Early Oscar 2014 predictions: best actor

With fall comes more than just a cooling of temperatures – within the film industry, the advent of chillier weather signals the heating up of that grand poobah competition, the Oscar race. This year’s crop of contenders is one of the strongest in recent memory. Already, records are being set (Alfonso Cuaron’s ‘Gravity’ pulled in the largest October opening-weekend haul to date), expectations exceeded (haven’t we already seen a million or two little-kid-gone-missing films? Not like Prisoners, we haven’t) and nerves shot (thank you, Paul Greengrass, for inducing a lingering headache after I felt compelled to hold my breath over and over again while watching Tom Hanks attempt to outwit a band of determined Somali pirates in your Captain Phillips). While the women of this season’s Oscar-bait films will be given their kudos in good time – Meryl’s back! – the men vying for the industry’s most coveted, or at least its shiniest, prize are worthy of particular note. The five-nominee limit seems particularly restrictive this year.

Those with the largest amount of buzz surrounding their performances include Chiwetel Ejiofor for Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave, Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club, Robert Redford in All is Lost, Forest Whitaker in The Butler, and the aforementioned pirate captive, Tom Hanks, in Captain Phillips. So that’s five, right? Technically speaking, yes. But with such a talented group to choose from, we wouldn’t be surprised if five or six other actors slipped into one of the coveted nominee slots.

Take Bruce Dern in Alexander Payne’s (Sideways) latest film, Nebraska. The twilight (referring to age, happily no association with the franchise) actor took home the Cannes Film Festival prize for Best Actor for his performance as a sick old man who travels with his son (Will Forte) from Montana over to the titular state in the hopes of claiming a $1,000,000 lottery prize. Word has it Nebraska was a festival crowd-pleaser, a sentimental favorite whose popularity (assuming the Cannes enthusiasm translates to a wider viewership when the film opens next month) could boost Dern’s chances.

Prisoners certainly has widespread appeal on its side, if box-office numbers are anything to go by (according to Rotten Tomatoes, the film is currently tracking at $47.5 million). And Hugh Jackman has been turning the heads of critics who’ve felt a bit lukewarm about the actor since his turn in the “mild box office hit” The Wolverine. In Prisoners, Jackman plays the father of a six-year-old girl gone missing, a man whose natural paternal anxiety evolves into something far darker when the investigation stymies and he feels compelled to take matters into his own hands. Prisoners boasts solid performances by Jake Gyllenhaal and Paul Dano as well, but the movie really is the Jackman show.

Making a strong showing of his own, Idris Elba as Nelson Mandela in the upcoming biopic Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom should also not be discounted. The Academy loves an epic, loves a romance, loves a history film, loves great actors playing giants of politics… it may very well love Elba and the vehicle behind him enough to give him a nomination.

For a few longer, though by no means faulty, shots, there’s Leo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s upcoming The Wolf of Wall Street, as well as Oscar Isaac in the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis. After five films together the pairing of DiCaprio and Scorsese could almost be called classic, and certainly one which highlights Leo to great effect. And who doesn’t love a Coen film?

Finally, my particular vote for underdog (for all the aggressive campaigning behind his film) nominee goes to Michael B. Jordan for his star turn in Fruitvale Station. Our Tomris Laffly said Jordan turned in a “remarkably mature and humanistic performance,” one which proves the former cult TV staple (he’s previously appeared on “The Wire” and “Friday Night Lights”) is an eminently watchable adult force to be reckoned with.

In alphabetical order, then, here is our list of would-be Best Actor contenders for the 2014 Academy Awards:

-Ejiofor, Chiwetel (12 Years A Slave)

-Elba, Idris (Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedom)

-Dern, Bruce (Nebraska)

-DiCaprio, Leonardo (The Wolf of Wall Street)

-Hanks, Tom (Captain Phillips)

-Isaac, Oscar (Inside Llewyn Davis)

-Jackman, Hugh (Prisoners)

-Jordan, Michael B. (Fruitvale Station)

-McConaughey, Matthew (Dallas Buyers Club)

-Redford, Robert (All is Lost)

-Whitaker, Forest (The Butler)

'Insidious: Chapter 2' posts best horror opening in September

Earning four times the opening of the original, Insidious: Chapter 2 got off to a great start with $41 million, the best debut ever for a horror movie in September. It's also just $1 million off the best September opening, which was set last year by Hotel Transylvania, a rare animated offering during what's usually a quieter month. Adding to the list of records, the opening makes director James Wan only the second person ever (to the Matrix series' Wachowskis) to open two movies that high in the same year. Just a couple of months ago, Wan's The Conjuring also started off with over $40 million in a weekend. But what did audiences think? Viewers gave it a "B+" in exit polls, which is pretty good for a horror movie, which often receive poor grades. Insidious: Chapter 2 also benefited from topicality: Half the weekend take came from Friday the 13th. Based on the first three days, I think it's also safe to guess that there will be an Insidious: Chapter 3 headed to theatres sometime next year.

The spy action-comedy The Family had a stronger debut than expected, opening to $14.5 million, director Luc Besson's second-best opening weekend. Older audiences in particular turned out to see Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer as mobsters in witness protection: 83% of audiences clocked in over the age of 25.

In four weeks of release, The Butler has limited its decline to roughly a third a week. This week, it dipped another 33% to $5.5 million, which pushed it over the $100 million mark. For the Weinstein Co., this is a big milestone, only the fifth time the distributor has gone into nine-figure territory. Another movie that's been holding particularly well has been We're the Millers. The comedy has earned $131 million to date. This week it finished right behind The Butler, with $5.4 million and a 30% decrease from the previous week.

On Wednesday, Nicole Holofcener's romantic comedy Enough Said, featuring a final performance from the late James Gandolfini, will begin its release. On Friday, action thriller Prisoners will go against a smaller wide release of the b-boy dance film Battle of the Year, a 3D re-release of The Wizard of Oz, and a limited opening of Rush.

'Butler' returns to win in mixed bag Labor Day weekend

During a quiet Labor Day weekend, The Butler made a splash, becoming the first 2013 release to stay at the top spot for three weekends in a row. The Civil Rights-movement drama starring Forest Whitaker and, of course, Oprah, earned $14.8 million from Friday to Sunday and $20 million

over the four-day period. Its Monday total was enough to push it ahead of One Direction: This Is Us, which earned $15 million over the normal weekend period, and $18 million through Monday. Concert movies have been popular ever since tween singer Miley Cyrus (you know, the star that performed at the VMAs last weekend) took the sleepy Super Bowl weekend by storm and opened Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour to $31 million. Since then, concert movies have been a bit hit-or-miss, with the Jonas Brothers completely bombing their debut, and Katy Perry not doing much better last year. But Sony was quick to point out that the One Direction movie cost just $10 million, making it an inexpensive win for the studio.

A Spanish-language underdog of a movie, Instructions Not Included, made it to fifth place over the long weekend with a total haul of $10 million. It marks the biggest hit yet for Pantelion Films,
the Lionsgate arm devoted to distributing films targeted at Hispanic audiences. The family-focused narrative, a mixture of comedy and heart, wowed audiences, who gave the movie an "A+" in exit polls. Popular Mexican comedian Eugenio Derbez plays a man who takes in his daughter after her birth mother abandons her, then fights to keep her when the mother shows up after they've formed a close bond. In release in just over 300 theatres, it had the best location average of the week, $28,000 per screen.

The car-set thriller Getaway lived up to its 2% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with a four-day total of $5.5 million. Still, that was better than the thriller Closed Circuit, which earned $2.5 million over the weekend. Focus Features has used this time slot before for adult thrillers like The American and The Debt, but this opening was markedly worse than those two releases, coming in with just a fraction of the take of those movies' opening weekends.

While the long weekend was poor for new releases, other returning releases posted lower-than-average drops. Blue Jasmine, in its second weekend on over 1,000 screens, had a four-day total of $5.3 million, matching last week's performance day for day. The Grandmaster, which expanded onto over 700 screens, earned $3.1 million, an excellent showing for the martial arts feature.

This Friday will be a light in major releases, with only Riddick opening in over 2,000 theatres.

 

'Butler' and 'We're the Millers' stay on top of new releases

Despite three new releases hitting theatres, the top two films were returning releases. In week two, The Butler led with $17 million, a scant 30% drop from opening weekend. In second place, the comedy We're the Millers dipped 25% to $13.5 million in its third week, a sign that audiences are connecting with this drug smuggling caper.

The World's End had the best relative performance of the three new offerings. Generating $8.9 million on 1,549 screens, fans of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg clearly turned out. Devotees of the so-called "Cornetto Trilogy" (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz are the first two genre-skewering comedies) gave the final installment its best opening yet, drawing an audience that skewed male, with the majority of attendees under 30.

Many in the industry expected that the horror feature You're Next would top the box office, but
instead this tale of a family under siege was the worst of the lot, opening to just $7 million. Just when you think horror is a sure thing, a movie like this falls flat. In fact, it was the worst horror movie opening yet in 2013. Still, its budget was likely fairly low, unlike this week's biggest loser: The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones.

Lily Collins stars in this adaptaion of a young adult novel, which was made for $60 million in hopes that it would launch a trilogy. No dice. Instead, the feature had a weekend total of $9.3 million,
and a five-day opening of $16 million. The audience was 68% female, with 46% of those turning out under 21. Even this bulls'-eye demographic turnout didn't prevent them from giving it a CinemaScore rating of "B+," when the same audience likely would have given Twilight an "A++!++!"

Blue Jasmine expanded into over 1,200 theatres this weekend, and it held on to its audience. The per-screen average dropped two-thirds, which is actually a fairly strong hold for such an aggressive expansion. That meant the Woody Allen comedy finished ninth with $4.3 million. That's a bit off Midnight in Paris, but the strength of the figures suggests that this story of a rich housewife married to Madoff-like villian could approach the $30-40 million range, compared to Paris' $56 million total.

 

‘The Butler’ overachieves this weekend, while ‘Kick-Ass 2’ lacks punch

Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2,933 screens) easily outshone all
other films at the box office this weekend, earning $25 million, a figure above what most predictors expected it to
bring in. The film cost $30 million to produce. Based on the true story of an
African-American butler (Forest Whitaker) who worked in the White House under
six presidents, The Butler was
particularly popular with women (60% of viewers) and people over 35 (76% of viewers).
It played most strongly in the Northeast and especially Washington, D.C., where
the film is set. 

It is fairly typical that distribution companies release
dramatic features aimed at women and older audiences in mid to late August. After a summer of tentpoles and 3D sci-fi
blockbusters, these demographics are starved for films that don’t feature men
in capes or multiple explosions. The
Butler was originally slated for an October opening, but TWC wisely decided
to take advantage of this late-summer demand, a choice that the studio is no
doubt very happy with.

The Weinstein Company can also attribute much of The Butler’s success this weekend to its
popularity among African-American audiences, many of whom went to see the film
with their church groups. TWC reached out to many religious leaders in the
black community to promote The Butler,
a popular practice among studios when releasing black- and civil rights-themed
movies. A special trailer, altered from the one shown in theatres, was created to appeal to church parishioners, and the company
even produced a “scripture guide” meant to promote faith-based discussion in
relation to the film. Black audiences made up 39% of total Butler tickets purchased this weekend, a very high percentage.

Unfortunately for Universal, Kick-Ass 2 (2,940 screens) did even more poorly
this weekend than expected. The studio had predicted earnings of nearly $20
million, identical to Kick-Ass’s take
its opening weekend three years ago. However, the sequel—which was made for $28
million—only grossed about $13.5 million,
or less than 70% of its expected profits. This put it in a near tie with Elysium, now in its second week in
theatres. However, Elysium earned
about $40,000 more than Kick-Ass 2,
placing the sci-fi thriller in third place above the superhero sequel, which
came in at fourth. Surprisingly, We’re
the Millers, also in its second week, continued to perform well, grossing
$17.8 million and landing in second place behind The Butler. We’re the Millers
now has the smallest drop in earnings (just 33%) between its opening and
second weekend of any film of the summer.

Like Kick-Ass 2, the two other features opening this
weekend, Jobs and Paranoia, both underperformed. Though they were both smaller releases, Open Road
Films and Relativity Media, respectively, had expected better showings. Jobs (2,381
screens) (a biopic of Apple founder Steve Jobs, played by Ashton Kutcher)
made $6.7 million and achieved a
seventh place finish. Paranoia (2,459 screens), by far the
worst-reviewed film currently in theatres, managed to dredge up a paltry $3.5 million—a disaster for a film
which cost ten times that amount to make, and which stars up-and-coming leading
man Liam Hemsworth (The Hunger Games)
as well as film royalty Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman. 

Lee Daniels’ The Butler’ may nab first place out from under ‘Kick-Ass 2’ this weekend

Summer may be almost over, but
distributors are still hoping to score blockbuster-sized ticket sales before
kids and teenagers head back to school. The Weinstein Company’s Butler and Kick-Ass 2 (from Universal) are expected to earn the top two spots at the box office
this weekend.

 Predictors may expect Kick-Ass
2 (2,940 theatres) to attract more viewers. It has all the trappings of a
summer smash, after all: a sequel about superheroes with a big-name star (Jim
Carrey) and fanboy cred. But don’t expect this film to do Man of Steel-style
numbers.
The original grossed
under $20 million its opening weekend in 2010. It did move a lot of DVDs and
Blu-rays, however, which Universal is citing as justification for a sequel. Kick-Ass
2 is also down a major actor: Nic Cage, whose performance
as a deranged Batman wannabe was a main draw for audience members, does not
appear in this installment. Carrey’s character is meant to fill Cage’s shoes,
but the comedian declined to promote the film, and even bashed it on social
media for its excessive violence in the wake of tragedies like the Newtown
shooting. The other factor that gave Kick-Ass so much buzz was
then-11-year-old lead Chloe Grace Moretz’s, um, colorful dialogue, which fully
justified the feature’s R rating. But Moretz is 15 now, and hearing her curse
like a sailor and ridicule her co-stars just doesn’t have the same double
take-inducing shock value. Universal is predicting that Kick-Ass 2 will
gross $19.8 million this weekend, an identical figure to the original. This
number would fall just short of The Butler’s expected haul, however.

A historical drama depicting
crucial moments in African-American history from the 1920s through the Reagan
era, The Butler (2,933 theatres) reads more Oscar-bait
than box office smash. But the Weinstein Company has been promoting the film
like mad. The presence of costar Oprah Winfrey (who hasn’t played a role other
than herself onscreen since 1998’s Beloved) alone should ensure a sizable female audience. Forest Whitaker is bankable as
protagonist Cecil Gaines, and audiences will be looking forward to catching
Robin Williams, John Cusack, James Marsden, Liev Schreiber, and Alan Rickman as
assorted Commanders in Chief. The film also appeals to minority viewers and TWC
has been promoting it heavily to church groups as well. In addition to all
these demographics, The Butler is likely to gain a significant
viewership from the overlooked 40+ set, who are drained from a summer’s worth
of comic book adaptations. Finally, the film is rated PG-13, which gives it a
greater built-in audience share than Kick-Ass 2, which
is rated R. The Butler could easily earn $20 million this
weekend, putting it just ahead of its rival’s predicted take.

Smaller releases Jobs (2,381 theaters) and Paranoia (2,459 theatres) also bow today. Neither has scored well with critics—Paranoia
in particular is currently boasting a horrendous 2% rating on Rotten
Tomatoes. Jobs stars Ashton Kutcher as the celebrated Apple
founder, and the actor brings enough appeal to likely land the biopic in third
place. Both films should bring in under $10 million. With no other PG-13
comedies currently in theaters, expect We’re the Millers to continue to pull in its portion of younger moviegoers. As the sole
recent animated kids movie, Planes is
in a similar position, which should boost its sales as well—though Despicable
Me 2, which came out over a month and a half ago, is still playing in over 2,000 theatres. 

Weinstein Co. picks up 'The Butler'

Early footage from The Butler, which is currently shooting in New Orleans, must look promising. The Weinstein Co. picked up the historical biopic for distribution, shortly after production began. The premise of The Butler sounds part Forrest Gump, part "Downton Abbey," and part The King's Speech, the Weinstein-distributed hit that focused on the relationship between the King of England
and his speech teacher of humble origins. A recipe for success, right? The story borrows from the life of the real White House butler Eugene Allen, who served eight presidents over three decades. From the pre-Civil Rights era through Vietnam and beyond, the man's experience is a slice-of-life that will be sure to illustrate social change and perhaps stoke a flame of nostalgia.

The trend in biopics as of late has been to go the "one event" route, focusing on an installment in the person's life rather than its length. The Butler will buck that trend--but hopefully it will do it wisely. Forest Whitaker, who will star as the butler, is 51. Oprah Winfrey, who will play his wife, is 58. Whitaker will be a natural fit for the middle-aged to elderly portions of the movie, but the younger scenes may be more difficult to pull off. Hopefully director and co-writer Lee Daniels (Precious, The Paperboy) took a look at Leonardo DiCaprio's distracting makeup in J. Edgar and decided to go for a story that won't rely heavily on the actors' performances at an age unbelievably far from their natural age.

Since the biopic spans a lifetime of presidencies, there has been a lot of casting of Presidents and First Ladies:

President Dwight D. Eisenhower: Robin Williams
Mamie Eisenhower: Melissa Leo (Frozen River)
JFK: James Marsden (X-Men: The Last Stand)
Jackie Kennedy: Minka Kelly (Esquire's Sexiest Woman Alive)
Lyndon B. Johnson: Liev Schreiber
Richard Nixon: John Cusack
Ronald Reagan: Alan Rickman
 Nancy Reagan: Jane Fonda

Missing from the list are Presidents Ford and Carter, but there is a cast listing for Barack Obama--who presumably comes in at the end after the butler is retired.

There are also prominent black actors on board, including  Cuba Gooding Jr., Terrence Howard, Lenny Kravitz, and Mariah Carey. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., who visited the White House a number of times, will be played by Nelsan Ellis, who had a small role in The Help.

Reviews for Daniels' The Paperboy have not been as favorable for those of Precious, but hopefully Daniels and his team know what they're doing, because this is the kind of movie that's large in scope and really drives people to the theatres.