Reese Witherspoon is Peggy Lee

By Sarah Sluis

Maybe Reese Witherspoon has the Oscar itch again? In 2006, she won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of the singer and performer June Carter in the musical biopic Walk the Line. Now she's going back to the music and will star in a biopic of Peggy Lee. What's more, Nora Ephron will write and direct the movie.

Side by side, Lee and Witherspoon have a believable resemblance to each other, especially when they're matched for age. Perhaps that's why Witherspoon herself secured the rights to Lee's life from the family's estate after being approached by Lee's granddaughter.

Until recently, Ephron has never tackled the famous person genre, but the success of her adaptation of Julie & Julia last summer may have inspired her to take on this project. Ephron herself usually writes light romance and comedy, which makes me wonder if maybe this biopic will have a lighter take on Lee's life. Generally, musical biographies are filled with some pretty low lows. Lee's Wikipedia page mentions her four marriages, and some biographies mention that she drank heavily but may or may not have crossed the line of being an alcoholic. That's certainly enough to fill the dark chapter of most movies, but not so much that these need to be the defining lows of Lee's life. When Ephron wrote about Julia Child, what came across most was her ebullience and her zest for life. Yes, Ephron's film included some scenes of her difficulty putting together her cookbook, and her sadness at not having children like her sister, but the overall portrait was upbeat. Maybe that's what people need. I don't know if I want to see another dark movie about drug-abusing, alcoholic singers. I'd rather have one about a fun singer who maybe drinks a little too much and gets married a few too many times. Let's see what Ephron comes up with.

With Ephron and Witherspoon banded together, this project could get moving quickly. Witherspoon attaches herself to projects that don't always get off the ground (right away), but once Ephron announces a project, it seems to get made--she currently has zero projects in development on her IMDB page, while Witherspoon has fourteen projects. In the meantime, while Ephron writes the script, audiences can catch Witherspoon this December in the James L. Brooks comedy How Do You Know, and next April in the literary adaptation Water for Elephants--she's quite the busy actress.

Top spot goes to 'The Other Guys'

By Sarah Sluis

The Other Guys led the weekend with $35.6 million, easily unseating Inception, which finished second with $18.6 million. The opening was 50% higher than last week's debut of the comedy Dinner for Schmucks. Younger males turned out in force, and their eagerness to see the movie opening weekend

helped drive up the first-week gross. The robust debut also affirms Will Ferrell's standing at the box office after last year's flop Land of the Lost. Ferrell will likely be lining up his next big-budget, starring role in the near future. Within the next 12 months, however, we'll see Ferrell wearing a smartly arranged set of hats designed to expand his star persona beyond that of a studio comedy headliner: he's starring in the indie movie Everything Must Go, which is debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival, he's doing voicework in DreamWorks Animation's Megamind, and producing the low-budget teen sex comedy The Virginity Hit. That's what I'd call a diversified portfolio.

In third place, Step Up 3D brought in $15.5 million. 75% of the theatres were 3D, and they brought in 81% of the total revenue. Higher ticket prices should have brought the total from the 3D theatres at least

25% higher, since most 3D surcharges add that much to the ticket price, so this suggests that 3D theatres underperformed. Variety points out that there are currently four 3D movies out right now, however, and that smaller venues may have scheduled 3D showings of the movie at less opportune times. Since Step Up opened to $20.6 million and Step Up 2 The Streets opened to $18.9 million, this further dip in the opening weekend gross likely spells the end of the franchise.

The Kids Are All Right broke into the top ten, earning $2.6 million in its latest expansion into 147 more locations for a total of 994 theatres. Oddly enough, the movie did a million dollars more last weekend but only eked out a twelfth-place finish. The story of a lesbian-led household and their teens' quest to seek out their sperm donor father has earned $14 million to date, testament both to the movie's good reviews and the subject's appeal in the marketplace.

Rob Reiner's kid-oriented comedy Flipped debuted in 45 theatres with a $5,200 per-screen average, a decent opening figure. This movie is set for expansion in coming weeks so it will need strong

word-of-mouth from initial viewers to propel it forward. The glamorous-teens-gone-bad film Twelve couldn't find its viewers and played to nearly empty theatres, posting just a $460 per-screen average for a total of $107,000. Middle Men, which stars Luke Wilson, also had a disappointing opening weekend, with a light $1,200 per-screen average for a total of $305,000. With a reported budget of $20 million, it looks like Paramount just dumped this movie and hoped for the best.

Lebanon's two-screen debut averaged $8,300 per screen, slightly smaller than another Sony Pictures Classics release about the Lebanon War. Waltz with Bashir averaged $10,000 per screen during its debut weekend in the 2008 holiday season. The Wildest Dream averaged $5,300 per screen on a dozen screens, a respectable amount for the National Geographic release.

This Friday, uber-female picture Eat Pray Love will go up against uber-male action movie The Expendables. The teen-oriented, comic-inspired Scott Pilgrim vs. The World will round out the bunch.

'The Other Guys' set to unseat 'Inception'

By Sarah Sluis

It's time for The Other Guys to have a turn. Inception has been at the top spot at the box office for three weeks running, which should end once the Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg cop comedy hits 3,651

theatres today. Last June, Ferrell took a nosedive with Land of the Lost, a huge bomb that also happened to release the same weekend as the surprise comedy hit of the summer, The Hangover. With The Other Guys, Ferrell will have a shot at redemption. The movie's currently posting a 78% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and FJI critic Frank Lovece called the comedy a "surprisingly witty satire of buddy-cop movies" that "punctures the testosterone bags of a zillion buddy and even lone-wolf cop movies."

Kind of like an urban, older version of High School Musical with frenetically paced professional dancing, Step Up 3D steps into 2,435 theatres this weekend. The "dynamite" dancing, according to critic Maitland McDonagh, also includes a sequence

with two characters dancing through the New York City streets, staged using "a series of extended long shots," "incorporating taxis, brownstone steps and various props," and taking a little bit of inspiration from the 1949 Gene Kelly/Frank Sinatra musical On the Town. Bet that'll sell the movie to today's teenagers.

Opening in 252 theatres, Middle Men stars Luke Wilson as a good guy caught in the sordid side of the Internet boom days. For all the crimes that take place in the movie, however, "the film is no more salacious than an average Lady Gaga video," according to critic Daniel Eagan. Director George Gallo's focus on the "remorse and repentance side" of the "combustible premise," instead of using it for satire, left him cold.

Kind of like a feature-length version of "Gossip Girl" (as if teens needed anything more than that to rush to the theatres), Twelve debuts in 300 theatres. Chace Crawford (a "Gossip Girl" heartbreaker) stars in the tale of glamorous rich kids getting tied up in drugs, violence, and sex. Director Joel Schumacher (age 70) turns out to be handy at the job, to a point, according to critic Kirk Honeycutt, "[giving] enough texture to the tale that one might overlook its soap-opera aspects until the film implodes in the end from an excess of

overheated elements." It's not clear how well this film was marketed, so its success may come down to its ability to get the word out among teenage audiences.

Rob Reiner, who last directed senior-friendly The Bucket List, will hit the same demographic with Flipped. Set in the 1960s, the movie centers on a cute tale of young love that will be sure to inspire nostalgia. Rated just PG, this suburban-set movie looks like an extended version of "The Wonder Years," and is releasing in 45 theatres--but not New York City, which may be too hardened to appreciate the tale.

There's an unusually high number of well-regarded specialty films coming out this weekend, so there's

room to put a few on your to-see list. The highly praised Lebanon, which will make you never, ever want to go to war, much less be confined in a tank, opens in NYC and LA. The war drama is so unlike the usual American approach, free of the patriotism, bravado, and never-let-you-downs that appear in U.S. war movies, even anti-war ones. Pretend you're climbing Everest in the documentary The Wildest Dream (12 theatres), a "gorgeous adventure film" and "suspenseful quest" according to critic Erica Abeel. To see a romance set in the Arab world that's not Sex and the City 2, seek Cairo Time (5 theatres), which drew raves at the Tribeca Film Festival this year. Or, if you're in the mood for some English-accented intrigue, there's The Disappearance of Alice Creed (12 theatres), a "nifty little Brit thriller" that centers on a kidnapping.

On Monday, I'll assess Will Ferrell's market value and the performance of The Other Guys, see if teenage audiences were wowed by Step Up 3D or Twelve, and see which of the specialty releases did well enough to warrant a broad expansion.

Disney kills 'Newt,' postpones 'Beauty and the Beast 3D'

By Sarah Sluis

Newt has been dead for months now, but the Pixar project was officially taken off Disney's slate in an

announcement today. The movie was to center on the last two newts left on Earth, who predictably hate each other (but of course are meant for each other). It looks like the project was pushed out by the sequels of Cars and Monsters, Inc., as well as the original project The Bear and the Bow. R.I.P., Newt.

The other announcement was the indefinite postponement of the 3D re-release of Beauty and the Beast in theatres. If Disney took the pulse of the market correctly, this move could have implications for other 3D re-releases. The official word is that Beauty and the Beast would have to release in a crowded market, but there's also the possibility that Disney doesn't want to orchestrate a re-release without an upcoming tie-in or sequel to spread out marketing costs and add revenue.

By comparison, the Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3D re-release in fall 2009 made $30 million. Once you take the estimated conversion cost of $15 million per film as well as marketing costs into account, it doesn't seem as though the re-release could have made much of a profit. But because the re-release renewed interest in the Toy Story franchise and the upcoming Toy Story 3, profitability of the theatrical re-release might not have mattered in the grand scheme of things.

In order to make money off the re-release of Beauty and the Beast in 3D, Disney had planned on parents buying the exact same thing (possibly in 3D) for their Blu-rays--a much tougher task. For now, they plan to release the 20th anniversary version of Beauty and the Beast not in 3D, but 2D--despite the fact that a 3D version exists! The 3D home market is expected to take off this year, but so far movies like Clash of the Titans, which just made a huge splash on DVD and Blu-ray, have not been released in 3D. The holiday season is traditionally a time for plenty of DVD/Blu-ray releases and home electronics purchases, so this will be the season that reveals whether 3D films hit the home market--or not.

The postponement shows that Disney feels consumers aren't ready to buy 3D movies (which require newer, capable televisions as well as a Blu-ray player) and that it will be difficult to get consumers to buy tickets to an older title. For now, we'll just have to wait to see that famous ballroom dancing scene pop out on a big screen.

Trend: Older woman/younger woman movies

By Sarah Sluis

Today in pickup news, Fox announced it will develop 29: A Novel, a soon-to-be-published novel by Adina Halpern. The author's previous novel, The Best Ten Days of My Life, was also picked up by Fox, with Amy Adams attached to star and Shawn Levy to direct. 29 centers on a 75-year-old woman who has employed every means possible to look younger. She wishes to be 29, just for a day, and gets her wish. With the

help of her granddaughter, she has a magical, youthful day, while her own daughter and her similarly aged best friend search for the "missing" woman. This kind of story, let's be clear, is not original. It's a little bit of Freaky Friday, 13 Going On 30, 17 Again, and every other age-reversing tale out there. But instead of someone wanting to be a teenager again (or out of the angst-filled

teen years), the story will target one retirement-age woman and another the age of the young

urban professional. This project continues a trend that's led to box-office success as of late: the pairing a 20 to 30-something actress with a 50+ actress.

2008's Mamma Mia! teamed up Meryl Streep with rising star Amanda Seyfried. Sure, European audiences were drawn in by the ABBA soundtrack, but younger audiences (like myself) came for the younger heroine, but, of course, were charmed by Streep's wonderful performance and fabulous rendition of "Dancing Queen." The movie ended up earning over five times its opening weekend. Streep also filled the position of the older actress in The Devil Wears Prada, which co-starred Anne Hathaway. The movie grossed $125 million, also five times its opening weekend.

Seyfriend repeated the gig of playing opposite an older woman in this May's Letters to Juliet, which teamed her up with Vanessa Redgrave (age 73!). The

movie opened small but quintupled its opening weekend gross over several weeks (making the five-times-opening-weekend formula pretty standard among this genre of films), and generating a tidy profit for Summit.

Last week, I wrote about the development of Mommy & Me, which will pair Streep with Tina Fey, and bring in a wide age range of female audiences. Streep also did this with Julie & Julia, which co-starred thirty-something Amy Adams. Because so many of these old-young movies co-star Streep, it's tempting to attribute it all to her, but this analysis doesn't hold up. Streep's female-centered films that did not include a prominent younger co-star didn't do as well at the box office. It's Complicated also didn't quite achieve the level of success of Streep's films that featured a younger star significantly involved in the plotline. Evening may be the black sheep here, or the exception that proves the rule. The small film that cast Toni Collette and Claire Danes in its "younger" roles, didn't do as well (even though I saw it in theatres, true to form, with my mother and aunt!), perhaps because the younger actresses Collette and Danes were past their twenties and no longer rising stars, or perhaps because the talent roster, which also included older stars Glenn Close and Vanessa Redgrave alongside Streep, was too weighted on the older end of the spectrum.

These younger-older woman stories are perfect for mother-daughter movie dates, but they also seem to attract audiences that are exclusively younger or older. Young audiences have embraced older actresses like Betty White, who was the recipient of a youth-driven, Facebook campaign for her to host "Saturday Night Live" (It worked). Coincidentally, White herself will soon appear as a grandmother in another younger woman/older woman movie, You Again, coming out in September. Kristen Bell plays a woman whose brother is marrying her high school enemy, and it turns out the mothers (50+ actresses Jamie Lee Curtis and Sigourney Weaver) also are high school enemies. Of course, Hollywood can only repeat a formula so many times before the audience begins to tire of it, but for now the young-old pairings are the hot way to draw in both female quadrants to the box office.

Diablo Cody is back with 'Young Adult'

By Sarah Sluis

Screenwriter Diablo Cody soared with Juno and then crashed and burned with Jennifer's Body. Her next project will re-team her with Mandate Pictures, the folks that made Juno. Young Adult will center on a divorced writer of YA (young adult) books who goes back to the Heartland to stalk her ex-boyfriend, who's now married with a kid.

Charlize Theron is in contention to play the lead female role, and Jason Reitman, who showed he could translate Cody's tone in Juno, will direct. According to The Playlist blog, which read the screenplay, the script "largely [dispenses] with the annoying slang she's been tagged with and is refreshingly unhip." It also reveals that there's a third main role that needs to be cast. While she's chasing down her ex, she befriends a high school classmate who was beaten and crippled by jocks who thought he was gay, and now is overweight, disabled, and stuck in the town. It's a pretty gutsy backstory for a supporting character, almost as if a little piece of Boys Don't Cry is thrown in another movie, but for some reason I'm imagining this character as Damian in Mean Girls, who has a sense of humor about being bullied (not crippled, though) for being chubby and gay by his fellow classmates.

What's compelling about Young Adult is that the premise will once again invert audience expectations. Juno gave us a character who handled teen pregnancy in a manner against type, turning what's usually framed as a melodramatic, Lifetime TV movie situation into something upbeat and light-hearted. In Young Adult, Cody appears to do the same thing. Many a romantic comedy heroine has gone stalking and remained endearing to the audience, but Cody apparently makes her anti-hero unhinged, selfish, and not particularly likable. How refreshing!

Cody has a compelling, unique style, and I believe she has another Juno in her. Young Adult may be it.

'Inception' stays at the head of the table, with 'Dinner for Schmucks' close behind

By Sarah Sluis

For the third week in a row, Inception led the pack at the box office. The dreamy sci-fi movie dipped just 35% to $27.3 million, for a total of $193 million. That means the movie will cross the $200 million mark within the next few days. If it continues to drop around 30% for the rest of its run, it will finish just shy of $300 million.

Debuting in second place, the Steve Carell-led Dinner for Schmucks rang up $23.3 million. Based on the French comedy Le Dner des Cons, the remake received mixed reviews (averaging 51% on Rotten Tomatoes). The question here is if the movie will end up with a run similar to Carell's April release Date Night, which opened to $25 million but finished with a figure four times its opening weekend. The tamer PG-13 Date Night, which also co-starred a woman, has more of a mass-market appeal, but Schmucks features Carell as an oblivious buffoon somewhat similar to his Michael Scott character on "The Office," which could draw in audiences.

The idea of pet movies as box-office gold suffered a setback with the $12.5 million debut weekend of Cats & Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. The first Cats & Dogs, which released ages ago in 2001,

opened to $21.7 million. With all the original fans of the series now in their teen years, it's no wonder the sequel failed to generate significant buzz.

Zac Efron was able to secure a $12.1 million opening for his romantic drama Charlie St. Cloud, playing a sensitive young man overwrought with guilt over the death of his younger brother. Awareness and intent to see was high among teen girls, but for the movie to open higher it needed to

appeal to broader audience. Efron can enjoy the fact that his weepie romantic movie played better than that of the competition. Twilighter Robert Pattinson's Remember Me opened to just $8 million in March.

On the specialty front, The Kids Are All Right expanded yet again, going from 201 to 847 theatres and bringing in $3.4 million for a total that's now hovering just under the $10 million mark.

Get Low, starring Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, and Billy Murray, had an equally starry debut in four theatres with a per-screen average of $22,700. The Weinstein Co.'s The Concert averaged $10,000 per screen on two screens, and the documentary Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, Rebel earned $10,000 on one screen.

This Friday, Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell take on the buddy cop comedy in The Other Guys, and Step Up 3D brings urban dancing to theatres everywhere.