NATO’s trailer guidelines & best previews of all time

It’s a feeling familiar to many moviegoers: You’re stalled in traffic; there are train delays on the subway; you thought you had arrived at the theatre right on time, only to find yourself stuck at the end of a line snaking its way out and away from the building’s entrance. You’re going to be late for your movie, there’s no doubt about it, but happily, your anxiety is checked by the recollection of common cinema practice. Movies never start on time. They always begin 10 minutes later than listed, at least. And why? Because it’s standard form for a host of pre-show previews to play before each feature.  And so you breathe easy, knowing there’s a nice, long buffer of movie trailers between you and the opening scene of your film.

It remains to be seen whether or not the new set of voluntary guidelines released by the National Association of Theatre Owners today will dramatically affect this common 10-minute lag-time, between when a film is listed to begin and when it does begin, but one thing is likely: The trailers themselves will be shorter. NATO has asked that all movie trailers run no longer than two minutes, a full 30 seconds shorter than today’s norm. They’re also asking distributors not to release a trailer more than five months ahead of a film’s premiere. These new guidelines, however, do allow for two exemptions per year, per distributor. They’re scheduled to go into effect next fall.

Does this mean theatre audiences will be treated to many more short trailers before their film begins, or will a movie scheduled for 8PM now in fact start closer to 8:05 instead of 8:10PM? Most importantly for trailer fans, what effect will the time restriction (should distributors choose to adhere to it) have on the caliber of preview itself?

Perhaps it will result in the creation of trailers that skew towards the kind of quality work that makes up today’s list, inspired by NATO’s announcement, of the best movie trailers of all time. It’s true, most of the below previews do not run much longer than two minutes. Other similarities include an ingenious use of music (Jefferson Airplane providing the aural relief at the end of the anxious A Serious Man trailer; the fervid interest The Social Network’s trailer stoked in a capella, and preferably foreign, covers of Radiohead; Arcade Fire reaching the masses via the Where the Wild Things Are preview; and of course, everything auditory about the Pulp Fiction trailer) and, in most instances, a tendency to tease and hint at rather than explain an entire premise. (Remember the Cloverfield phenomenon?)

Admittedly, our list trends towards more recent films, with a certain emphasis on horror and indies, so if you have any suggestions for older works or genres not included, feel free to sound off in the comments below!

The Social Network
 

Where the Wild Things Are
 

Pulp Fiction
 

The Exorcist
 

Citizen Kane
 

A Serious Man
 

Cloverfield
 

The Shining
 

The Blair Witch Project
 

Little Children
 

Alien
 

Unconventional titles and releases populate box office

By Sarah Sluis

Where the Wild Things Are opened this weekend to the tune of $32.5 million, on the high side of projections. However, the movie is rumored to cost around $100 million. Once you add in the marketing budget, it could be awhile before the film breaks even. After taking the Twitter pulse of the people, it appears that some found the movie to be slow and squirm-inducing, but others were pleased to see something so unconventional at the box office. While I enjoyed the movie, I think the budget was way too big. The production notes mention expensive choices like clearing a beach full of kelp and helicoptering the footprints out of a desert between takes--things a filmmaker with a smaller budget would be forced to work around. By comparison, its competitor, Fox's upcoming adaptation of the children's book Fantastic Mr. Fox, was made on a "medium-sized" budget, and also boasts a rollout distribution. It will release in New York and Los Angeles for two weeks before expanding (oddly, on the same weekend Disney's The Princess and the Frog opens wide). Their respective directors, Spike Jonze and Wes Anderson, can each be characterized as indie-crossover successes, and I suspect that Fox's release strategy will better serve their film.

The other unconventional release of the week was Paranormal Activity, which expanded its release to 760 theatres and racked up $20.1 million at the #3 spot. Its per-screen average was $26,530, down 50% from last week's $49,379. If the per-screen average drops another 50% next week, when it expands to about 1,800 screens, the movie will still gross about $23 million. Not so bad for a movie that cost around $10,000 with a reported marketing budget of $10 million. Next week it will contend with Saw VI, but it's worth noting that it didn't seem to have any problem with the competing horror title The Stepfather, which debuted this weekend to $12.3 million.

Going back up the list to #2, Law Abiding Citizen earned $21.2 million, a big win for its distributor, Overture. With a diverse cast and its appeal to adult males, the movie helped fill a neglected niche.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs brought in another $8.1 million to bring its box-office total to $108.2 million. Even with Where the Wild Things Are and Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3D, it dropped just 29%, yet another week with an extremely strong holdover. Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3D, however, a week past its advertised two-week engagement, dropped 61% to bring in $3 million. While a $28.5 million gross for a re-release is quite healthy, Disney spent an unknown but sizable amount remastering the movie in 3D, paying for prints, and marketing. Last week, it pushed back its re-release of Beauty and the Beast in 3D from February 12, 2010 to 2011, perhaps a sign it is rethinking its 3D re-release strategy.

Among specialty releases, The Maid had the highest per-screen, $18,000. New York, I Love You did light business, $3,000 per screen, but by opening at 119 locations it netted a third of a million dollars. A Serious Man, in its third week of release, added 60 locations for a total of 82, with a strong $10,400 per screen. An Education, in its second week, went from 4 to 19 locations, and drummed up $14,000 per screen.

A 'Wild' weekend at the box office awaits

By Sarah Sluis

Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze's children's movie that's much different from what we've come to expect from children's movies, will open today in a huge 3,735 screen release. Besides kids, the movie has a huge fan base of 20 and 30-somethings who grew up with the Maurice Sendak book. The fact that Jonze's adaptation is regarded as "adult" could help bring in those crowds. Critical reception has been mixed, and it's uncertain whether theatregoers will relay the good or bad parts of the film to their friends. This weekend, projections are putting the film's weekend take at $25 million, and its release in IMAX should help bring it to that number.

Law Abiding Citizen (2,899 theatres) may have a mere 16% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but according to critic Kirk Honeycutt, the thriller "create[s] sufficient tension and intrigue to hook viewers along with a photogenic, hard-working cast," making it a likely candidate for a solid, if unimpressive box-office performance.

Starring teen heartthrob Penn Badgely from "Gossip Girl," The Stepfather (2,734 theatres) is wish fulfillment for children of divorced parents. Because when your stepfather yells "Your Mother said 'Turn that down,' son," it really means he's a psycho serial killer who marries divorced women then kills off their families.

The teen horror movie could have some competition from Paranormal Activity, which is expanding to 760 theatres this week. If it were to replicate its $49,000 per screen from last week, it would bring in $37 million. While it's unlikely to maintain that per-screen level when it expands, I wouldn't be surprised if it creeps much closer to Where the Wild Things Are than expected.

On the specialty front, New York, I Love You releases in 119 theatres. Our critic Erica Abeel found it to be better than Paris, Je T'Aime, noting that "most of these linked 'shorts' succeed remarkably in nailing the serendipitous flavor of love, New York-style." Newbie distributor Apparition will release blaxploitation parody Black Dynamite in 70 theatres. Critic James Greenberg appraised that "even if it's a one-joke movie that runs out of steam, director Scott Sanders manages to keep the gag going for 90 minutes," though he wondered if younger audiences who didn't grow up with blaxploitation would get the joke.

On Monday we'll see if Where the Wild Things Are made audiences roar as loudly as predicted, if Paranormal Activity's screams died down or amped up, and whether Law Abiding Citizen and The Stepfather were able to entice those interested in a run-of-the-mill thriller or horror movie.