'Hunger Games' may have a bigger weekend than 'Twilight: Breaking Dawn'

It's hard to imagine a female-driven, book-based franchise bigger than Twilight. Yet The Hunger Games should open far above the first Twilight's opening. In fact, it's on track to beat The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, the fourth film in the vampire romance series. What accounts for The Hunger Games' astounding tracking numbers?

One, a wider variety of people are embracing the movie. Breaking Dawn had 36% interest among younger women, Hunger Games has 45%. Among women over 25, 29% expressed interested versus 27% for Twilight. The trend is even more pronounced among males. 28% of males under 25 are interested in Hunger Games, versus just 10% for Breaking Dawn. Only 8% of older males wanted to see Breaking Dawn, but 20% are interested in Hunger Games. The additional interest from males and younger women could push the movie to a $100 million opening. Within a week, Lionsgate could have its highest-grossing film ever.

There's also a more varied plotline. Unlike Twilight, The Hunger Games has action and romance. Its love triangle (a la Twilight) is sandwiched within between an original, futuristic action plotline. These aren't young kids having car chases. They're young kids who have been compelled to fight to the death. For people who are sensitive to realistic motivations, a demographic that may include more females and males, The Hunger Games delivers.

Finally, people are expecting to be wowed. Like the Harry Potter series, the Hunger Games series is filled with action sequences and fantasy elements that just beg to be created on-screen. A big reason fans wanted to see the Harry Potter series was in order to see how the movie interpreted and re-created its magical creatures and buildings. Hunger Games is inspiring the same anticipation.

The Hunger Games comes out on Friday, March 23. American viewers can relish the fact that the PG-13 film didn't require any digital removal of blood, like the U.K. rating board demanded for it to receive a "12A."

 

Two,

'2012' destroys the box-office competition

By Sarah Sluis

Disasters, it seems, are always in style. 2012 earned an astonishing $65 million over the weekend, exceeding expectations. All the CG carnage came at a steep price, $200 million in production costs, but the first-week international gross of $225 million, plus a cable deal with FX, has already steered the movie toward the black.

Coming in second place, A Christmas Carol dropped a merry 25% to $22.3 million. It also has $200 million in production costs to make back, so the movie is counting on steady audiences through the Christmas season to recoup its investment. IMAX screens alone brought in $3.1 million, continuing the trend of 3D/IMAX films being buoyed up beyond opening weekend due to the strength of the higher-priced screens.

Pirate Radio debuted right out of the top ten at $2.8 million. Because it released on just 882 screens, its per-screen average of $3,200 bested seven of the films in the top ten. The movie didn't flop, but it would have needed to at least double its per-screen average to be considered a success.

The real second-week winner was Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire. The drama made the top ten while in release on under 200 screens. The only other film to do that in the past decade, according to Box Office Guru, was Paranormal Activity, which did so just weeks ago. Sometimes lightning does strike twice, but I suspect another explanation. The definition of "per-screen" may have changed--Precious was being played ten times a day, which requires more than one screen to achieve. Still, its $6 million gross and $35,000 per-screen average show the movie has a ways to go at the box office, giving it a promising forecast when it expands again this Friday.

Fantastic Mr. Fox debuted to a $65,000 per screen (though, again, playing ten times a day at each of its four "screen" locations). The stop-motion animated film will open wide over Thanksgiving. With its appeal to both kids and adults, it might be the crowd-pleasing choice, though it will have both Planet 51 and The Princess and the Frog to contend with.

This Friday, the next movie in the Twilight Saga, New Moon, will storm into over 4,000 theatres. Animated Planet 51 will provide some counter-programming for kids, and parents that don't qualify as "Twilight Moms" may want to catch feel-good The Blind Side after they drop off their rabid teenage girls at the theatre.

Will 'Where the Wild Things Are' enchant or repel audiences?

By Sarah Sluis

Last night, in a theatre dotted with kids wearing cardboard crowns just like the boy lead, Max, I saw Where the Wild Things Are . Like many of my generation, the book by Maurice Sendak was one of my favorites, in part because it defied easy explanation. Max breaks rules and is mean to his Mom, then goes on this weird, parallel adventure that's never really explained. All in a few hundred words. Max's wolf suit, in particular, captured my imagination. In the movie it's just as compelling, and comes with the addition of Converse sneakers to place the movie in a modern, but still retro, context.

I loved the soundtrack by Karen O (a singer in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs). It would burst in with just the right note of ebullience during the rumpus or dirt clod fight. But it's also eclectic. Not everyone likes the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and those that aren't a big fan of children choruses (apparently one of the most hated things about music, according to an NPR "This American Life" I once listened to) will probably dislike the film's music even more. But director Spike Jonze's choice in the soundtrack reflects his sensibility for everything else about the movie. He's not trying to please everyone. Maybe he doesn't even care that the movie has some slow spots in the middle. He's certainly not trying to make a Disney movie.

In the press notes, Jonze explains that "kids are

given so much material that's not honest, so when they find a story

like this it really gets their attention." It's true that Americans in particular are known for sheltering their children, which leads me to wonder how this movie will play across the world. In an interview with Newsweek, Sendak rails against Disney for defanging the Mickey Mouse of his youth (he apparently used to have teeth) and spoke of how his immigrant parents believed in giving children the full, messy, evil truth. Will Max's disobedience of his mother read the same across cultures? Or the presence of monsters who want to eat you one minute and are your friends the next?

More immediately, how will the movie do this weekend? Thompson on Hollywood puts tracking at $25 million, a plausible figure. Toy Story / Toy Story 2 has been playing this week, and the studio announced that it extended its engagement through a link on Twitter to this video. Meanwhile, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs will be entering its fifth week, and will probably dip below $10 million. Among family and kid-oriented fare, the field is wide open. Let the wild rumpus start!

Box office forecast is 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs'

By Sarah Sluis

Releasing in 3D and IMAX, to a welcoming audience that's settled into school and ready for some entertainment, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is considered the likely winner of the weekend box office. It's clever and fast-paced, with "breakneck humor and sparkling wordplay," according to our critic Frank Lovece. While the plot is much more embellished than Ron and Judi Barrett's illustrated classic, it stays true to its wish-fulfillment premise. It rains ice cream, cheeseburgers, spaghetti and more--every kid's dream. Its 3,119 screen release includes 1,828 3D screens and 127 IMAX screens, a new high that should significantly pad the returns of the animated movie.

A "campy pastiche of horror and high-school movie clichs" appealing to the 18-25 crowd, Jennifer's Body (2,701 screens) should woo male and female audiences alike. The critical consensus appears to be that Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody's hipster-quip dialogue isn't quite as charming the second time around, but moviegoers may be much more forgiving of the slick horror film. Plus, there's Megan Fox, whose candid interviews and sultry on-screen personality will sell more than a few tickets.

Love Happens, which is billed as a Jennifer Aniston-Aaron Eckhart romantic comedy but is actually more about Eckhart coming to term's with his wife's death in a car accident, opens on 1,898 screens. It's a genre picture straight down to its green-screen shots of Seattle, but executed just well enough to make your hour and forty minutes more diverting than plodding.

Steven Soderbergh's The Informant! (2,505 screens) also debuts. Soderbergh is another one of those prolific directors who cranks out film after film--I got a hint of why in the comedy/thriller, which has a few shots with sloppy cinematography (Soderbergh does it himself under the pseudonym Peter Andrews). Our Executive Editor Kevin Lally hated the "relentlessly jaunty music score." While that film device fails, there's also a clever voice-over narration that illustrates the "cognitive dissonance" of Matt Damon's character. The "manic stream filled with non-sequiturs" about corn and polar bears was one of my favorite parts of the film.

This week is a crowded one at the box office. We'll recap Monday to see how the weekend played out.

No Vacancy at the box office with 'Hotel for Dogs,' 'Bloody Valentine 3D'

By Sarah Sluis

The Martin Luther King box-office weekend frequently sees the release of horror, kid, and black-

oriented titles. This year, we have all three. The nepotism niece, Emma Roberts, stars in Hotel for Dogs (3,271 screens), the latest in a long string of canine titles that have swept the box office. In a recession, who better to turn to for comfort than man's best friend? The film riffs on a Lois Duncan children's novel of the same name, adding a foster children premise (what is it with children's books featuring orphans?) and "a pint-sized

engineer a la Kevin McCallister from Home Alone" (to quote our Ethan Alter). With no school on Monday, the film will be able to capitalize on the elementary-school set.

Mobilizing the males under 25 quadrant, My Bloody Valentine 3D (2,534 screens) and Paul Blart: Mall Cop (3,144 screens) will offer up the horror and comedy genres. Certainly, the novelty of seeing axes and fireballs being thrown at you in 3D (a thrill promised in the trailer) will make for good locker room water fountain chatter, but will teen boys pass up the chance to laugh at authority in Paul Blart: Mall Cop? A power-tripping mall cop on a Segway is certainly the bane of a food court loafer's existence. I can imagine a teen boy saying to his friend, 'Didn't we see The Unborn last weekend? Let's go for a comedy.' Unless, of course, the boys are already aware of that other mall cop flick hitting theatres soon, Seth Rogen's Observe and Report.

The Notorious B.I.G., of drug dealer to rapper fame, lived a crack-to-riches American Dream until he was gunned down in Las Vegas. Notorious (1,637 screens), releasing on the weekend honoring Martin

Luther King, and on the eve of Obama's inauguration, harkens back to the 1990s. As Teresa Wiltz from The Root noted, seeing the film is 'like time traveling back to the day when gangsta rap ruled, all bluster and bling, beef was settled with bullets and an XXL-sized brother from Brooklyn dazzled, if only for a moment." With Obama, King, and B.I.G. sharing the limelight this weekend, B.I.G.'s gangster success seems much less relevant than the achievement of our first black president.

For the foreign and Oscar loving audience, we have two Oscar expansions and three foreign/specialty releases. Defiance (expansion to 1,789 screens) and Last Chance Harvey (expansion to 1,054 screens) will both open in a multiplex (nearish) you. While neither of these well-reviewed films will sweep the Oscars, they have earned some awards attention (receiving one and two Golden Globe nominations, respectively) and good word-of-mouth. Chandni Chowk to China (130 screens) , which tackles the martial arts AND Bollywood genres, "should please fans of both genres ready to be happily assaulted for two-and-a-half hours," according to our critic, David Noh. If, of course, a "mulligatawny stew of a film that feels like it's been laced with liberal doses of acid" is right up your alley.

For NYC audiences, Cherry Blossoms, "a portrait of an aging couple" FJI critic David Noh found deeply imbued with "a strict humanist's compassionate observation," opens, along with Ballerina, a documentary of three professional dancers in the Russian Kirov Ballet. Both come recommended by Film Journal.

Stay tuned this weekend for posts from Sundance, courtesy of Daniel Steinhart.

A Weekend of Leftovers...and 'Punisher: War Zone'

By Sarah Sluis

Deferring to the blitz of movies released over Thanksgiving weekend, only one film opens to wide release
this week, Punisher: War Zone (2,508 screens).  The comic book sequel should break the top five, better than last week's action sequel Transporter 3, but the movie's lackluster reviews certainly won't electrify audiences or even fanboys. 

With Four Christmases, Australia, Bolt, and Twilight returning for their second and third week, more eyes will focus on the performance of these holdovers.  Australia opened to a lackluster $20 million, and its success or failure will be determined this weekend, when analysts measure just how much it drops from last week.  Bolt, which rebounded from its Twilight-induced third place opening by posting the same numbers over Thanksgiving (unlike Twilight, which dropped nearly 70%), should finally drop a little this weekend, but the real sign of its longevity won't come until schools let out for winter break--will parents bring their children to Bolt or choose something else?   Last week's number one release, Four Christmases, should hold its appeal through this weekend, especially now that audiences have heard piped Christmas music for a week in virtually every public place.

Last week four specialty releases cleared a million dollars (Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Changeling). While the latter two films are winding down,  Milk and Slumdog Millionaire both expand their releases this week. Milk will move onto 99 screens and Slumdog Millionaire onto 78, including new markets Atlanta, Detroit, and Indianapolis.  Both films are sure to rack up Oscar nominations, so they're worth seeing.

Beyond wide releases, Cadillac Records (686 screens) and Nobel Son
(893 screens) both open moderately this week.  Starring Adrien Brody and Beyonce Knowles, the glamorous and flashy musical was dubbed "rollicking and insightful" by the New York Times but "overstuffed" by our reviewer, David Noh.

A stylistically flashy film, Nobel Son
seems to have inspired a "love it or hate it" response, and is currently tracking at 21% on RottenTomatoes.  Our critic David Noh called it "over the top but in a good way," and predicts the film will have a cult following.  Lastly, Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon opens on 3 screens, and the positively reviewed film will now have a chance to gain or lose momentum based on audience response.