Can ‘Frozen’ cool ‘Fire’s’ streak?

This year’s Thanksgiving weekend is serving up a battle of the elements, as Frozen goes head-to-head with reigning champion, Catching Fire. (Which reminds us of these classic antagonists.) The Disney animated musical and latest princess movie opens wide in 3,742 theatres today. The film’s tracking strong on Rotten Tomatoes at 88% fresh, and boasts a megawatt cast of Broadway stars, including Wicked’s Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff and Josh Gad, as well as Kristen Bell as spunky and motormouthed protagonist Anna. Already, Frozen is out-selling 2010’s Tangled in advance ticket sales. Expectations, as they generally are for Disney family fare, are high, with pundits seeing receipts in the $70 million range.

Odds are, however, Catching Fire will continue to light up the box office. The successful Hunger Games sequel and Lionsgate’s early Christmas present (to themselves) had earned $170 million domestically as of Monday. It’ll likely hold strong through the weekend. Where previous November blockbuster Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part II fell 69% over the holiday weekend, Catching Fire’s inevitable sophomore dip shouldn’t be more than 50, 55%.

Also hoping to wrangle a large slice of the holiday b.o. pie – or what’s left of it, anyway – Black Nativity, starring Jennifer Hudson, Forest Whitaker, and Angela Bassett; Homefront, with Jason Statham, James Franco, Winona Ryder, and Kate Bosworth; and Oldboy, Spike Lee’s Korean cult-movie remake starring Josh Brolin, are all bowing today. Nativity, targeted toward an African American audience and opening just as the Christmas season begins in earnest, should perform the best of the bunch with around $10 million. Neither Homefront nor Oldboy have garnered particularly favorable reviews, but they can both count on built-in audiences (Statham fans, original Oldboy fanboys) to show up, regardless of a grousing peanut gallery. With Homefront opening in 2,572 theatres, it’s expected to gross in the high single digits. At just 583 locations, Oldboy will likely reap around $3 million.

There aren’t any specialty releases opening today, but Philomena and The Book Thief will both expand. Judi Dench and Steve Coogan’s odd-couple drama will broaden its audience base as it goes from screening in four to 835 theatres. Thief will open in 1,234 locations across the country and, most likely, gross between $5 and $9 million.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Crowdsourcing success: Veronica Mars movie raises over $2.5 million with Kickstarter

Kickstarter is starting to get really, really powerful. It's funded tons of indie movies and even (perhaps regrettably) Lindsay Lohan-led The Canyons. Now it's funded one of its most mainstream projects yet. With the support of "Veronica Mars" star Kristen Bell and the blessing of Warner Bros.' digital
division, the TV show's writer and executive producer, Rob Thomas, created a Kickstarter campaign to get a feature-film version made--although the studio has the final word, of course. That was yesterday. Today, the campaign has earned over $2.6 million--I'd give the specific number, but it's rising by the second. Did I mention that the goal of $2 million was met within 11 hours, and there's 29 days left in the campaign?

Film Journal's written before about how independent movie theatres have been using Kickstarter to help finance digital conversions. But it's pretty amazing that a mainstream network television show is using this method. While it seems exceptional at first, there have been some prominent TV shows that have recruited fans to bring them back. The most famous early example was "Family Guy," and a new season of "Arrested Development" is coming to Netflix soon after years of speculation that the series would have a second run somewhere.

So much has been said about how social media has turned opening weekend into opening day.  Word-of-mouth can destroy bad movies much quicker than they used to. As this Kickstarter campaign shows, it can also work in reverse. Good programs may be subject to cancellations by executives or declining ratings despite a rapt fan base. But those same fans can now actually have a say. In today's day-and-age, there's no way a cult show like "Twin Peaks" would be cancelled and gone forever. Here's to the Kickstarter campaign for "Veronica Mars," and fans having a vote in saying what movies will make them show up to theatres.

Barrymore, Bell and Krasinski swim with 'Whales'

By Sarah Sluis

Call it Ace in the Hole meets The Cove. Kristen Bell has signed on to Whales, starring alongside Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski. The screenplay is based on a book about a 1988 global effort to save three whales trapped in Arctic ice. While normally, these whales would die, over $5 million in journalism coverage

eventually prompted the Soviet Union to send two icebreakers to free the whales--all during the Cold War. Because in Alaska, as Sarah Palin says, you can see Russia from your backyard.

Entitled Freeing the Whales: How the Media Created the World's Greatest Non-Event, the source material sounds cynical--thus my Ace in the Hole reference--but reviews say the book, at least, is more sincere. The Hollywood version will undoubtedly go the sincere route as well.

Barrymore will play a Greenpeace activist (of course) and Krasinski a small-town news reporter. Bell will round out the cast, playing an up-and-coming television reporter who thinks her looks are her only asset. The setting for the movie is a little offbeat, and the historical event fairly remote, but this could end up working in the movie's favor. I predict that Barrymore and Krasinski will be each other's love interest, with Bell as the "other woman" that Barrymore mistakenly thinks has gone too far with Krasinski--but it will all be a misunderstanding. Also, they'll save some whales!

The director, Ken Kwapis, last directed Barrymore in He's Just Not That Into You, and has directed Krasinski in "The Office." His directing credits (License to Wed, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) don't really reveal a personal style. But if there are whale scenes, he'll be ready: after all, he had to direct an orangutan in Dunston Checks In.

If this is a romantic comedy, I give it points for setting the action against an event that will actually be interesting and have real stakes involved. Bonus points if Barrymore goes a little hippie in her role as a Greenpeace activist.