‘Furnace’ to fall behind ‘Frozen’ & ‘Fire’

The weekend after Thanksgiving is typically a quiet one for the nation’s box office, and this year, only one new release is opening wide. That would be Out of the Furnace, a gritty, bleak revenge drama starring the gritty, bleak Batman, Christian Bale, as well as Casey Affleck, Zoe Saldana, and Woody Harrelson. Expectations aren’t quite as dour as the film’s subject matter, location and production stills, but they’re not overly hopeful. To compare, Killing Them Softly was in the same position this time last year, as a new release bowing after the holiday weekend. It boasted a big movie star, Brad Pitt, but failed to leverage the actor’s perceived wide appeal. Softly opened to $6.8 million. Furnace isn’t tracking great with critics, either, (52% rotten on infallible taste barometer Rotten Tomatoes), though it’ll likely fare better than Brad’s failed bet. Screening in 2,101 theatres, odds are, it’ll earn around $10 million.

That kind of haul would likely place it at No. 3, behind last weekend’s reigning champions Frozen and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. General consensus has Games finally slipping from the top slot, to the gain of family friendly Frozen. This will be the action flick's third weekend in theatres, while Frozen, now in its sophomore outing, has youth and a bit more novelty on its side. Comparable franchise series Twilight and Harry Potter both experienced a significant downturn in sales over this same weekend, on average dropping about 60%. Games, however, has consistently done better business than either of its blockbuster peers, meaning its dip shouldn’t be quite as severe - probably about 50%. Both the princess and the provocateur (there’s a college term paper for you) should earn figures in the mid-to-high $30 million range, with Frozen gaining the edge.

Art-house aficionados have been edge-of-their-seats with anticipation over the new Coen brothers’ film, Inside Llewyn Davis, opening in four locations in LA and New York today.  The film, allegedly inspired by the experiences of folk singer Dave Van Ronk in 1960’s Greenwich Village, has been earning rave reviews (95% fresh on RT). Not to mention, its hooky, ridiculous protest song “Please Mr. Kennedy” has steadily been making its viral way into the hearts, and that part of your brain that’s like fly paper to a catchy tune, for a few days now. It doesn’t have the foot-tapping appeal of a “Man of Constant Sorrow,” from the brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? But it does have “Girls” actor Adam Driver as a real-life space cowboy.  Between the siblings’ cachet, the film’s positive buzz, and the below clip, Davis should significantly out-earn its predecessor, A Serious Man, which opened to $41,890 in 2009.

 

Latest 'Jackass' looks to unseat 'Gravity'

Jackass spinoff Bad Grandpa may finally have the popular heft to unseat Gravity this weekend, bringing the latter’s nearly month-long reign over the box office to a worthy end. It’s been quite a run for Alfonso Cuaron and co.: Gravity has earned $177 million domestically and close to $300 million worldwide. Business this weekend is expected to remain steady, if no longer stellar. Pundits predict a haul in the mid $20 million range, which would amount to a 25% downturn in sales.

Bad Grandpa, on the other hand, is reportedly on track to double its production value. The Borat-style comedy, in which Johnny Knoxville plays the titular geriatric pervert on an eventful roadtrip with his chip-off-the-ole’-block troublemaker grandson, was produced for approximately $15 million. Odds are the Jackass faithful will help carry the film to a $30 million opening weekend. As respectable a figure as that may sound, however, it nonetheless pales in comparison with the franchise’s last debut. Jackass: 3D , released in 2010, was buoyed by expensive 3D sales to earn a whopping $50 million its first weekend out of the gate (or should we say pen?).

Ridley Scott/Cormac McCarthy collaboration The Counselor, also bowing tonight, certainly has a fancier pedigree to its name, but the critical drubbing it’s received will most likely undercut its ability to perform, and certainly compete with wide-appeal Grandpa. Our Rex Roberts didn’t completely pan the film that attracted the likes of megawatt stars Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, and Cameron Diaz, but neither did he place himself in the minority of lauders. “The Counselor isn’t a bad movie,” he wrote, “just a bombastic one.” Audiences aren’t expected to bang down the doors in their haste to view this exhibition of hubris (on multiple levels). Fox believes the movie will earn between $8 and $10 million.

On the other end of the critical spectrum, French film and Cannes Palme d’Or winner Blue Is the Warmest Color may reap the benefits of universal praise and a healthy dose of salacious controversy. Not only does the three-hour drama about a young woman and her intense relationship with a female artist carry with it an NC-17 rating, but the film’s two leading ladies and their director have been engaged in a very public media battle over who was or was not exploited during the movie’s graphic lesbian sex scenes. The most recent installment of the he-said she-said argument/publicity gambit took the form of an open letter by director Abdellatif Kechiche, in which he charged actress Lea Seydoux with making “opportunistic calculations.” It all seems a bit juvenile for such high-brow fare, but let’s see if the nonsense helps move tickets. Blue Is the Warmest Color opens in just four theaters tonight.

12 Years A Slave expands considerably this weekend, playing in 123 theaters. After it over-performed at 19 locations last weekend the historical drama is expected to only gain momentum. Its recent Gotham Award nominations probably won’t hurt its earning potential, either.

High concept adaptation: Christie's auction meets rom-com, Pitt and Portman

By Sarah Sluis

Perhaps I shouldn't be saying this on a film blog, but it is a fact universally acknowledged that, most of the time, the book is better than the movie. There are certainly exceptions, even among prize-winning literature--I just finished No Country for Old Men and found the movie to be much better than the book. I also count the dramatization of action-packed pulp novels as a one-up over the writing of John Grisham or Dan Brown. Michael Crichton's work reads as well as it adapts, and the CGI spectacle of Jurassic Park gave me nightmares for literally years. What can be great in print often fails on the screen, and let's mark Watchmen as the latest example.

I'm also a little mixed when it comes to using books as a jumping-off point. He's Just Not That Into You, a romantic comedy based on the comedic self-help book, took two hours to work its way through the romantic couplings of nearly a dozen people. It barely kept the tone of the book (probably a good thing, as the book was kind of like when a friend says something cruel to you, then follows it up with "just kidding"), but at least it helped at the box office, giving the movie the benefit of being a vaguely recognizable property.

I bring this up because of the announcement that this book, Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry (page through it here and here), will be made into a romance. A romantic comedy, specifically. The book by Leanne Shapton, art director for the NY Times, looks like a Christie's auction catalog, and documents a couple's four-year relationship by putting their possessions on display. It's rather archaeological, has that ever-popular element of ironic detachment ("behold exhibit A, a love letter"), and

requires a little bit of detective work and imagination to enjoy, which will certainly make the book popular among snoops, a category I suspect the author belongs to. (Her previous book, Was She Pretty?, is a fictional exploration of a boyfriend's ex-girlfriends, facilitated by the girlfriend's examination of his diaries.)

What I appreciate about (the potential) for this project is how much will be left unsaid. So often, it's "five years later" in movies and stories without a sense of anything meaningful having happened during the

interim. Being able to convey a sense of history, and the sense that characters have many stories left untold--a tone this book excels at simply through its structure--makes for a much richer project. As an added bonus, telling a story through objects allows for easy manipulation of chronology, and, again, that indie sense of irony that comes from explaining a relationship only through objects. Because the book is modeled after a Christie's auction catalog, the project seems very tied to New York and I see a bit of Annie Hall and When Harry Met Sally... in the idea, which has yet to attach a writer.

Most promisingly, Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman would play the couple in the project, which was auctioned off to Plan B productions (Pitt's production company). If

you think about it, Portman has a bit of that Angelina Jolie look, so I

suppose that makes their coupling plausible. Less plausible, however, is the idea that the movie will be made in the near future. With seventeen titles in development, Brad Pitt's slate is filled to the brim. Perhaps it's time for him to hold an auction of his own.