Week in review: 3/17 - 3/21

This week saw two big Hollywood players, Sofia Coppola and Andy Serkis, sign on to direct projects for the benefit of the little people -- kids, that is. A cult classic celebrated its 10th anniversary, we were treated to our first look at classic cartoons in 3D form, and a critic made an impassioned plea for accomplished short films to be taken as seriously as any modern classic feature. While we're on the subject, Golden Era-Hollywood choreographer and director Busby Berkeley, he of 42nd Street fame, will be the subject of a new movie, thanks to producer (and most likely, star) Ryan Gosling. Unfortunately, Gosling's Busby biopic is not a Sony project, which is too bad, as the studio could use a hit, or quite a few, right now.

Our final pick of the week has no direct ties to the world of film, but is nonetheless an interesting read for anyone interested in art and entertainment criticism (and spats) in general.

What have we missed? Let us know by sounding off in the comments below!

Sofia Coppola to helm 'The Little Mermaid,' Deadline Hollywood

Andy Serkis to direct 'The Jungle Book' for Warner Bros., The Hollywood Reporter

Blessed Are The Forgetful: Remembering Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on its 10th Anniversary, Indiewire

You're a CGI-rendered Man, Charlie Brown in the Peanuts 3-D Teaser, The A.V. Club

Does the Cinema Need Short Films?, The New Yorker

Ryan Gosling Producing Busby Berkeley Biopic, May Also Star, Indiewire

Sony Interactive Group Shuts Down as Layoffs Begin, The Hollywood Reporter

Rosen: In Defense of Pop Criticism, Vulture

'The Lego Movie' assembles boffo weekend figures

The Lego Movie enjoyed a stellar four days this President’s Day weekend. The animated film that’s a hit with both kids and adults earned a pretty darn awesome $63.5 million Friday-Monday. It grossed $50 million from the weekend alone, which tallies out to a slight 28 percent drop from last weekend. To compare, similar title The Lorax dipped 45 percent its second weekend in theatres.  The Lego Movie has earned $143.8 million to date.

The rest of the weekend’s titles more or less stacked up as expected.  About Last Night landed just behind Lego with $25.7 million. This second consecutive hit (after Ride Along) for comedian Kevin Hart had the best opening for a rom-com since another Hart title, Think Like a Man, debuted to $33.6 million in 2012. Unsurprisingly, the majority of the film’s viewers were female (63 percent) and skewed older (57 percent were over the age of 30).

RoboCop failed to meet Sony’s initial projection of $35 million for the four-day spread. Instead, the sci-fi remake earned a slightly disappointing if still solid $21.7 million. Audiences were 62 percent male and 64 percent over the age of 25, and awarded the movie a CinemaScore rating of a B+. Odds are RoboCop will eventually bow out to the tune of $60 or $70 million.

The Monuments Men made the Top 5 as predicted, though it took the No. 4 and not the No. 5 slot as many had expected. Men is now George Clooney’s most successful outing as a director, and it grossed $15.5 million over the past four days. The weekend’s earnings have bumped The Monuments Men’s cume to $44.2 million.

It was Endless Love that took the weekend’s No. 5 spot, earning $13.2 million. The vast majority of that four-day gross – over 56 percent of it – came from Valentine’s Day ticket sales, which means Love can now boast one of the most front-loaded openings over. Eighty percent of viewers who paid good money to watch pretty young things love, lust and, well, look pretty, were female, and 76 percent were under the age of 25. They generally liked what they saw, awarding the movie an A- CinemaScore grade. Endless Love’s heavily front-loaded debut, however, portends a steep drop in the weeks ahead.

But at least Love can say it enjoyed one good weekend, which is one more than fellow romance Winter’s Tale. The adaptation of Mark Helprin’s beloved and perhaps too sprawling novel was a categorical bomb with its $7.3 million debut. That figure landed Tale at No. 7, plunking it down behind enduring success Ride Along. Writer-producer-director Akiva Goldsman’s misfire will likely fade out within the next few weeks or so.

Weekend box office to host battle of the remakes

As VH1 would say: I love the ‘80s. Or rather, Hollywood does, rolling out three remakes of films that were popular 30-odd years ago. Even with RoboCop, About Last Night, and Endless Love stacking the bill, however, general consensus has last weekend’s champion, The Lego Movie, once again taking first place.

About Last Night will likely land just behind Lego, with Sony predicting returns somewhere in the mid-20 millions. It’s a romance flick opening on Valentine’s Day, and one that boasts a marquee actor who has already proven his box-office worth with films like Think Like a Man and the recent hit Ride Along, Kevin Hart. Both of which factors have led some pundits to believe Sony’s expectations are a little low. Think Like A Man, for example, opened to $33.6 million in 2012. Chances are good About Last Night will meet, if not exceed, that bar.

RoboCop opened a few days ahead of the weekend this past Wednesday night. Sony had predicted a debut of roughly $35 million for the Wednesday-Monday spread, but RoboCop got off to a rough start on Wednesday night, raking in just $2.8 million. Granted, much of the country was battling poor weather conditions, but underwhelming reviews and diehard RoboCop fan skepticism (the new color of the hero’s suit and the soft PG-13 rating are two points of contention) do not bode well for a considerable uptick through the weekend. It’s more likely RoboCop will earn between $20 and $25 million.

The final 1980s remake, Endless Love, will surely benefit from opening on Hallmark’s National Date Night, or Valentine’s Day, today. Similar titles The Vow and Safe Haven fared pretty well over this same weekend the past two years, and their demographic, teenage girls, will likely help Love earn solid figures. Even given the film’s lack of headlining stars (The Vow had Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum going for it) or recognizable name brand (Safe Haven was a Nicholas Sparks adaptation), eye-candy Alex Pettyfer and a tried-and-true star-crossed lovers storyline should nonetheless help Endless Love gross around $10 million.

Given Winter’s Tale cast – Colin Farrell, Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly – period setting, and heavily romantic plot, one would think the novel adaptation would be primed to easily beat Endless Love, if not the weekend’s other two new releases. Unfortunately, those stars about which Jessica Brown Findlay spoke so dreamily within the film have not aligned for its likely success. Director-writer-producer Akiva Goldsman’s labor of love has been almost universally panned, and there are many who believe the movie’s marketing has done a poor job explaining just what exactly the time-traveling tale is about. Returns should tally out to less than $10 million, which means Winter’s Tale will probably not crack the long weekend’s Top 5. Monuments Men should earn the No. 5 spot, dropping some 40 percent or so from last weekend to rake in $12 or $13 million.

Happy Valentine's Day!

 

‘The Lego Movie’ to tower over ‘Monuments Men’

Remember when people thought The Lego Movie was a bad idea? All the sniping and Internet eye-rolling that accompanied Warner Bros.’ decision to release a film based on the popular kids toy brand has been all but forgotten today, as positive reviews for the animated flick continue to pour in. Opening wide in 3,775 locations, The Lego Movie is poised to enjoy a boffo opening.  According to Fandango, Lego is on track to rake in the highest pre-sales figures since Toy Story 3, a feat that would place it ahead of blockbusters Despicable Me 2, Monsters University, and box-office darling Frozen.  Each of the aforementioned films debuted to $67 million or more, which certainly bodes well for Emmet, Wyldstyle, and the rest of Lego’s funny, earnest and “special” cast.

The Monuments Men’s box-office performance, on the other hand, is more uncertain. Writer-director-producer George Clooney’s WWII dramedy could also be called funny and earnest, but critics are seeing something much less special in the combination. An old-fashioned war movie, which our critic Kevin Lally called “A film set in the 1940s that feels like it was made in the 1960s,” and to which NY Mag critic David Edelstein suggested the alternate title The Tasteful Dozen, The Monuments Men has received underwhelming reviews.  The draw of such a stellar, A-list cast (Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, John Goodman) will still likely help Men land at No. 2 this weekend, but expectations are tempered. Some pundits predict returns around $25 million. Others, like Sony, have less faith in the pedigreed caper: The film’s distributor believes receipts will tally out in the high teens.

The third and final new film opening today, Vampire Academy, is expected to fall behind Ride Along and possibly even Frozen to clock in at No. 4 or 5.  There hasn’t been much of a marketing push behind this new(ish) spin on the tired blood-sucker trope, although it does have Mean Girls and Freaky Friday director Mark Waters to recommend it. The teen romp will probably be funny enough – which, in all likelihood, will still not be enough to make an impact at the box office. Expect Academy to earn $6 or $7 million.

3D opera and Sony's closed-caption glasses previewed at Geneva Convention

Now in its sixth season, the Met Opera has been the single most successful alternative content program in theatres. On Tuesday night, RealD previewed part of Madam Butterfly 3D. No, it's not from the Met, but London's Royal Opera House. After a host of technical difficulties were resolved, we previewed part of the movie. The opening credit sequence had the extreme pop-outs people associate with 3D. It was mainly behind-the-scenes shots of hair and makeup and rainy London streets. The patient, slower pace lent a different mood to 3D than the one people are used to seeing with 3D-animated or tentpole movies. The actual opera had more restrained use of 3D. The most revelatory part was not the 3D, but the crispness of the shots. The high definition showed, and gave a front row view of the action.

On Wednesday evening, Sony previewed its closed-caption glasses. Not only will theatre owners likely be required by a federal mandate to provide options for deaf and blind patrons, but many theatre owners spoke of customers who had come in requesting such a product, since it was announced last year at ShowEast. Though Sony is currently mum about the price, the glasses are heavy and
complicated--and that usually means expensive. This reporter could not figure out exactly how the hologram was being projected but that's for the engineers. On each side of the glasses there is a small pack that apparently projects the captions on the screen from each side--but I can't explain more than that. It's also attached to a small transmitter that allows people to set the language and other specifications. This creates a great opportunity for international film festivals--people can watch the same movie, all with subtitles set to their preferred language.

Wearing the glasses is slightly less smooth. They project in green, but depending on the color of the screen at the moment, words could be hard to read. The darker the screen, the more legible the captions. Because the glasses are adjustable, you can have the subtitles show up in the black space below the screen, which Sony confirms many testers have preferred to do. But if your theatre doesn't have a lot of dark dead space below their screen, you may have to read the subtitles on the screen, a more difficult option.

The biggest flaw of the glasses is the fact that a person's head is not the most stable projection device. If movies were projected via hats worn by the projectionist, the images would be wobbly. The same principle is at work here. It's possible over the length of a feature film the mind would adjust to the wobbles, but I found that the subtitles drew an annoying amount of attention to my body's minor fidgeting. I would then move my head more to try to move the subtitles back to where I had them before. This is the kind of problem that never seems to happen in Minority Report! Despite these issues, Sony's engineers have created an impressive technology. For a deaf patron, the service is a lot better than nothing. But audiences used to fixed, unmoving subtitles while watching a foreign-language film may not find the experience as smooth to their liking. For that reason, I think this product will be the biggest success in the hearing impaired market. If the next generation contains a stabilizer or something else to fix the wobbles, I think foreign film subtitling will be the next application of this cutting-edge technology.

Audiences die for 'Zombieland'

By Sarah Sluis

Combining the classic opening weekend winner, the horror genre, with an 89% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Zombieland went straight to number one at the box office, bringing in $25 million. The number exceeds the reported production budget, making this movie an out-of-the-gate winner for Sony.

The studio also had the second place film of the week, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. The 3D animated movie earned $16.7 million with just a 33% drop from last week, even as it shed 142 locations.

Right behind it was its 3D animated rival, the Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3D double feature. The re-release brought in $12.5 million. Because it opened in a smaller number of theatres, its per-location average bested that of Cloudy, $7,100 to $5,600.

The Invention of Lying opened at $7.3 million, despite its dismal reviews. By contrast, the well-reviewed Whip It opened three spots lower, with a gross of $4.8 million. However, the movie sneaked in 500 locations the week before, so the studio likely has an extra million or so in its cumulative gross. If Fox Searchlight's predictions come true, the movie could play well in coming weeks due to positive word-of-mouth.

Increasing 1,990% from last week, Capitalism: A Love Story also opened at $4.8 million. Its first wide opening weekend matches that of Sicko, so it's likely to end up in the $20-25 million range.

Among specialty releases, The Coen Brothers' A Serious Man racked up a quarter million at its six locations for a per-theatre average of $41,00. While the Coens' movies have a large number of fans that likely turned out opening weekend, and many expect this to be one of their smaller films, the large average indicates that this film is in for a healthy, robust run at the box office.

In its second weekend of release in college towns, Paranormal Activity went from 12 to 33 locations, and brought in $16,200 at each. The unusual release strategy appears to be paying off--the movie brought in $535,000 this week, for a cumulative gross of $780,000.

LeBron James documentary More Than a Game debuted with $197,000 gathered from its 14 locations, with a per-location average of $14,071. Well-reviewed, the payoff for this movie may be in its tie-ins, since Nike has been heavily cross-promoting the doc.

In its second week, Coco Before Chanel added 11 locations and $220,000 to its gross, with a healthy $13,750 per screen.

This week, Universal comedy Couples Retreat should head up the box office, and the much-buzzed potential awards movie An Education begins its platform release.