Hilary Swank to play ALS-stricken woman in 'You're Not You'

If Hilary Swank's characters have a common thread, it would be resilience in the face of adversity. That's what won her both her Oscars, for 1999's Boys Don't Cry and 2004's Million Dollar Baby. She favors true-to-life stories (Conviction, Amelia, Boys Don't Cry), and she's not so much into happy endings--her characters' fates include dying in a plane crash, becoming paraplegic and
requesting assisted suicide, and being murdered. It appears that her next project will have a few of those elements. She will play an ALS-stricken woman in You're Not You, which is based on the well-received novel by Michelle Wildgen. Swank's character is a sophisticated former chef who now can barely move her fingers. An aimless college student becomes her caretaker, and in the process the young woman redirects her life and learns a few lessons from the woman. Then the husband of the disabled woman has an affair and she kicks him out, revving up the stakes of the tale.

I would say that it's a challenge to make a project where the main character can barely move, but John Hawkes' performance in The Sessions has already proved that belief wrong. French success The Intouchables, about the relationship between a paralyzed man and his caretaker, has also shown these stories can resonate with audiences. Finally, the focus on female relationships dovetails with Hollywood's heightened focus on this piece of the puzzle, thanks to a string of hits with female-centered plotlines. I imagine Swank's character is a lot nicer than the one in The Devil Wears Prada, but that movie, at least, proves that a workplace growth experience between an older woman and a younger woman is viable at the box office.

I admire Swank for being so choosy about the movies she appears in. There are plenty of movies about 20-somethings trying to figure out their lives and seek personal growth, but most of them are romances set in urban areas with the women already in swank jobs (and "Girls," its innovative and less glamorous counterpart, also deserves a mention). You're Not You delves into more serious territory with its depiction of a serious disease. That makes a lot of concerns look trivial in comparison.

Although the project has been in development for years (the book was published in 2006), production will finally begin this November. One big casting decision has yet to be made: the college student. Shana Feste (Country Strong) and Jordan Roberts (Dolphin Tale) worked on the script, and George C. Wolfe (Nights in Rodanthe) is directing. Most tellingly, Alcon Entertainment, which brought tearjerker and feel-good movie The Blind Side to the big screen, is producing. With shooting beginning this fall, You're Not You will likely hit screens sometime in 2014.

 

Laika may pick up Henry Selick's abandoned Disney project

One of the big news items from Disney's quarterly report this September was a $50 million writedown on an unnamed movie, which was shut down mid-production. It was quickly revealed that the movie was the stop-motion animation feature from director Henry Selick, who was poached away from Laika, where he directed Coraline.

Now there are signs that Laika might pick up Selick's unfinished project, which was reportedly too
dark for Disney. Since Laika's film credits also include Corpse Bride and ParaNorman, it's safe to say "dark" won't be a problem for the production company. Of course, dark wasn't always a problem for Disney, since Selick's 1990s movies The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach were made under the mouse house. Since Disney recently underwent a change in leadership, with Alan Horn stepping into the role of chairman, it's possible that the writedown was related to new executives who didn't believe in the project.

$50 million does seem like a steep investment for Disney, especially if the project was unfinished. Dark, animated movies appeal to a niche audience. Coraline, a success, earned $75 million at the box office, with a reported budget of $60 million. Compare that to Brave's $233 million (and $185 million budget), just another one of Pixar's all-ages successes. Maybe Disney, so used to its big animated projects, couldn't adapt to making a smaller, cheaper project. Word is that Selick was also behind schedule, and would have been unable to make the planned October 2013 release date.

Selick's work may not be for everyone, but Coraline is up there in my favorite animated films list. Let's hope Laika takes Selick back into their fold and embraces the creepy, dark animated tale.

 

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.

 

'End of Watch' grabs first in close weekend

After a close race, End of Watch grabbed the first place spot with $13.2 million. Positive word-of-mouth fueled the cop drama, giving it an extra edge over its competitors. Hispanic audiences, who made up 32% of attendees, may have been drawn in part by co-star Michael Peña,
as well as the setting in Los Angeles, which has a large Hispanic community. Audiences also gave the movie an "A-" rating in CinemaScore exit polls, another reason for newbie distributor Open Road Films to celebrate.

In second place, The House at the End of the Street earned $12.2 million. Audiences gave the horror movie, which stars Oscar nominee Jennifer Lawrence, a "B" rating.

Trouble with the Curve was right behind in third with $12.1 million. The South and Midwest regions posted the highest returns for the Clint Eastwood-led picture, which is about
old-fashioned, non-Moneyball baseball scouting. Trouble's demographic should give the drama long playability, with plenty of people turning out in coming weeks as word spreads.

Earning half as much as the other three wide releases, Dredd 3D faltered with $6.3 million. The rub is that even a re-release, Finding Nemo 3D, did better, easily accruing a return of $9.4 million.

The Master made a bet by expanding from four to 788 locations in its second weekend. The bet didn't exactly pay off. Although the drama earned $5 million in seventh place, only 36% of locations earned more than $5,000, a sign
that a smaller release might have yielded higher per-screen averages. That being said, digital distribution is a lot cheaper than film prints, so perhaps that affected distribution plans.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower had an extremely strong opening of $244,000 on four screens, a per-screen average of $61,000. With a debut like that, there's no way this offbeat teen comedy will fade into the background.

This Friday, the well-received sci-fi picture Looper (read FJI's profile of the director here) leads the pack. Halloween starts early with the animated feature Hotel Transylvania, parents fight for better teaching in Won't Back Down, and college a capella gets its due in Pitch Perfect.

'Trouble with the Curve' goes to bat against 'Dredd 3D'

Four new movies open this weekend, but the box office is still expected to be 20% off of last year. With some modestly budgeted pictures in the mix, even $10-20 million openings may yield good results for studios. All four of the wide releases are expected to end up in the range, so the race for first will be close.

Clint Eastwood may be the main draw in Trouble with the Curve (3,212 theatres), but Amy
Adams has a surprisingly meaty role in this story of an aging baseball scout and the corporate lawyer who accompanies him on a scouting trip. Yes, director Robert Lorenz "telegraphs plot points" in a way that's a bit eye-rollingly obvious, as critic Daniel Eagan points out, "but he also tells the story clearly, without fuss. As a kind of anti-Moneyball, the picture will hold particular sway among those who, like Eastwood's character, feel a little crochety about the world's technological changes.

The sci-fi dystopia in Dredd 3D (2,506 theatres) is "not as awful" as the 1995 adaptation of the
comic book, according to critic Maitland McDonagh. In the futuristic world, robotic judges mete out justice in giant skyscrapers. Cool idea, but apparently it's "straight and dull, despite the near-nonstop mayhem."

Pre-Hunger Games, Jennifer Lawrence made House at the End of the Street (3,083 theatres), a horror movie that screened only for critics the night before opening. Horror movies have been doing mixed business lately, with The Possession opening over $20 million
but The Apparition falling short with $2.8 million. With the recognizable Lawrence front and center, the horror flick should be in store for an opening closer to Possession than Apparition.

The cop drama End of Watch (2,730 theatres), starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña, comes from AMC and Regal joint venture Open Road Films, which aims to increase the amount of product for movie theatres that falls in the middle-budget range. With an estimated budget of $7 million, End of Watch falls on the low end of the budget spectrum, but the results impressed critic Maitland McDonagh, who calls the police drama "fiction designed to look like the most exciting supersized episode of 'Cops' ever." Using the amateur footage technique that's been popularized by horror films and extended to other genres, like the teen superhero pic Chronicle, isn't a gimmick, but "lifts it above cop-movie clichés."

Harry Potter's Emma Watson stars in The Perks of Being a Wallflower (4 theatres), an adaptation of a popular young adult book. The content may have been watered down in execution,
as critic Doris Toumarkine complains the "more mainstream than edgy" tweener pic will be a "box-office wallflower unless there's good word-of-mouth.

Last week's indie smash The Master expands from four locations to 788 this weekend. The critically acclaimed movie is tracking at 86% on Rotten Tomatoes and 88 on Metacritic, which is often a bit tougher on releases. Director Paul Thomas Anderson's previous release, There Will Be Blood, didn't open that wide until its fifth week of release, so there is some concern that distributor Weinstein Co. may be opening too wide, too soon. But a quick expansion will help the Scientology-esque drama keep the momentum from its positive film festival reception and record-breaking opening.

On Monday, we'll see if the influx of new movies boosted the box office, and which picture came out on top.

3D opera and Sony's closed-caption glasses previewed at Geneva Convention

Now in its sixth season, the Met Opera has been the single most successful alternative content program in theatres. On Tuesday night, RealD previewed part of Madam Butterfly 3D. No, it's not from the Met, but London's Royal Opera House. After a host of technical difficulties were resolved, we previewed part of the movie. The opening credit sequence had the extreme pop-outs people associate with 3D. It was mainly behind-the-scenes shots of hair and makeup and rainy London streets. The patient, slower pace lent a different mood to 3D than the one people are used to seeing with 3D-animated or tentpole movies. The actual opera had more restrained use of 3D. The most revelatory part was not the 3D, but the crispness of the shots. The high definition showed, and gave a front row view of the action.

On Wednesday evening, Sony previewed its closed-caption glasses. Not only will theatre owners likely be required by a federal mandate to provide options for deaf and blind patrons, but many theatre owners spoke of customers who had come in requesting such a product, since it was announced last year at ShowEast. Though Sony is currently mum about the price, the glasses are heavy and
complicated--and that usually means expensive. This reporter could not figure out exactly how the hologram was being projected but that's for the engineers. On each side of the glasses there is a small pack that apparently projects the captions on the screen from each side--but I can't explain more than that. It's also attached to a small transmitter that allows people to set the language and other specifications. This creates a great opportunity for international film festivals--people can watch the same movie, all with subtitles set to their preferred language.

Wearing the glasses is slightly less smooth. They project in green, but depending on the color of the screen at the moment, words could be hard to read. The darker the screen, the more legible the captions. Because the glasses are adjustable, you can have the subtitles show up in the black space below the screen, which Sony confirms many testers have preferred to do. But if your theatre doesn't have a lot of dark dead space below their screen, you may have to read the subtitles on the screen, a more difficult option.

The biggest flaw of the glasses is the fact that a person's head is not the most stable projection device. If movies were projected via hats worn by the projectionist, the images would be wobbly. The same principle is at work here. It's possible over the length of a feature film the mind would adjust to the wobbles, but I found that the subtitles drew an annoying amount of attention to my body's minor fidgeting. I would then move my head more to try to move the subtitles back to where I had them before. This is the kind of problem that never seems to happen in Minority Report! Despite these issues, Sony's engineers have created an impressive technology. For a deaf patron, the service is a lot better than nothing. But audiences used to fixed, unmoving subtitles while watching a foreign-language film may not find the experience as smooth to their liking. For that reason, I think this product will be the biggest success in the hearing impaired market. If the next generation contains a stabilizer or something else to fix the wobbles, I think foreign film subtitling will be the next application of this cutting-edge technology.

NATO's John Fithian leads off Geneva Convention with industry insights

Digital conversions are finally winding down. In the opening NATO "State of the Industry" speech at the Geneva Convention today, president John Fithian remarked that he's been in his position for over a decade, and he's never stopped talking about digital. Finally, he sees the end on the horizon. In his address, he said, "the train has left the station. Make your decision in the next ten days," which elicited nervous titters in the audience. Most integrators have a September 30th deadline to sign a contract, so it's now or never. Some single-screen theatres or smaller locations are still figuring out financing for digital--or hoping to wait around for the cheaper projectors that have not been officially announced or priced. With VPF deals often not a good fit for the smallest theatres, owners are coming up with alternative solutions, like looking for loans backed by the Small Businesss Admistration (sba.gov).

There are still growing pains for those who have converted to digital. Fithian fielded one question from a theatre owner who felt many theatres, especially smaller five- and six-plexes, were getting passed over for releases they would have received on film. Distributors just didn't want to pay the fee part of the VPF. Fithian acknowledged that there was a problem and he's been receiving a few complaints a week about the matter. In an upcoming meeting, he plans to address this issue with the studios in the presence of representatives from independent theatres. His view was that a lot of the problems stem from the complicated nature of the contracts and legalese. If VPF deals are followed correctly, this shouldn't happen.

Fithian and his co-presenters,  NATO's Patrick Corcoran and Belinda Judson, also talked about ideas coming out of NATO's strategic planning committee. One idea is a national campaign encouraging moviegoing, which they compared to the "Got Milk?" campaign. Exhibitors are at the mercy of studio marketing, which is movie-specific, so advertising emphasizing the experience of moviegoing may encourage current moviegoers to attend more frequently. Another idea is having a national discount movie day. Many chains currently have cheap tickets every Tuesday, for example, but it's not nationwide. Additionally, Canada and some countries in Latin America already have these discount days in place without negative effect on the overall market.Apparently some studio partners are enthusiastic about the idea, while others hate it. There was also talk about addressing some grievances exhibitors have with current studio marketing strategies, like trailers and standees for films that are 12-18 months away. Trailers that give away too much of the movie are another pet peeve, and with running times creeping up to two minutes and thirty seconds, the previews are just too long.

Studios have been just producers and distributors ever since the 1948 Paramount Decision. But now exhibitors want a hand in the distribution business too. NATO's position is that theatres are suffering because fewer movies are being made in the middle range--the ones that don't cost too much and don't earn too much. Open Road Films, the joint venture between AMC and Regal, is one such foray into distribution. During the Box Office panel "Programming Alternatives to Movies," this issue came up again. Although alternative content is primarily associated with programs like NCM Fathom's Met Opera programs, the tactics used to promote these one-off screenings could also help smaller independent movies find their audiences in theatres, not at home.

Yesterday, before the opening dinner and Geneva Idol competition, Warner Bros. unveiled a new Hobbit trailer, which enthused the crowd. As for the winner of the riff American Idol? Well, if one duo could have pulled off the Patrick Swayze lift while singing Dirty Dancing's "Time of My Life," maybe they would have won, but it was a smooth, memorized version of Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" that brought the house down. The day's entertainment also yielded benefits. The golf tournament earlier in the day brought in over $5,000 for Variety The Children's Charity. The organization was originally a men's club that rallied together to help an abandoned baby found at the doorsteps of a theatre, so the combination of entertainment and charity seemed fitting. The golfers, and anyone who looks outside in between promo reels from the studio, are treated to the majestic, tree-covered hills of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Check back tomorrow for more highlights from "Where Hollywood Meets the Heartland."