'Sherlock Holmes' no match for 'Avatar'

By Sarah Sluis

A record-breaking $278 million week at the box office was led by Avatar, with the rest of the top ten following closely behind with strong debut and holdover performances. The sci-fi spectacle's second week was just as strong as its first, dropping a minuscule 2% from its opening weekend to earn $75 million. The movie posted its highest one-day gross the day after Christmas, when it earned $28.5 million, compared to the smaller $26.7 million sum it brought in its opening day. Unlike most other tentpoles, which are adaptations of successful books, series, or comic books, Avatar had to tough through a lower opening and wait for word-of-mouth to build up. In light of Avatar's success, perhaps other filmmakers besides James Cameron will be able to follow in his wake and develop tentpoles based on original ideas. Fox, however, won't have to take on much risk if it moves forward with a sequel or two: Cameron has mentioned that he has already mapped out a multi-movie arc for his characters.

Coming in second place for the weekend, action-detective movie Sherlock Holmes beat Avatar its opening day, Christmas, but dropped off over the weekend. The movie earned $65.3 million, about $10 million under Avatar's gross. While the movie's hero and his iconic pipe-smoking habit is more familiar to audiences, Avatar delivers on its premise much more than Sherlock Holmes, which lost points with me for its overuse of action movie conventions.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel came in third with $50.2 million. Because it opened on Wednesday, its total gross is already $77 million, which is far outpacing the first movie in the series, which opened to $44 million.

Writer/director Nancy Meyers' latest installment in the romantic comedy department, It's Complicated, opened fourth with $22.1 million. Her last two films, The Holiday and Something's Gotta Give, both opened in the teens, so this marks her best opening since 2000's What Women Want, which debuted at $33 million.

Of the films placing fifth to tenth, all were returning films, and three of the five increased their grosses from the previous week. Up in the Air went from 175 to 1,895 theatres and earned $11.75 million, a 266% increase from the previous week. The Blind Side rose 17% to $11.73 million even as it shed over 600 theatres, further cementing its status as a surprise word-of-mouth hit. Nine, in eighth place, increased 2000% to $5.5 million as it went from four theatres to 1,412 theatres. In tenth place, Invictus, which only added 35 theatres to its 2,160-theatre release, inched up 4% from the previous week. The remaining two films in the top ten, The Princess and the Frog and Did You Hear About the Morgans?, dropped in the 20-30% range. In particular, The Princess and the Frog may be hurting from competition with the Chipmunks and Chipettes.

Now that all the big films of 2009 have been released, the first month of 2010 will measure their longevity. Competition from new releases will be minimal, but for awards films, it's a long haul to the Oscar ceremony, which was moved from February to March this year.

Guy Ritchie turns to the comic books with 'Lobo'

By Sarah Sluis

Now that Watchmen is done and gone, Warner Bros. is on the lookout for its next blue superhero. They've set Guy Ritchie to direct Lobo, a DC Comics property. While the Lobo character isn't as well-known as, say, Spider-Man, I think that's all the better, since it will allow Ritchie to experiment with the characters more. Ritchie has proven himself to be a master of quippy, dialect-driven action films, and his particular style seems a natural complement to the equally stylized action and characters of comic books. In the comic book, which was first created in 1983, Lobo is an alien bounty hunter, tall, muscular, and virtually indestructible. He arrives on Earth to capture four aliens with the help of a teenage Midwestern girl (clearly put in to attract female audiences). Filming will start next year, which will probably give the movie a Summer 2011 (or 2012, depending on the visual effects) release date. Like many of its comic book cousins, the film will aim for the broad PG-13 rating.

While Lobo is a ways off, audiences can look forward to Sherlock Holmes, which will open on Christmas. Starring Robert Downey, Jr., Jude Law and Rachel McAdams, the appeal of this Arthur Conan Doyle adaptation will be seeing Ritchie let Holmes break free of his stuffy, "Masterpiece Theatre" depiction. The Holmes mythology includes cocaine and morphine use, a bohemian flat, weapons, and a least a few romantic liaisons, which Ritchie's adaptation (watch the trailer here) restores with relish.

While Ritchie doesn't seem to recycle his cast too much, it should be noted that I could see Robert Downey, Jr., CGI'ed and wigged, playing the role of Lobo--if he's not too busy reprising his role as another superhero, Iron Man.

3D all the rage at ShoWest

By Sarah Sluis

FJI Executive Editor Kevin Lally reports on movie highlights at the annual ShoWest Convention in Las Vegas.

The $59.3 million opening weekend for DreamWorks Animation's Monsters vs. Aliens was a timely prelude to the 3D programming that dominated the second day of ShoWest, the convention for the movie theatre business now taking place in Las Vegas. As if engaging in a game of one-upmanship with DreamWorks Animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg and his fervent campaign to get cinemas on the 3D bandwagon, Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Group President Mark Zoradi hosted a nearly two-hour program highlighting Disney's ambitious slate of 17 3D films coming up in the next three years.

Zoradi revealed that the reconfigured 3D Toy Story and Toy Story 2 will debut as a double feature in a two-week limited engagement in October, whetting the public's appetite for Pixar's all-new 3D Toy Story 3 on June 18, 2010.

Meanwhile, Cars 2 in 3D will be preceded by a series of 3D shorts dubbed "Cars Toons." ShoWest delegates got an exclusive look at one such short, "Tokyo Mater," a fantasy in which the countrified tow truck voiced by Larry the Cable Guy finds himself competing in a manic Tokyo drift race. It's fun to see the familiar Cars characters in a sleek, glittery Tokyo setting�an opportunity for director John Lasseter (and Pixar head honcho) to show his well-documented love for Japanese animation.

The Vegas audience also got to preview the opening sequence of Disney's 1991 classic Beauty and the Beast repurposed for 3D. It was a refreshing reminder of the charms of hand-drawn animation, here surprisingly smoothly adapted to the 3D medium, and the particular delights of the only animated feature ever nominated for Best Picture. I can't wait to see the whole movie in this new guise.

Disney is also reviving a property that laid some of the groundwork for today's computer animation�the experimental 1982 cult feature Tron, which placed live actors in a surreal game-racing environment. Zoradi showed a test sequence for the 21st-century Tron which showed lots of exciting potential, complete with the welcome return of the original movie's star, Jeff Bridges.

Zoradi also made note (without screening actual footage) of two upcoming 3D projects from major directors: Robert Zemeckis' motion-capture A Christmas Carol, with Jim Carrey as Ebenezer Scrooge and all three of his ghostly intruders, and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which will combine live-action, motion-capture and CGI. Alice will also open on IMAX 3D screens.

The second half of the Disney program was a screening of the first 47 minutes of Pixar's first 3D feature, Up, which was recently chosen as the first animated and first 3D film to open the Cannes Film Festival. Director Pete Docter, of Monsters, Inc. fame, was on hand to enthusiastically introduce his handiwork. ShoWest forbids advance reviews of its screenings, but I think I can safely say this project is as original as we've come to expect from Pixar, and absolutely wonderful. In fact, I dare say the first ten minutes, which show the life story of the old man at the center of the tale, is as artful and poignant as any live-action sequence you'll see this year.

Docter noted that the Pixar folks consider all their films to be in 3D, but "we've just never showed them to you in stereo."

The Disney program went so long, lunch at the show was unusually late. But first, before we could eat, hosts Sony Pictures and RealD somewhat cruelly showed us two sequences from Sony's 3D adaptation of the popular children's book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, in which a young scientist's experiment results in food raining down from the sky. The 3D effects looked great�particularly the meatballs plopping in the foreground�and kids should, please pardon the pun, eat it up.

Overgrown kids of all ages, particularly unrepentant frat-boy types, will love The Hangover, which director Todd Phillips of Old School and Road Trip fame previewed during the part of the morning session conducted by Warner Bros. Entertainment president and COO Alan Horn. Judging by its wild and funny trailer, this comedy about a bachelor party run amok is destined to be one of the surefire hits of the summer. Horn also brought on the energetic McG to show an extended trailer for his Terminator Salvation, which looks like an action bull's-eye, and the ever-wry Robert Downey, Jr. to tout the cheeky, big-budget, action-oriented approach to his next starring vehicle, Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes.

From the glimpses gained on ShoWest Day Two, it looks like the momentum of the movies in 2009 will be continuing for months to come.