Showing posts with label surrogates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label surrogates. Show all posts

Monday, September 28, 2009

Audiences return for second helpings of 'Meatballs'


By Sarah Sluis

With only a small decrease in demand, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs came in at #1 for the second week in a row. It dropped just 18.8%, an unheard-of amount, to bring in another $24.6 million. Because it's the only family film in the marketplace right now, and comes with the added boost of 3D

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs hamburger

and IMAX locations, this movie's release benefited from a perfectly clear forecast.

Bruce Willis futuristic film Surrogates opened at #2 with $15 million in ticket sales. It's half the amount of last year's fantasy-action movie Eagle Eye, which opened on the same weekend last year. Given Surrogates' $80 million budget, this opening is a disappointment.

Scrubbed for tweens, Fame brought in $10 million and the second-runner-up spot. The double digit opening is about half the movie's production costs, which should satisfy MGM's expectations.

Sci-fi/horror movie Pandorum, "endlessly derivative of films such as Alien, Event Horizon, Pitch Black and countless others," opened at $4.4 million. Apparently, space mutants don't sell themselves the way they used to.

Among the rest of the returning films, The Informant! fared best, dropping a light 33% to bring in $6.9 million. Strong second-week returns were expected given the film's older audience.

On the specialty circuit, Coco Before Chanel and Capitalism: A Love Story both made big waves at the box office.

Coco Before Chanel, which stars charming Audrey Tautou, has already earned $24.8 million at the foreign box office, and brought in $35,400 at each of its five locations, a per-location average that speaks well to the film's future.

Michael Moore's Capitalim: A Love Story brought in $60,000 per location at each of its four locations,

Capitalism a love story moore

giving it the highest per-screen average of the year--though it appears it was running on more than one screen at those theatres, at least in New York City. While the opening seems stellar, it's difficult to compare the debut to other Michael Moore films, all of which had different specialty-to-wide release patterns: Fahrenheit 9/11 opened wide on a Friday after a two-location debut on Wednesday. Though its per-screen averages were lower, Capitalism could still fall short of Fahrenheit's $119 million total gross. Moore's more recent film, Sicko, opened on one screen on a Friday its first weekend, giving it a $68,000 per-screen average by limiting supply--showing how easily per-screen averages can be deceiving.

Along with Capitalism: A Love Story, Ricky Gervais/Jennifer Garner comedy Invention of Lying will open wide this Friday, keeping company with teen roller derby movie Whip It!, and a double feature re-release of Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3D.



Friday, September 25, 2009

Box-office leaders: 'Surrogates,' 'Fame,' and 'Cloudy'


By Sarah Sluis

The trio of wide releases this weekend has one thing in common: so-so reviews. Surrogates (2,951 theatres), a dystopian future film starring Bruce Willis, is one pick for the top spot. Critic Kirk Honeycutt

Surrogates willis pike

quipped that Surrogates is "a movie about human robots that appears to have actually been made by human robots." The premise, as laid out in the trailer, is a twist on The Matrix: everyone willingly hooks up to a machine and lives their life through an avatar. The problem is, turns out killing your avatar kills your real-life self. The best thing about futuristic films is their detailed, well-laid-out worlds, but unfortunately it seems Surrogates lacks the logic that would make the movie a satisfying diversion.

Teen musical remake Fame (3,096 theatres) is another contender for the top spot, along with last week's release Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. According to critic Stephen Farber, it "apes High School Musical rather than Mean Streets. Rated PG, it's almost laughably bland and

Fame dance

watered-down in its desire to appeal to the widest possible audience." Sadly, the best song of the production, "Fame (I'm Going to Live Forever)," is ghettoized to the closing credits.

Pandorum (2,400 theatres) also borrows from a well-known sci-fi movie, this time Aliens. Dennis Quaid plays an astronaut who wakes up in a spaceship that looks creepily old--and missing many of its 60,000 passengers. With a group of survivors, he must try to evade the aliens that have the ability to both kill and infect. It's expected to open below Surrogates and Fame.

This week also brings some high-profile small releases. Sony Pictures Classics Coco Before Chanel (6 theatres, NY/LA) is a must-see for any fashion fans, though the movie concentrates more on

Coco before chanel

biography and ambition than the fashion icon's actual designs. Chanel's very masculine, unfrivolous garments are a shock to the eye, and the manor scenes play much differently than the usual costume film stereotypes.

Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story opened on Wednesday on 4 screens, and earned $9,000 per screen on its opening day (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen did $14,600 per screen in its Wednesday debut). It doesn't open wide until next Friday, so this week's returns will help portend its box-office fate. I can't wait until all the pundits start digging in, if Moore's promotional appearance on Good Morning America is any hint.

The much-reviled I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, from the book by Tucker Max, opens on 120 screens, hopefully all located, and contained to, epicenters of fratty bad behavior.

Slamdance horror movie Paranormal Activity will open in 13 campus locations, in an attempt to build word-of-mouth for the Blair Witch-type horror movie. Our critic Kevin Lally found the movie to be either stupefying or horrifying, with the wait for its "[e]ffective jolts" requiring "extraordinary patience."

Monday we'll see if audiences picked Fame, Surrogates, or the comfort choice, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. We'll also get a sneak peek of whether Michael Moore's film will be more Sicko or Fahrenheit 9/11.