'Breaking Dawn--Part 2' leads sluggish post-Thanksgiving weekend

The post-Thanksgiving weekend was pretty uneventful. No release crossed the $20 million mark. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn--Part 2 came the closest, falling another 60% to settle at $17.4 million. However, the top fourteen movies all earned over $1 million, a sign there are lots of quality movies in the marketplace, including some specialty releases that are gearing up.

Both new releases flopped. Killing Them Softly debuted to $7 million, under the $10 million figure many predicted. It also failed with audiences, who gave the movie a rare "F" rating in exit
polls. It's an especially a harsh blow for Brad Pitt, who both starred in the movie and produced through his Plan B productions. At least he has Angelina Jolie to go home to. The other new release, the hard-core horror movie The Collection, also had a soft opening, but at least this one was in line with expectations. The sequel (to a film few had heard of, The Collector) earned $3.4 million, squeaking into the last spot in the top ten.

Skyfall did drop by half, but that was enough for the James Bond movie to earn second place and $17 million, barely losing to Twilight. Steven Spielberg-directed Lincoln continued to hold strong, going down 47% to $13.5 million.

The Bollywood feature Talaash debuted to $1.9 million despite playing in just 172 locations.
That's $700,000 higher than the opening two weeks ago of another Bollywood movie, Jab Tak Hai Jaan. It looks like there is money to be made from the Indian diaspora right here in America.

In eleventh place, Silver Linings Playbook outshone its competitors by dipping just 23% for a total of $3.3 million. Right behind the Weinstein Co. release was Focus Features' Anna Karenina, which went up 148% to $2.2 million in an expansion to 384 theatres.

This Friday, the romantic comedy Playing For Keeps will attempt to charm audiences. Bill Murray plays FDR in Hyde Park on Hudson, and Weinstein Co. rolls the dice with the release of gambling picture Lay the Favorite.

 

'Killing Them Softly' and 'The Collection' add R-rated movies to holiday mix

If you missed any of the great releases in the past few weeks, now is the time to catch up. For the past decade, movie studios have avoided releasing any film they want to open big the weekend after Thanksgiving. The two movies opening today, both with R ratings, appeal to niche and frequent moviegoers. The Collection will satisfy horror fans while Killing Them Softly will play to adult connoisseurs of mobster and gunplay movies. Neither of these movies should inch up far past the $10 million mark, if they even get that far. The Collection, in particular, may only tally up a few million.

The lead spot this weekend will likely go to The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2. Even with free-fall drops, the supernatural romance started off high enough that it could end up with just under $20 million three weeks after its blockbuster $141 million opening. In the follow-up weekend after Thanksgiving, that may be enough to boast a number-one finish. The rest of the top five should be filled with broader-playing, quality fare, including Lincoln, Life of Pi, and Skyfall, which is staying aloft thanks to great word-of-mouth. I've heard more buzz about Skyfall from friends who are infrequent moviegoers than I have for any other movie this year.

Rise of the Guardians should also play somewhere north of $10 million in its second weekend,
though it will be interesting to see how much of a lead it can maintain over its much more successful animated competitor. Wreck-It Ralph has been playing just two spots below Guardians during the weekdays despite releasing three weeks earlier. 

Killing Them Softly (2,424 theatres) should open in the bottom half of the top ten, but not because it's a bad movie. Instead, the tale of a hit man (Brad Pitt) who is hired to take down a trio who robbed a mob card game, making the entire criminal world insolvent, serves as commentary on the collapse of American banks and offers the insight "that all this bottom-feeder jockeying
for position is the funhouse mirror of American politics and
business," according to critic Maitland McDonagh. As
"black comedy as its most stygian," it may alienate some viewers, but McDonagh is giving this one her endorsement thanks to its "razor-sharp edge."

An "exercise in gratuitous sadism and gore," The Collection (1,403 theatres), a sequel to the horror movie The Collector, has enough "carnage to satisfy hardcore horror fans," according to THR's Frank Scheck. Though there are moments of "tension" and successful scenes involving tarantulas and a person forced to
break their own arm, don't check this one out unless you unequivocally say yes to all things torture porn.

The Bollywood movie Talaash will open in 172 theatres, and it could ring up some big business. Two weeks ago, the Yash Chopra-directed Jab Tak Hai Jaan, with a similarly small release, opened in the top ten with $1.2 million, and has now earned $3 million. Critic Daniel Eagan predicts the "polished and seductive" noir should "do extremely well at
the box office." The mystery covers topics seen less frequently in Indian movies, and Eagan gives it a nod for its "sympathetic but realistic view of sex workers."

On Monday, we'll see which of the Thanksgiving releases held on to their audiences, and if Killing Them Softly and The Collection were able to draw new viewers who weren't already stuffed from the holiday offerings.

Tentpole watch: 'Pacific Rim' teaser and 'Avatar' update

It's hard to think of tentpoles releasing a year or two years from now when a juicy franchise like The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey comes out just two Fridays from now. But today brings updates on two highly anticipated tentpoles: Pacific Rim and the Avatar sequels.

Guillermo del Toro, the original director of The Hobbit series before dropping out due to MGM's bankruptcy-related delays, turned his attention to Pacific Rim, an aliens vs. robots sci-fi movie that promises to show off del Toro's skills as a creature creator. Warner Bros. just released a viral teaser that reveals part of the plot in the form of a frantic news broadcast. The poor Golden Gate Bridge is cracked in half by an alien, who is then subdued and placed on a ship in the same manner as the T-Rex in The Lost World. When it comes to the blueprints of the robots, which were also released, I'm not quite as excited. They look like giant Iron Men or Transformers. There's not a lot of originality, at least in their form. How they perform in action may be a different story. The movie comes out next July.

 

 

The blue-hued, naturalistic aliens in Avatar will begin their CG creation late this year, according to an interview conducted with writer/director James Cameron in New Zealand, where he's hanging out and finishing up the script for the sequel. Apparently the script for Avatar wasn't finished at the time of production (normally a big no-no), leading to a lot of work for scenes that were later cut. A completed script for Avatar 2 plus working with creatures that have already been created in CG should mean the time from production to screen is shorter, though I wouldn't bet on that. Especially because Cameron imposed a new challenge for the series by setting it underwater, which should multiply the difficulty for both the CG team and the poor humans who have to spend a lot of time in water tanks. Though between Cameron's experience on The Abyss and Titanic, he's at home with the difficult filming conditions. Even with production starting late next year, it's unlikely the movie will release until 2015. By that time, the three-film series of The Hobbit will be done, and audiences will be more than eager to pick up where the 2009 Avatar left off.

Nominations for Independent Spirit Awards heat up award season

Now that the Gotham Awards have come and gone, it's time to look at the Independent Spirit Award nominations, which were announced yesterday. Of course, what's great about the Spirit Awards is that they tend to reward movies that won't have a big play in the Oscar race. However, many of the nominees for the Spirit Awards have also been angling for statuettes at the Oscars.

Of the five nominees for Best Feature, both Moonrise Kingdom and Silver Linings Playbook received four other nominations for five in total, making them the most-nominated features. When it comes to the Oscars, Silver Linings Playbook is a shoo-in for the Best Picture category, while Moonrise is an outlier. Beasts of the Southern Wild grabbed four nominations, as did Keep the Lights On. However, at least according to the odds posted by GoldDerby, Beasts has a better chance for receiving the coveted Best Picture nomination come Oscar time. Rounding out the group is Bernie, which received only one other nomination, for the performance of Jack Black.

Safety Not Guaranteed, an indie comedy that parlayed word-of-mouth into a $4 million theatrical box office, received two nominations, for Best First Screenplay and Best First Feature. Whether they win or not, it seems like the screenwriters already have launched their career. Today, Variety reported that the movie's director/producer Colin Trevorrow and writer/producer Derek Connolly have been hired to write Disney's remake of the sci-fi picture Flight of the Navigator. Trevorrow may also direct. They also sold yet another project to Disney that Trevorrow is attached to direct, but it sounds like Flight of the Navigator will be up to bat first.

So while the Spirit nominations reinforce the Oscar prospects for Silver Linings Playbook, Moonrise Kingdom, and Beasts of the Southern Wild, their biggest impact may be to recognize the work of independent filmmakers and give others the exposure they need to start plying their craft at major studios.

Gotham Awards favor 'Beasts of the Southern Wild,' but 'Moonrise Kingdom' wins top prize

The first awards results are in. At last night's Gotham Awards, Beasts of the Southern Wild won two prizes. Both were for director Benh Zeitlin, who won both the Breakthrough Director award and the Bingham Ray award, which comes with a check for $25,000. However, the top prize for Best Feature went to Moonrise Kingdom.

Both films have the potential to grab a Best Picture nomination in the Oscar race. On GoldDerby, Beasts of the Southern Wild appears more frequently than Moonrise Kingdom in the critics' top ten picks for the Best Picture nod. Both pictures generally appear in the last few spots, below heavyweight frontrunners like Silver Linings Playbook, Argo, Lincoln and Les Miserables. Last year's co-winner for Best Feature at the Gotham Awards, The Tree of Life, earned a Best Picture nomination, so Gotham Awards can predict what happens at the Oscars. The question is if Beasts and Moonrise will end up with a spot on the Best Picture list, or if just one will prevail.

From a story standpoint, both Anderson and Zeitlin have a narrative that fits with a nomination. Moonrise director Wes Anderson has been nominated twice before, once for "Best Animated
Feature" for Fantastic Mr. Fox and a decade ago for his screenplay for The Royal Tenenbaums. His latest was a summer hit, earning $45 million and reinvigorating his reputation. What better time for the Academy to reward him? In contrast, Zeitlin made his debut feature completely outside the Hollywood system, and the result astonished critics and audiences. For Zeitlin and Beasts, a nomination would be a feel-good story about a rise to fame. But will the Academy want to embrace something done on such a shoestring budget, with no guilds or Hollywood professionals involved? For both the movie and the outside story, my money's on Beasts of the Southern Wild, not Moonrise Kingdom. But enough people disagree with me that this year's Best Picture picks will be a nail-biting surprise.

AMC reminds audiences it's movie time, not texting time

In case you haven't been to an AMC theatre lately, check out their clever new policy trailer, a graphically imaginative message to audiences that it's MOVIE time, not time for texting, chit-chatting, or even shouting "Don't go in there!" A necessary reminder to today's moviegoer that your local multiplex isn't your living room...

AMC policy trailer

Leftovers rule as 'Breaking Dawn,' 'Skyfall' and 'Lincoln' lead Thanksgiving box office

Despite three new wide releases, it was the returning films that led the Thanksgiving box office. The long holiday period still gave plenty of extra cushion to all the movies in theatres, which enjoyed five days of weekend-level returns. A thin offering  of new movies this coming weekend will allow the current releases plenty of time to run through their potential viewers.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn--Part 2 led for a second week with $43 million Friday to Sunday, giving it a total to date of $226 million. The event picture, which was the finale for the franchise, plummeted 70% from its first-week total. It will likely continue its decline next week.

In second place, Skyfall leveled its descent with $36 million, just a 12% decrease from last week. Over the five-day period, its receipts totaled $51 million. The James Bond film's three-week total is
$221 million, just behind Twilight. By next week, Bond will rise above the vampire romance and stay there. It's also the best-performing Bond movie of all time, well ahead of Quantum of Solace's $164 million total. Time to shake up a martini for Daniel Craig and director Sam Mendes.

Lincoln went up 19% from the previous week to post a $25 million weekend. Continued strength in its week-to-week performance should bring this historical picture above $100 million. That's great for a talky movie many considered a tough sell.

Rise of the Guardians had the best opening of any of the new releases, earning $24 million over the weekend and a five-day total of $32.6 million. That's on the low side of projections for
the CG-animated release. In comparison, Disney's Wreck-It Ralph earned $16.9 million while falling just 9% from the previous week. Wreck-It Ralph has much better reviews, and comes from a trusted brand name. That definitely hurt the debut of Guardians.

Life of Pi opened to $22 million, right on target for the Ang Lee-directed picture. Audiences turned out to see it in 3D, too, with two-thirds of ticket sales for glasses-wearing audiences. While the literary adaptation has received mixed reviews from critics, audiences gave it an "A-" in exit polls, a sign that the mildly spiritual picture will do well in word-of-mouth.

Red Dawn rallied from the three-year delay in its release to gross $14.6 million, a number that
rose to $22 million over the five-day period. FilmDistrict reported the South and military areas had the best turnout for the invasion-themed picture. However, with many other offerings in weeks to come, Red Dawn will have a quick sunset.

Specialty pictures big and small did well over the holiday. Silver Linings Playbook, expanding into 367 locations, earned a spot in the top ten, posting a $4.6 million weekend and an applause-worthy per-screen average of $12,500. Hitchcock, which centers on the making of Psycho, debuted to $301,000, and had an even higher per-screen average of $17,700. The awards hopeful Rust and Bone averaged $15,000 per screen at two
locations. The documentary The Central Park Five had a lower per-screen
average but a higher total, earning $11,300 per screen at three
locations.

This Friday, violence rules at the box office. The horror movie The Collection will go up against Killing Them Softly, which stars Brad Pitt as an enforcer tracking down a trio who robbed a Mafia-run card game.