'Captain America' takes the lead as 'Harry Potter' plummets

By Sarah Sluis

Given Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2's record-breaking $169 million weekend, it's no wonder the highly anticipated film fell 71% to $48 million its second weekend. It's the same fate suffered by The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which also plunged 70% its second time around. While huge drops usually indicate a movie was all marketing and no substance, they also hold true for fan movies. No serious Harry Potter fan would see the movie a week after it came out. It's pretty respectable that Deathly Hallows Part 2 earned $48 million, in fact, which is more than most movies' opening weekends. If Deathly Hallows Part 2 follows Twilight's trend, it will level its fall in a few weeks and then benefit from repeat viewings and interest from casual moviegoers.

With Harry Potter plummeting, Captain America: The First Avenger easily summited the first place spot with a $65.8 million opening. Audiences appeared to have no superhero fatigue. Thor and X-Men: First Class each had a different take on the genre, so that kind of creativity has helped keep the superheroes fresh.

Friends with Benefits grabbed $18.5 million and third place. Despite better reviews, the Mila Kunis/Justin Timberlake rom com earned less than January's No Strings Attached. The audience for Friends with Benefits skewed less female and slightly younger than the January sex comedy. Good reviews, however, could help this movie remain a popular pick in weeks to come.

Fox Searchlight's heavily promoted indie release Another Earth earned $19,600 per screen at four locations, an auspicious start. The perennial appeal of Holocaust-era films, however, meant the film was outshone by Sarah's Key. The Kristin Scott Thomas-starring tale about a woman's investigation into her family's past averaged $23,400 per screen at five locations. In the top ten, Midnight in Paris continued its run as this summer's indie darling by accruing $1.8 million, a 2% increase from last week.

This Friday will be packed. Cowboys & Aliens will set its sights on the action/sci-fi crowd. Crazy, Stupid, Love, with an all-ages cast, will try to grab multiple generations with its romance and comedy, and The Smurfs will turn the big screen blue.

Will 'Captain America' strike down 'Harry Potter'?

By Sarah Sluis

"Old-fashioned rightness and integrity" take center stage in Captain America: The First Avenger (3,715 theatres), which received a thumbs-up from critic Frank Lovece. The "heroic achievement" of a film features "bravura action sequences, exceptional performances and core emotional truth." Just don't see it in 3D, Lovece warns. The effects, added in post-production, are "barely noticeable."

Captain America's biggest competitor will be Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, which earned $169 million last weekend. Deathly Hallows Part 1 fell 60% in its second weekend. A similar drop would put Deathly Hallows Part 2 at $67 million its second weekend, slightly above the expected opening of Captain America. The superhero movie, which has the added benefit of 2,511 3D screens, is considered capable of a $55-60 million debut.

Comedy-seeking audiences will have the second opportunity this year to catch an R-rated "buddies who hook up" romantic comedy. This winter's No Strings Attached grabbed 49% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Friends with Benefits (2,926 theatres) is faring slightly better, with 65% positive reviews from critics. Critic Kevin Lally wasn't one of those in favor. Though "Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis make an attractive couple," the movie is way too "superficial." One extended gag involves a rom-com inside a rom-com, which didn't quite work with Lally. "If you're going to make fun of rom-com tropes, you had better make certain you're not wallowing in them yourself." Though the market has been saturated with R-rated comedies, Friends with Benefits should rack up at least $20 million.

Festival favorite Another Earth (4 theatres) uses the sci-fi genre to "mount a 'what-if' investigation of penance, redemption, and the possibility of a second chance to make a terrible act come right." Actor/writer Brit Marling is a star on the rise, making this a movie a "must see" for in-the-know indie moviegoers.

A woman's family's complicity in the Holocaust is explored in Sarah's Key (5 theatres), an adaptation of a book of the same name. Alternating between WWII and modern times, Kristin Scott Thomas plays a woman who is trying to determine what happened to the Jewish family who lived in her family's current home until 1942. Doris Toumarkine praised Scott Thomas' performance, noting that the movie puts the viewer through an emotional ringer, with "alternating wonderful, horrifying and tear-inducing moments."

On Monday, we'll see what kind of muscle Captain America wielded at the box office, and if audiences were ready for a second rom-com with the same premise as No Strings Attached.

DreamWorks Animation finds a director for 'Monkeys of Mumbai'

By Sarah Sluis

DreamWorks Animation has shown itself to be a worthy rival of Pixar, gaining accolades for a number of films, including last year's Oscar-nominated How to Train Your Dragon. Their latest project, Monkeys of Mumbai, just acquired a director.

Kevin Lima (Enchanted, Tarzan, 102 Dalmatians) will direct the Bollywood-inspired animated musical. Gurinder Chadha, who IMDB listed as director, is writing the screenplay with Paul Mayeda Berges. Chadha and Berges collaborated on Indian-inflected tales Bend it Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice. The adaptation of a story in the epic Sanskrit tale The Ramayana will be told from the point of view of monkeys. The primates must prevent demons from taking over the land.

One thing DreamWorks head Jeffrey Katzenberg will make sure of is that the movie won't "suck." During a webcast interview with Fortune, the studio head criticized recent movies, saying "Let me have a show of hands of people that would say the last seven or eight months of movies is the worst lineup of movies you've experienced in the last five years of your life... They suck. It's unbelievable how bad movies have been." It's a rare candid comment, but as someone who's seen her fair share of tepid films lately, I agree.

Projects similar to Monkeys of Mumbai have had mixed success. Disney misfired when it partnered up with Yash Raj Films for the 2008 animated flop Roadside Romeo. Perhaps DreamWorks will be luckier. Like DWA's Kung Fu Panda series, there will be opportunities for the movie to draw inspiration from classic Indian styles of drawing. Movies like Blue Sky Studios' Rio attracted an international audience while focusing on a specific locale, Brazil, including song and dance numbers inspired by the region's music. Done right, Monkeys of Mumbai could easily attract the global audience that's becoming increasingly important to Hollywood's bottom line. American audiences, for their part, will get a cultural lesson from another country's story bank.

Ron Howard & Brian Grazer adapt Mormon murder mystery in 'Under the Banner of Heaven'

By Sarah Sluis

Jon Krakauer is one stellar author. His nonfiction books combine gripping tales of adventure and tragedy with well-researched background information that offers incredible insight about the environment and history of his characters. They've also become movie fodder. 2007's Into the Wild, about a young man who lived a vagabond life before dying in Alaska, was nominated for two Oscars. Into Thin Air, the more successful book, has a less successful life on film. ABC turned it into a 1997 TV movie, but the movie was more of a cultural catalyst. Programs like Discovery Channel's "Everest: Beyond the Limit" mine the same content as Krakauer's book. Now the production team of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer have set their sights on a film version of Krakauer's 2003 book Under the Banner of Heaven. But it won't be an easy book to adapt.

Under the Banner of Heaven is both an incredibly readable history of the Mormon religion as well as the story of two fundamentalist Mormon brothers who killed their younger brother's wife and infant daughter. Among Mormons (though not an official part of current, mainstream LDS religion), there is a principle called blood atonement which mandates that blood must be spilled in order to atone for certain crimes. The men believed that the brutal killing was commanded by God and would serve as atonement for the wife's "sin." Her crime? The brothers maintained that young wife's influence led the elder brother's wife to leave him when he wanted to take a second wife.

The obvious choice is for the adaptation to drop the history altogether and focus on the murder. However, in the wake of the success of the Broadway play The Book of Mormon, I wouldn't be surprised if the producing duo had something else in mind. At the very least, they will need to provide context for the principle of blood atonement.

Dustin Lance Black has been tapped to pen the screenplay, and he just might be the perfect man for the job. Professionally, his expertise is in biographical films, including Milk and the upcoming J. Edgar. He also grew up Mormon, giving him a uniquely personal insight into Mormonism's religious culture. It's no wonder that he was a writer/co-producer/director on the HBO series "Big Love."

I look forward to seeing Under the Banner of Heaven on the big screen. "Big Love" has a soap opera take on polygamy, but I hope Black turns this tale as dark as he can--I'm thinking Boys Don't Cry and Zodiac, not Fargo.

Theatre, Netflix, or TV? Netflix price hike brings to light moviegoer habits

By Sarah Sluis

Yesterday, I mentioned my occupation as a writer for a film magazine to my hair stylist. "Yeah, between cable and Netflix I don't really go to the movies anymore," he said. He's not alone. 30% of Americans don't see a single movie in a year. The remaining 70% includes two groups. A minority sees movies regularly, once a week or a few times a month. The majority sees a select few movies a year that seem worth the expense for the experience. Movies like Harry Potter, Twilight, and Avatar make the cut for these people. Others prefer to see action-filled flicks in theatres and save talky ones for home. I recently recommended Midnight in Paris to a friend. "No, I don't see those kinds of movies in theatres," he said. He prefers seeing movies like X-Men: First Class, which benefit most from monster screens and surround sound, on the big screen. Movies lost their monopoly long ago, back when television first made its way into American homes. How much of a threat is Netflix really to movie theatres? Nada.

The only company to go out of business since Netflix has been Blockbuster. That's the clearest indicator that consumers consider Netflix a replacement for movie rentals, not going to the movies or catching them on TV. Netflix has also increased the "pie," opening up entirely different patterns of viewing. Never has it been so easy to sit down and watch an entire series of a television show. It's also the subscription method of choice for young adults, many of whom can't be bothered to set up a cable connection, much less pay $100 a month for the privilege, in their transient lives. Everyone I know who doesn't have a television watches programs online with Hulu or Netflix. So much for reducing screen time by not having a TV.

What will be most interesting about Netflix is to see how consumers react to the 60% price hike announced last week. Before, streaming was just an add-on to the DVD delivery service, which could be had for $9.99 a month (one DVD + streaming). Now consumers will have to purchase a $7.99 streaming plan and/or a $7.99 DVD rental plan, a big increase for Netflix's budget-minded customers. That makes the calculus of choosing a plan a bit more difficult. Personally, I've enjoyed streaming now and then when nothing else looks good, but the content and selection isn't strong enough to justify that cost, given how little the content I stream is worth (we're talking the movies that used to be in the 99 cents rental section). Perhaps that's why Netflix decided to outbid HBO for an original series back in March. I bet the $7.99 streaming fee will soon have an added bonus: original content.

As you can see by reading through the comments on Netflix's blog, a lot of their customers are very unhappy about the price hike. People are mentioning Red Box, Blockbuster, Amazon Prime, and Hulu as competitors who can provide them movies for a lower price. Not one person said, "Well, I might as well go to the movies now." Maybe that's because a month of Netflix is still less than the price of a night at the movies for two.

Netflix is part of the changing landscape of the post-movie theatre market. But so many of these changes are just variations on existing ways Americans already find and watch movies. Netflix is like a video rental store. Streaming is like on demand or even selecting what's best from the TV guide. Movie downloads are just buying a digital DVD. And going to the movies is always going to be a more immersive experience than watching a movie at home.

'Harry Potter' levitates to the top of the box office worldwide

By Sarah Sluis

Two out of three moviegoers this weekend bought tickets for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, giving the wizarding finale $168.5 million and the record for biggest opening weekend. Abroad, the movie also broke records, including best international opening weekend: $307 million. The spectacular numbers backed up the general agreement that the final Potter film was more than worthwhile. Critics rated the film 97% positive, and 93% of Rotten Tomatoes audiences liked the franchise's conclusion. Longtime Hogwarts fans made sure they turned out for the final installment. Audience members over 25 comprised 55% of audiences, compared to 45% for the penultimate film. With so many people making it a priority to see Harry Potter its opening weekend, next weekend could see a dramatic fall. However, repeat viewing could bolster the film as it rides out the rest of the summer.

Tyke favorite Winnie the Pooh was no match for Harry Potter, capturing just $8 million of the weekend box office. Even 2000's The Tigger Movie opened slightly better, and that's not counting a decade of inflation. Still, this kind of property will have a long life on DVD and Blu-ray and undoubtedly boost merchandise sales for Disney.

Literary adaptation Snow Flower and the Secret Fan debuted to a soft $5,600 per-screen average on 24 screens. Given the popularity of the book, I expected the marketing and release to approximate Memoirs of a Geisha, at least, but perhaps the marketing mavens at Fox Searchlight anticipated the 14% positive rating garnered by the movie on Rotten Tomatoes.

Documentary Tabloid grabbed a tidy $7,200 per screen at 14 locations. Director Errol Morris' latest garnered up a sizeable amount of press, and the film in turn released in an above-average amount of locations for an indie film.

This Friday, we're back to comic book superheroes with Captain America: The First Avenger. Friends with Benefits, featuring a similar plot to this spring's No Strings Attached, will also release wide.

Final 'Harry Potter' film to conjure up massive audiences

By Sarah Sluis

One decade and eight films later, the Harry Potter series is drawing to a close. The first viewers of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 caught the film at midnight, and Film Journal's intrepid intern Katie O'Donnell was at Manhattan's AMC Loews Lincoln Square to document the best costumes. Nationwide, the midnight screenings shattered the previous midnight record. With over $43 million in the coffer just from midnight screenings, the final Harry Potter is well on its way to a blockbuster weekend with more record-breaking to come.

Members of the Quidditch teams Chudley Cannons and Holyhead Harpies, complete with their Swiffer brooms.

Hogwarts students

Harry Potter casting a spell...without pants.

Now that the fun is finally coming to an end, extra crowds are expected for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, which is opening in 4,375 theatres. Many cineplexes are showing the movie on multiple screens, giving the movie an overall screen count of 11,000. Over 3,000 3D screens and 274 IMAX screens will help up the movie's overall box office. Critics have responded positively to the finale, giving it a 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Critic Harry Haun pronounced the brisk and action-filled finale an "emotional and exhilarating end."

Those too young for Harry Potter will enjoy Winnie the Pooh (2,405 theatres). Disney's been plugging the movie as a nostalgic return to hand-drawn animation. The idea of Winnie, Tigger, Piglet, and Eeyore rendered in computer animation is unthinkable. With a demographic of parents and kids no older than kindergarten or early grade school, Winnie the Pooh will have a hard time earning even $10 million, though tracking suggests an opening similar to Mr. Popper's Penguins teen-millions. Critics have pointed out, admiringly, that this is one kid's film that doesn't try to add in-jokes for adults. The gentle film stays "faithful to the original characters and material," Doris Toumarkine writes of the "delightful, no-frills" movie.

On the specialty front, my top recommendation is Director Errol Morris' Tabloid (14 theatres), which I wrote highly about when I saw it last year at the DOCNYC fest. Sex, kidnapping, Mormons, a beauty queen, and cloned dogs populate the documentary, one of the craziest true stories you'll ever hear. The dark religious comedy Salvation Boulevard (4 theatres) has Pierce Brosnan playing a preacher, with some uneven fun and more kidnapping hijinks. The literary adaptation Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (24 theatres) should please "female art-house patrons" according to Toumarkine. The quiet film hasn't gotten nearly as much as buzz as producer Wendi Murdoch's husband's problems with News of the World. That's too bad, since the movie caps off the tale of female friendship with a "sweet, deeply affecting, tear-inducing ending."

On Monday, we'll count the records Deathly Hallows Part 2 broke, and see if tykes and their parents turned out for their favorite honey-craving bear.