Best would-be movie adaptations of 2013

As your newsfeeds and Digg accounts can attest, the end of the year is a time for Best-Of lists, a time that extends the spirit of Thanksgiving, as we take a moment to  appreciate the (over)abundance of media we’ve consumed these past 12 months.  

This year, in addition to our list of the Top 10 Films of 2013, we wanted to express our reflections with an eye towards the future. Combining an equal love of books and film, the below group of four books and one essay published in 2013 are those we believe would make for noteworthy – creatively interesting, or popular – films in the years ahead.

Here are our bids for the best would-be movie adaptations of 2013:

D.T. Max: Every Love Story is A Ghost Story: The first biography of David Foster Wallace (or DFW, to the late author’s dedicated base of fans, many, many of whom can be found in Brooklyn) chronicles the troubled writer’s struggle with the depression that would ultimately overwhelm him.  DFW’s magnum opus Infinite Jest, as well as his collection of essays Remember the Lobster, remain popular as ever, if not more so, as (and as is generally the case with modern mythologizing) the further we get from Wallace’s ’97 suicide, the more closely he becomes associated with the cult of artistic genius arrested, in the vein of Kurt Cobain or James Dean.

It’s important to note, however, we weren’t the first ones to think a DFW film would tap the zeitgeist: There’s already a movie about the author in development, an adaptation of the book Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself. An account of the five days writer David Lipsky spent accompanying Wallace on his book tour for Infinite Jest, Yourself has Jason Segel playing DFW.  We believe Ghost Story would lend itself to a more straightforward character study, perhaps narrowing in on that section of Wallace’s life when he was working on rather than promoting Infinite Jest, arguably his most popular work. There are certainly many ways to approach or rather represent a man who’s been alternately canonized (“gentle,” “kind,” “wise”) and vilified (“pompous,” “grandstanding” “a jerk”), but we believe one of the more rewarding approaches would involve mining Ghost Story’s extensive – in the sense of author Max’s access to personal letters and the like – insight to produce a film that makes conveying Wallace’s paradoxes its primary focus.

In other words, this would be the “thinker” or art-house DFW film.

Cheryl Sandberg: Lean In
This nonfiction book written by the former Chief Operating Officer for Facebook sparked a feminist controversy when it first hit shelves earlier this year. A sort of guidebook for the gentler sex in the workplace (if you want to succeed, don’t act like the gentler sex), Lean In outlines those steps women should take as well deconstructs those myths Sandberg thinks they shouldn’t believe.

In terms of how this non-narrative book could lend itself to a film adaptation, we were thinking something along the lines of the 2012 movie What to Expect When You’re Expecting, which used the popular mommy-to-be handbook as a jumping off point for a fictional story. A film about a young woman who receives a promotion at a tech company (tech tends to be a  male-dominated industry) and then has to contend with the modern issues Sandberg raises would be both timely and trendy. Let’s give Isla Fisher a part that puts her comedic skills and everywoman likability to good use – and gives her more of an edge than the confectionary Confessions of a Shopaholic.

Alice McDermott: Someone
Someone is just what its title suggests: In its portrayal of one “unremarkable” woman’s life, from childhood through old age, the story is both generic and, as this is a particular human life, inimitable. This film would be another art-house offering, as there’s no easily taglined plot to the story – the action is driven more by time than, well, action. But if cast correctly, including three great actresses, a girl, a woman, and an older woman, to play protagonist Marie at various points in her life, the cinematic version of Someone could bring a heightened immediacy to the novel’s theme of human universality. It would also pose a creative challenge to translate the author’s lovely prose into visual equivalents.

As NPR points out in their review, Marie “doesn’t undergo any kind of dramatic transformation,” which is something of a narrative no-no in both modern books and movies. But we happen to think a realistic portrayal of a real character would be simply really great.

Donna Tartt: The Goldfinch
Slightly more high-concept than Someone, The Goldfinch was rated by the NYT Book Review as one of the best books of the year. An orphan steals a painting from the museum he was forced to hide in during a terrorist attack. Then he tries to keep out of foster care and away from “the man” by staying with a friend. Then his father finds him and takes him to Vegas. Then he becomes involved with the underworld art set and ends up in Europe. A lot of other things happen too, meaning there’s plenty of action and memorable characters to make Goldfinch a broadly appealing bid at the box office.

Galya Diment: Two Lolitas (Vulture essay)
The Oscar-bait. Dorothy Parker may or may not have seen an early copy of Nabokov’s Lolita prior to its publication, but she certainly wrote an eerily similar short story that appeared in the The New Yorker. Famous wit Parker contending with her fading star, and ascendant Nabokov trying to find a home for his rebel Lolita, are two juicy parts. This is the film Laura Linney and Bill Murray should have made instead of Hyde Park on Hudson.

 

'Battleship' takes a hit from 'The Avengers'

Releasing in the wake of The Avengers, Battleship earned just $25.3 million this weekend, half as much as the superhero movie. Projections had the movie earning somewhere over $30 million, so it appears that The Avengers remains the first-choice pick for most audiences. I've heard that people are still showing up only to find sold-out screenings, no surprise given the movie's $55 million third weekend, which is second only to Avatar. With Memorial Day weekend coming up, The Avengers can only stand to benefit from its blockbuster status. If you're looking for an action movie to see, why settle for Battleship when you can watch the movie your friends have been raving about?

The Dictator opened to $17.4 million. Sacha Baron Cohen's portrayal of a corrupt ruler split open the U.S. cultural divide. Paramount reported that the comedy did well in the Northeast and West but performed noticeably worse in the Midwest and South. Young males were the biggest fans of the Cohen starrer. The polarizing humor was undoubtedly responsible for its terrible "C" CinemaScore in exit polls.

The pregnancy comedy What to Expect When You're Expecting earned $10.5 million playing to a mostly female crowd (70%). Women with children often show high "intent to see" numbers but low numbers when it comes to actual attendance. I predict this life-stage movie will do much better in the ancillary markets, and could be the kind of film women pick up when they're actually pregnant themselves.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel went up another 21% from last week to finish with $3.2 million. Bernie has also been having a successful theatrical run, rising 132% in its fourth week to finish with $511,000.

Hysteria had trouble attracting audiences, finishing with an $8,000 per-screen average in five locations. The French-language Polisse averaged $17,000 per screen in three locations, a much more auspicious debut.

During the coming Memorial Day weekend, Men in Black 3 will revive a long-dormant franchise, and the first horror offering in weeks, Chernobyl Diaries, will target younger audiences. Specialty seekers will have Wes Anderson's latest, Moonrise Kingdom, along with the release of the French hit The Intouchables.

FJI contributor Jon Frosch is blogging from the rainy Cannes Film Festival for France 24. Check out his latest post here.

'Battleship' challenges 'The Avengers'

Like The Avengers, Battleship (3,690 theatres) has already released overseas. With $200 million already in the bank, the action extravaganza won't be a failure by any means, but it won't enjoy the combination of critical and box-office success enjoyed by The Avengers. "Those looking for big, loud sci-fi action will find plenty to like here," THR's Megan Lehmann reports, "as director Peter Berg pumps up the volume on clashing military hardware and flag-waving heroics." That doesn't mean the action-packed, warships vs. aliens premise has much of a narrative thrust. Critics agree, giving the Taylor Kitsch starrer just a 36% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. A weekend total of around $35-40 million is in the cards, which would put the Hasbro adaptation short of The Avengers. Even if the superhero picture drops by half, it will end up with over $50 million. Globally, the billion-dollar success is now the sixth-most profitable movie of all time.

For audiences who prefer the screams of a baby to explosions, What to Expect When You're Expecting (3,021 theatres) offers a humorous take on pregnancy and child-rearing, with a diverse cast (young, old, black, white) that covers the gamut of experiences (planned, unplanned, adoption). FJI critic Marsha McCreadie reports that the "sitcom structure of much of the film supersedes credibility," but "you won't need an epidural" to get through with the comedy, which has a "light touch." An opening just north of $20 million would undoubtedly make Lionsgate very proud of its creation.

The Dictator (3,008 theatres) opened on Wednesday to $4.1 million, and its five-day total could end up close to $25 million. Unlike star Sacha Baron Cohen's previous titles Borat and Bruno, which documented his characters' interactions with unwitting participants, this one is 100% fictional. I laughed from start to finish, which made me more forgiving of the comedy's narrative flaws and occasional joke that didn't quite hit the mark. There's also a dash of social commentary in the mix, with a late-in-the-game speech that references the 1% rhetoric of Occupy Wall Street.

On the specialty scene, Maggie Gyllenhaal leads the cast in Hysteria, a "gimmicky but handsome period rom-com" about the invention of the vibrator to treat Victorian women's so-called hysteria. The film "amounts to a superficial cinematic massage," according to Doris Toumarkine. Francophiles should swoon for Polisse (3 theatres), which dramatizes the work of officers in Paris' child protection unit.

On Monday, we'll see if the wild success of The Avengers dampened the releases of Battleship and The Dictator, or if the great kickoff to the summer movie season has encouraged more repeat business.

Who exactly will be buying tickets to 'What to Expect When You're Expecting'?

I don't have particularly high hopes for the box office of What to Expect When You're Expecting, a comedy based on the pregnancy how-to book. It looks funny-ish, but I predict it will do its biggest business on Netflix and DVD, not at the box office. Why? The people who will find the most humor in the situation are probably young parents, exactly the people with the least amount of time, energy, and money to hire a babysitter to see the latest movie. They are television's favorite audience, not exhibitors' favorite audience. Look how badly the Sarah Jessica Parker movie I Don't Know How She Does It bombed. The movie was about a busy corporate mom who has no time to make something for her child's bake sale. Is that the kind of person who has time to see a movie with her fellow moms in order to laugh at their lot? No.

Lionsgate just released a new trailer for What to Expect that focuses entirely on the dads, hoping to draw in the male audience. That doesn't seem like much of a stretch, but I'm worried about the majority of moviegoers, who have only a tenuous connection to or interest in parenthood.

There are so many demographics that won't want to see this movie. Teens, I hope, unless they're unhealthily obsessed with "16 & Pregnant." Singles. Parents of older children. Empty nesters who feel alienated by the talk of competitive parenting and the most recent declarations of what modern pregnancy is supposed to be like. And for couples without children, doesn't this sound like the worst possible date night movie?

Thinking about movies about parenting young children that have done well with a broad audience, my first thought was Look Who's Talking. I actually saw that quite young, enchanted by the talking baby concept. This was a movie that made almost $300 million in 1989. It had some of the parenting young children moments, but also a romance, and, of course, the talking baby gimmick. It appealed to parents, but it wasn't a "parents" movie, which is exactly what What to Expect is trying to be. It's possible that the upcoming release's ensemble cast of diverse, popular stars will draw audiences despite the subject matter. But this is a movie commenting on a pretty stage-specific event that doesn't seem to have much to offer to people who haven't gone through this life stage or said good-bye to it a long time ago. If Lionsgate manages to pull off the marketing of this May 18th release, I will be very, very impressed.