‘Non-Stop’ tops ‘Son of God’

The question on everyone’s lips, “Who would win in a fight between Liam Neeson and Jesus?” has been settled. The country’s favorite action star KO’ed the iconic religious figure $30 million to $26.5 million at the box office this weekend. Non-Stop’s impressive opening haul exceeded the debuts of Neeson’s last two movies, Unknown (which bowed to $21.9 million in 2011) and 2011’s The Grey ($19.7 million). The airborne thriller is Universal’s third movie to open at No. 1 this year, after Lone Survivor and Ride Along. A few more women than men purchased tickets to the film (the audience breakdown was 51 percent female) and were mostly part of an older crowd (65 percent of attendees were over the age of 25). They generally liked what they saw, awarding Non-Stop an A- CinemaScore rating, which means the movie should hold well over the next few weeks. It will likely top out at around $80 million.

Son of God impressed with its second-place standing. The movie about the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, a repurposing of The History Channel’s “The Bible” mini-series, far out-performed other recent religious films, including The Nativity Story (2006) and Kirk Cameron’s Fireproof (2008), which opened to $7.8 million and $6.8 million, respectively. Of course, it didn’t attain the fiscal heights of Mel Gibson’s blockbuster The Passion of The Christ – which earned $26 million on its first day – but, lacking that film’s controversy and star power, this was to be expected. Attendees were 62 percent female and 82 percent over the age of 25 and also awarded the move an A- CinemaScore grade. Such a favorable audience reaction portends continued steady, if not stellar, success, however, many pundits are unsure how well Son of God will hold through the rest of its theatrical run, as well as for how long that run will last.

As expected, The Lego Movie clocked in at No. 3. The awesomely successful animated hit raked in another $21 million and, on Saturday, became the first movie released in 2014 to cross the $200 million mark.

In fourth place, The Monuments Men continues to defy the critics and do great business. George Clooney’s labor of art love earned $5 million, which has boosted the movie’s overall cume to $65.7 million.

The two new releases that opened wide last weekend, 3 Days to Kill and Pompeii, both suffered steep drops their second weekend out of the gate. Kevin Costner-starrer Kill dropped 60 percent to gross $4.9 million, earning it the weekend’s No. 5 spot. Pompeii eased 58 percent to take in $4.3 million.

Smaller and specialty releases did their part to contribute to the weekend’s BO earnings as well. The Wind Rises fared the best, grossing $1.6 million from 496 locations, followed by the extended cut of Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, which earned $1.34 million. Repentance, starring Forest Whitaker and Anthony Mackie, made $530,000 from 152 locations, while Russian 3D war film Stalingrad tallied out to $500,000, having screened in 308 theatres.

Finally, Oscar contenders, led by American Hustle, continued to draw audiences right up until the big telecast on Sunday night. Combined, the nine nominees for Best Picture earned around $7.4 million, with American Hustle raking in the largest haul with its $1.9 million weekend gross.

‘I, Frankenstein,’ takes up the rear far behind ‘Ride Along’

Fantasy/action retread I, Frankenstein suffered through its own version of a horror story this past weekend. The movie failed to crack the weekend’s Top 5, let alone claim the No. 2 or 3 slot as befits a big-budget wide release. Instead, I, Frankenstein bombed with $8.3 million. Even worse than The Legend of Hercules’ opening figure ($8.9 million), and roughly half of last year’s comparable title Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters’ debut, Frankenstein’s haul landed the film at No. 6. Expect the DOA would-be franchise to flame out very soon, most likely to less than $20 million.

On the other hand, expect Ride Along to cruise past an overall gross of $100 million by the end of its theatrical run – and potentially towards a sequel. For the second weekend in a row the cop comedy earned the No. 1 spot at the box office. Along raked in $21.2 million, bumping its 10-day cume to $75.4 million.

Another Universal film, Lone Survivor, took second place with $12.6 million. This is the second consecutive weekend the top two spots have been occupied by movies distributed by Universal  – the last time a distributor achieved this feat was back in 1994, when Warner Bros. titles On Deadly Ground and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective both ruled the box office. Having earned $93.6 million so far, Lone Survivor will likely out-gross Zero Dark Thirty, which earned $95.7 million, by the end of the week.

The Nut Job continues to hold well, having accumulated $12.3 million and thus securing the weekend’s No. 3 position.  That figure marks a drop of 37% from last week, and has boosted the film’s domestic earnings to $40.3 million in total.

Continuing to afford pundits and journalists ample opportunity to play off the title of its hit song, “Let It Go,” Frozen refuses to do just that when it comes to its hold on the box office. The animated success moved up a bit this weekend to the No. 4 position, enjoying $9.04 million in sales. It is now officially the highest-grossing original animated movie of all time. Yet another boost may be imminent, as Disney plans to release a sing-along version nationwide this coming weekend.

This same nation has more or less opted to take a pass on the new Jack Ryan reboot. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit rounds out the weekend’s Top 5 with its $8.8 million gross. The movie’s overall cume to date is less than that which the last Jack Ryan attempt, The Sum of All Fears, managed to earn at this same point in its theatrical run a decade ago. Shadow Recruit now stands at $30.2 million.

When it comes to specialty features and, as is the case with the following films, awards contenders, Dallas Buyers Club enjoyed the benefits of a wider release (earning $2.05 million from $1,110 locations) while Nebraska took in $1.44 million from 968 theatres. Right now Nebraska has earned the least of amount of money of the nine Best Picture Academy Awards nominees, while as of this morning Club's  total domestic gross clocked in at $20.4 million.

‘Ride Along’ to pull up ahead of ‘Jack Ryan’

Buddy cop comedy Ride Along, starring Ice Cube and comedian Kevin Hart, whose documentary Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain was one of the most successful docs of 2013, is poised to cut in front of the other guys and finish first this weekend. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit will likely be Ride’s fiercest competitor, although the spy reboot isn’t expected to put up much of a fight.

Ride Along follows a seasoned cop who tries to scare away his sister’s boyfriend by taking the wannabe policeman on a faux ride-along – which soon turns very and hilariously real. Pundits believe the film’s dual plots involving a romantic relationship and a budding bromance should appeal to audiences of both genders and help the film score big at the box-office. Expectations are hovering about $30 million for the long weekend. Interestingly, if Ride Along does earn the most money, this will be the third consecutive year a Universal film has come out on top over the MLK holiday.

Chris Pine is now the fourth actor to tackle the popular Tom Clancy character Jack Ryan. Alec Baldwin played him once and Harrison Ford played him twice in the ‘90s, while Ben Affleck made the most recent attempt to establish a Jack Ryan franchise with 2002’s The Sum of All Fears. Is Chris Pine finally the guy to make a Bourne-like success of Ryan? Unclear. The film has gotten mixed though not terrible reviews, with many critics adopting an ambivalent attitude: Competent enough, but we’ve seen it before. Shadow Recruit opens in 3,387 theatres to Ride Along’s 2,662, but even with a potentially larger audience base, the movie is only expected to gross somewhere in the high-teens.

2013 saw a number of high returns for horror films, and Devil’s Due may be looking to continue that momentum. Unfortunately, the movie’s found-footage conceit, once a popular device, seems to be wearing thin with viewers. Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones also featured spooky video and yet it failed to match the figures of past Paranormal Activity movies, opening to just $18 million, a new franchise low. Devil’s Due doesn’t have a similarly recognizable name, or cast (although fans of TV show “Friday Night Lights” will be excited to see Matt Saracen up on the big screen), in which case, the film will likely clock in between $10 and $15 million.

Animated kids’ comedy The Nut Job is the last new release opening wide this weekend. Comparisons to Disney’s winter behemoth Frozen are inevitable, although the latter continues to hold remarkably strong. The nutty squirrel caper may have novelty on its side, but Frozen has the enduring appeal of Idina Menzel. The princess musical will likely out-earn Job, which isn’t expected to gross more than $20 million or so.

Lastly, several Academy Award nominees are getting their pre-Oscars re-release this weekend, to the delight of those intent on seeing each of the nine Best Picture contenders before the March 2 telecast. Technically, Captain Phillips is already two days into its theatrical return, having opened in 903 theatres on Wednesday. Favorites Gravity and 12 Years a Slave will screen in 944 and 761 locations, respectively.

‘Hercules’ to fall in step behind ‘Lone Survivor’

If early tracking reports bear out, the son of Zeus is no match for the U.S. Navy SEALs (now there’s an infomercial for you). Lone Survivor, the critically acclaimed war drama starring Mark Wahlberg and based on a real-life disastrous, albeit heroic, 2005 SEALs mission in Afghanistan, expands wide to 2,876 theatres today. Comparable combat films Zero Dark Thirty and Black Hawk Down managed to pull in figures in the low-to-mid $20-million range over their opening weekends (in 2012 and 2001, respectively), setting mid-January precedents many believe Lone Survivor could easily match. Universal, however, has released more conservative estimates, predicting their film will bow somewhere in the high teens.

The other high-profile release opening nationwide this weekend, The Legend of Hercules, isn’t expected to make its competitors work hard for their survival. Although promos have Kellan Lutz looking appropriately muscular, and the CGI visuals boasting the appropriate fanboy aesthetic, there’s been little advance hype, from either critics or fans, surrounding this latest variation on the 300 formula. Hercules will likely haul in around $10 million, and may not even crack the weekend’s Top 5. However, those still gunning for an epic take on the epic tale of a son-of-a-god can rest assured: Brett Ratner will release his version, starring The Rock, this July. If that doesn’t do it for you, there’s always the Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth adaptation.

Over in the specialty realm, Spike Jonze’s Her is poised to expand to 1,729 locations. The quirky tale of fraught love between man and machine has so far earned $3.2 million and received generally favorable reviews, though given its strange/original subject matter, pundits are unsure of its continued success. Similar oddball titles, such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Lost in Translation, however, managed to play very well, so we’ll see if cerebral cinemagoers can help Her reach the $5 million mark.

Finally, August: Osage County and Inside Llewyn Davis will also continue their rollouts. August will screen in 905 theatres, while Llewyn will play in 729.

In sum, the weekend’s breakdown will likely go something like this:

1. Lone Survivor


2. Frozen (No, audiences can’t let it go)


3. The Wolf of Wall Street


4. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug


5. American Hustle

 

'Tower Heist' to be available for just $59.99 three weeks after opening

By Sarah Sluis

If most city dwellers pay at least $10 for a movie ticket, it would take six people just to equal the price of watching Tower Heist on-demand for $59.99. The fee, which is more than six months of Netflix's streaming services, is part of a test being carried out by Universal and its parent company, Comcast. For that price, viewers can watch the film three weeks after its theatrical release in the comfort of their own homes. But who's buying?

A lot of people don't even have six comfortable seats on their couch, let alone the ability to wrangle so many friends together to watch a movie and share the cost. Do executives at Universal and Comcast expect people will invite friends over to watch the movie? Will couples gather older children (the movie will be rated PG-13) around the television? Will the teens themselves hit the "buy" button to the consternation of their parents? Or will this be a status thing for the people on MTV's "Cribs" with home theatres?

Comcast plans to test the VOD concept in two markets, Atlanta and Portland. Atlanta, with its high population of affluent black citizens and ex-pro sports players, seems like a good fit for the test, especially since Tower Heist has a couple of prominent black cast members (Eddie Murphy and Gabby Sidibe of Precious fame). Portland may be the counterpoint to that test, with a liberal, tech-savvy populace but not as much of a reputation for McMansions. Because the McMansion segment, presumably, has enough money to rent a movie for ten times what it used to cost at Blockbuster.

It's doubtful that Universal and Comcast would release the data from the test, so the best indication of this working would be if this idea of high-priced on-demand continues to flourish. So far, the exhibition industry and NATO have not spoken out on this issue. The audience for high-priced on-demands is probably small. It's hard to see the value proposition in paying so much to see a movie at home when a theatre provides more of a guarantee of good technical specs and an "event"-like experience.

Is this high-priced product intended to figure out the upper limit people will pay to watch a movie? Or is it simply a bit of a bait-and-switch? If the industry plans on offering more reasonably priced, $29.99 on-demands in the future, maybe this is just a way to gain a foothold and flout current windowing guidelines without prompting the ire of the exhibition industry.

Will 'Ouija' go the 'Battleship' route?

By Sarah Sluis

In the past few years, it seems comic book adaptations have been supplanted by adaptations of brands that don't even have a story attached to them. It was as if action figures (Stretch Armstrong) led to board games (Battleship, Candy Land) which led to the technically-a-board-game adaptation Ouija, the rights to which are held by Hasbro. To my mind, the only successful non-book/play/comic book
adaptation wasPirates of the Caribbean. There were just a handful of references to the theme park ride, and the rest was straight-up Jack Sparrow with eyeliner. Based on what Universal's doing with Battleship, I'm not enthused about what they have in store for Ouija.

To refresh, Battleship is the two-person game involving shouting out numbers on your opponent's grid (A-7!, J-8!), and playing cat-and-mouse with your opponent until they have sunk all your battleships. With all that tension from constant evasion, it sounds like Crimson Tide all over again, right? Wrong. The Universal version is not about two boats chasing each other, but about ALIENS. An "armada" of aliens out for destruction, to be specific. It's almost as if the writer of the movie really wanted to make a sci-fi movie and just decided add some aliens. And it has pop singer Rihanna in it, a left-field choice that feels a little like a tone-deaf marketing ploy. Without a screen persona, it would have been better if she started out in something music-oriented to get audiences used to seeing her on screen.

The plot of Ouija isn't out on the Internet yet, but since it's also a Universal project I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to turn what obviously should be a horror film into a car-chase actioner or romantic comedy. In fact, after doing some more extensive Googling, I discover I'm actually on the right track. According to Newsinfilm.com, "Ouija will not take the expected supernatural horror angle � strange consider Michael Bay's horror house Platinum Dunes is producing � but will follow a more Indiana Jones type journey to discovery. " I am up in arms. Universal has had one flop after another, and it's decisions like these that prevent anyone over the age of thirteen from enjoying such misguided releases.

Will 'Chief Ron' be worth the gamble?

By Sarah Sluis

When I heard the plot line of Chief Ron, my initial reaction (that one you're supposed to either trust or ignore) was extreme wariness. A huckster, who doesn't "look" Indian, poses as a member of the Mohegan tribe in an attempt to start his own casino. What's funny is that it's based on a true story, in which a blond, blue-eyed Indian successfully won a court case that established his ancestry and allowed him to set up a casino, but in the comedy version, the guy will be a fake (at least until the third act, perhaps?).

Justin Theroux, who co-wrote Tropic Thunder (which you may remember for Robert Downey, Jr.'s blackface character) will direct from a script by Jordan Roberts (Around the Bend). I'm all about using comedy to explore the racial politics that underscore tribal casinos, but will a mainstream studio picture be able to effectively do this? The premise incorporates several hotly contested issues: blood quantum, or "how much" makes you a certain race, and the political rights of tribes governed as "domestic dependent nations" (which means independent, but not really). Will it be able to engage with these arguments, or merely bow to widely held stereotypes? As someone who has lived near Indian casinos and heard both sides of the debate, often phrased in racial terms, and studied under an indigenous rights scholar in college, I'm perhaps more sensitive to these issues than most people, but that doesn't mean these viewpoints should be ignored.

Looking at debates that occurred over Tropic Thunder last year (turns out the movie also got heat for making jokes about people with disabilities), the best I can hope for is that the film's treatment of these stereotypes will bring awareness to the political issues surrounding Native Americans, much like Downey's performance encouraged debates about black/white relations, as people argued about whether or not the jokes were offensive (even in the YouTube comments section!). Last year I saw the Tropic Thunder trailer several times in theatres, and there's a particular joke (at 2:00) that inspired a wave of shocked laughter: Downey, Jr (in blackface) taking offense to a perceived racial slight, saying, "What do you mean, you people?" followed by Alpa Cino (who is actually black) saying "What do you mean, you people?" The joke seemed to relax people into laughter, by implying that being sensitive to racial slights is actually more problematic. At least that's my reading of the joke.

Who knows how much of this subtext was in Tropic of Thunder's script, and how much was in Robert Downey, Jr.'s delivery? After all, he did receive an Oscar nomination for the astounding fact that he managed to play a role in blackface without totally misfiring. I can only hope that Chief Ron will be able to handle the political issues they got themselves into with the plot with sensitivity, and, most importantly, humor. If they fail at that, you can always rent Smoke Signals.

Scorsese to take on the life of Frank Sinatra

By Sarah Sluis

Marty, meet Ol' Blue Eyes. Today, Universal announced that Martin Scorsese will helm a biopic of Frank Sinatra. Phil Alden Robinson, best known for writing and directing Field of Dreams, will pen the script. It took Universal and Mandalay over two years just to get the life and music rights to Sinatra's work, so one hopes the project will move quickly now that they're done with the legalities. Already, people are asking who will play Sinatra. Leonardo DiCaprio seems like the front runner, given his working relationship with Scorsese and slight build, but I've also seen Johnny Depp and Ewan McGregor being thrown around as possibilities.

The best part about this project is how naturally Frank Sinatra's life fits in with Scorsese's interests as a director. There's the mob and crime connections, which Scorsese's explored in Goodfellas, The Departed, and Casino. Sinatra spent a lot of time in New York (he was born in Hoboken, NJ), which Scorsese loves as a subject (Gangs of New York, The Age of Innocence, New York, New York, After Hours, Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, to name a few, all make New York an unswappable part of the story), Then there's Las Vegas, which Scorsese profiled in Casino. Sinatra spent years singing there and the filming of the original Ocean's 11 in the city is cited as the time the perennially hung-over group of performers became the "Rat Pack."

Music features prominently in Scorsese's films. He's never done a biopic of a musician, but he's helmed documentaries of the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and he's in post-production on a documentary on George Harrison. His soundtracks always have thoughtfully placed songs, which have inspired directors like Wes Anderson to make their musical choices even more prominent and front-and-center.

Of course, the capper to all this is the superb work he's done on his "one man" biopics. Raging Bull is one of the best films ever made, and The Aviator had the difficult task of portraying the enigmatic life of Howard Hughes, then showing him interact with starlets who were famous in another right, like Katharine Hepburn and Ava Gardner. He's incredibly detail-oriented when it comes to historical portrayals, even reflecting them stylistically: The Aviator matched its color processing with the Technicolor technology at the time, switching from two-strip to three-strip as the characters progressed through time.

As a final-cut director (according to Variety), Scorsese should be able to include the less savory parts of Sinatra's life, even with the presence of daughter Nancy Sinatra as an executive producer. Wikipedia, for example, turns up evidence that Sinatra might have had ties to the mob, struggled with mental issues and was possibly bipolar, and had a tumultuous, love-hate relationship with Ava Gardner, which apparently began while he was still married to his first wife. These biographical details, in my mind, aren't damaging, but signs of humanity. Scorsese has always been attracted to morally ambiguous characters, but he gives them souls, making us understand the struggles and thought processes of mobsters, worn-out boxers, and psychopathic taxi drivers. There's no question in my mind that he will be able to do similar justice to Frank Sinatra.