Film students + Google Glass = New film form, free publicity

In a sign of the growing symbiotic relationship between Hollywood and Silicon Valley, Google has announced that it will distribute Google Glasses to select film schools. Film students will get to experiment with a new filmmaking form, and Google will reap the benefits as their technology gets a creative showcase. Can I just say I called this? Back in May, I wrote "Forget piracy, could Google Glass inspire a new film aesthetic?" At the time, the film industry was worried about how movies could easily be pirated using Google Glass. I argued that they have the potential to inspire a completely new film aesthetic. With film students leading the way, I think Google Glass will be much more of an asset to the industry than a threat.

The schools participating in the program include USC, CalArts, RISD, UCLA and AFI, who each will receive three sets of the glasses. Right now, they cost $1,500, but they're expected to be priced closer to a smartphone by spring. They can make phone calls, so there is a chance the glasses will be subsidized by a phone contract, potentially costing just $200--though I wouldn't be surprised if they're at least $100 higher than that.

Time for more speculation. Cheap, high-quality digital cameras have revolutionized low-budget filmmaking. But when it comes to cell phones, video footage has been too low-quality. Instead, photos have thrived, nearly replacing the point-and-shoot camera used by the average consumer. Cell phone videos have been more useful for documentary footage--like capturing the shooting of Oscar Grant, now the subject of the dramatic film Fruitvale Station. Because Google Glass mimics a point-of-view shot, I think its cinematic potential is much greater. And now that film students have their hands on these new tech tools, it's only a matter of time before we see exactly just how cinematic Google Glass can be.

'Wolverine' has modest victory with $55 million opening

With so many big-budget tentpoles face-planting at the box office, all eyes were on the domestic performance of The Wolverine. But as it turned out, the Hugh Jackman-led superhero movie opened to $55 million. Sure, that's $30 million less than the 2009 opening of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but great overeas performance, where the film has already earned $86 million, is helping to make up for this gap.

Fruitvale Station entered the top ten in its third week. After expanding into over 1,000 theatres, the fact-based story of a black man who was fatally shot in tragic circumstances totaled $4.6 million. That was enough for it to beat another expanding indie, The Way, Way Back. The lighter, coming-of-age dramedy totaled $3.3 million, another good number, especially since its release was about 20% smaller.

The rest of the top ten was returning releases. Most had drops in the 30-50% range, but one exception was the buddy cop comedy The Heat. The female-driven picture dipped just 26%, its smallest decrease to date. Positive word-of-mouth is often cited as critical for movies that appeal to women, and that appears to be the case here. Its fifth-weekend total of $6.8 million brings its cumulative to $141 million.

The To Do List had great reviews, but a lackluster opening of $1.5 million. The weak interest in the movie is disappointing, but perhaps it will do better in aftermarkets like VOD. Even if it earns several times its opening weekend, it may not break $10 million.

Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine had a much stronger opening, earning an out-of-the-park $102,000 per screen for a total of $613,000. That's a few thousand over the per-screen average of Midnight in Paris, Allen's biggest recent hit. However, right now Allen is playing to his core audience in New York and L.A., so it's a bit early to know if this film will approach the $56 million earned by his vintage Paris-channeling 2011 success.

On Wednesday, The Smurfs 2 will enter a field already crowded with animated features. On Friday, Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington will team up for action flick 2 Guns.

'Wolverine' sole new wide release in indie-dominated weekend

Audiences may be suffering from box-office fatigue, with too many tentpoles hitting theatres this summer, but The Wolverine (3,924 theatres) has one thing in its favor: it's the only new wide release this weekend. Sure, two other superhero movies have released this summer, Iron Man 3 and Man of Steel, but the sixth appearance of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, although the smallest of the bunch, should top $60
million. The previous Wolverine installment, X-Men Origins:Wolverine in 2009, didn't get the strongest of reviews. Although this follow-up has earned positive endorsements from critics, including our Daniel Eagan, it will be an uphill battle to win over audiences. Eagan calls out the feature's "involving script, focused direction
and a powerhouse performance by Hugh Jackman," going on to note that the James Mangold-directed feature "isn't a
run-of-the-mill, effects-heavy comic-book adaptation—it's a solid
drama that's only incidentally about superheroes."

This summer has also yielded a number of strong specialty features. The To-Do List (591 theatres) is a bit in-between an indie and mainstream release. The 1993-set teen sex comedy stars Aubrey Plaza as a high school graduate anxious to get some sexual experience. The "sublimely entertaining female version of

American Pie," according to our critic David Noh, "goes just as far as most male-oriented
teen sex comedies, except its raunch and gross-out humor are
actually funny and, yes, fully empowering." CBS Films is keeping the release small, which will hopefully lead to packed theatres and positive word-of-mouth. It's only expected to open to $2 million, but it could be in for a long run as word spreads, just like last year's Pitch Perfect, which earned ten times its opening weekend.

In its third weekend, Fruitvale Station will expand into 1,064 theatres. That's an aggressive expansion, given the socially conscious drama was in just 34 theatres last week. The move into wider release may also be related to the Weinstein Co.'s upcoming release The Butler, which will open in just four weeks. Both focus on social justice and America's racial issues, albeit in different ways,
which could prove a challenge for the distributor.

The Way, Way Back will nearly triple the locations in its release for a total of 886 theatres. The comedy is so perfect for summer, you can almost feel the sand between your toes, and the casting of Steve Carell has helped bring more eyes to this coming-of-age tale. In three weeks, it's earned over $5 million, and this week should add a significant chunk to that total.

Also opening this weekend is Blue Jasmine (6 theatres). Woody Allen's features always open to sky-high per-screen averages, so his latest should open to at least $70,000 per screen. Allen's auteur status always draws his loyal crowds, but the question is whether his films will catch on with a wider audience, like Midnight in Paris did, or quietly fade out. Blue Jasmine has earned generally positive reviews (82% "Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes), and its light take on timely subject matter, via its focus on Cate Blanchett, the spurned wife of a Bernie Madoff-like character, should propel it forward through the rest of the summer.

On Monday, we'll see if The Wolverine breaks the box-office curse that has plagued many of this summer's would-be tentpoles, and which of the smaller releases shows the most promise.

Rosamund Pike joins Ben Affleck in 'Gone Girl'

The wait is over. Two weeks after announcing that Ben Affleck would play the male lead in Gone Girl, casting for the female lead was announced. Rosamund Pike, who has been seen with Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher, as well as the upcoming feature The World's End and the 2009 indie An Education, has won the coveted part. The juicy role requires the character to make quite a transformation--but I won't
go any further. In the book, the story is first told through the perspective of the husband (Affleck), then moves to the perspective of the wife (Pike). Her character goes missing on their fifth wedding anniversary, and her husband becomes the number-one suspect. They each see each other through completely different lenses, which hopefully these talented actors will be able to convey.

Now that the casting is in place, production is set to start in September. Author Gillian Flynn, a former TV writer for Entertainment Weekly, adapted the screenplay of her novel, which was her third published thriller. What promises to set this adaptation apart, however, is having David Fincher as a director. His 2007 crime thriller Zodiac remains one of the scariest movies I've ever seen, and there will be plenty of opportunities for him to apply those touches in Gone Girl. My one concern when it comes to the box office is that the book hinges on its twist ending--and for the millions who have read the book, that twist is forever spoiled. Fincher's version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, another literary adaptation, underperformed despite being impeccably made. That movie, however, had a double death-knell. Not only had many people already read the trilogy, spoiling part of the mystery, they were so excited to see a movie of the books, they had already gone out and seen the entire trilogy of the Swedish-language adaptation, which had a dramatically successful run at the U.S. box office. At least in this case, Fincher will be the first to adapt the work. If this is anything like Zodiac, or its cousins Se7en and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, audiences will be in for a treat.

Abigail Breslin & Arnold Schwarzenegger team up for 'Maggie'

Hollywood's zombie craze has reached a fever pitch. The most recent undead project to join the fray is Maggie. Abigail Breslin will star as a young woman infected with a "walking dead" virus in the feature, which will shoot this fall. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays her father. The original log line for the 2011 Black List script by John Scott 3 read like this: "As a “walking dead” virus spreads across
the country, a farm family
helps their eldest daughter come to terms with her infection as she
slowly becomes a flesh-eating zombie." I can't imagine Schwarzenegger as the comforting type--he's more the kind of actor who solves problems through action--but perhaps there's more beyond the description that suits the action star's strengths.

What Maggie won't have in its favor is novelty. Zombie movies, books, and TV shows are everywhere. The shockingly good 28 Days Later a decade ago may have kick-started the trend, joined by its sequel 28 Weeks Later in 2007, Zombieland in 2009, AMC's "The Walking Dead," which premiered in 2010, and ParaNorman, The Crazies, and this year's Warm Bodies and World War Z. Then there's the still-pending works like the adaptation of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. Zombie culture has become an epidemic in itself.

This feature will start filming this fall, so this casting combination is likely set. Last May, Variety reported Chloe Moretz was circling the role, but that deal fell apart. All along, the commercials director Henry Hobson, who would make the feature debut with the zombie movie, has been attached.  Breslin has since filmed the yet-to-be-released features August: Osage County and Ender's Game, both of which will likely raise the profile of the all-grown-up Little Miss Sunshine star by the time Maggie is released.

‘Gravity’ sequence earns positive buzz at Comic-Con

Comic-Con attendees might be running out of superlatives to
throw at Alfonso Cuarón’s upcoming deep-space thriller Gravity, after an
extended sequence was presented at the festival on Saturday. Fans took to
Twitter to call the footage—which showed leads George Clooney and Sandra
Bullock weathering an attack on a space station—“beyond intense” and “one of
the most extraordinary things I’ve ever seen.” Others singled out the
“astonishing 3D” or the impressive long takes that structured the sequence, and
apparently comprise much of the film.

A panel conference with Cuarón, Bullock, and producer David
Heyman followed the showing, and helped elucidate the unusual process of making
an unusual movie. Gravity tells the story of two astronauts who are cut
off from their shuttle after a space debris collision, and are left
floating—untethered and with a dwindling supply of oxygen. Bullock and Clooney
are the only two actors shown in the film, which seems to layer even its bursts
of action with a tone of eerie minimalism.

Isolation, however, was not just a plot point, but a
technological necessity. In order to replicate the conditions of zero-gravity,
Bullock spent much of the shoot suspended in a 9x9 foot cube, surrounded by
camera-wielding robotic arms. She would often stay inside her contraption
between takes, and claimed she learned to meditate during the shoot. At other
times, a camera might rush towards her at 25 miles an hour, only to stop an
inch from her nose.

 

When asked about inspiration behind the project, Cuarón paid
respects to Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped, which details a war
prisoner’s plan to break out of a Nazi prison. It’s a fitting mention given Escaped’s
focus on confinement, but also because of the 1956 film’s meticulous attention
to sound—from the turn of a key to the distant footstep of a guard.  Gravity
promises similar detail. As soon as Cuarón took the stage he poked fun at the
explosions that the studios had put in the trailers; “As we know, there is no
sound in space. In the film, we don’t do that.” And Bullock credited the
specially designed music and sounds that played on her headphones between takes
for putting her in the right space.

Cuarón, who’s famous for his displays of filmmaking
prowess—especially that seven-and-a-half-minute single shot in Children of
Men—made sure to emphasize the human side of the story, downplaying the
importance of his virtuosic methods in favor of the film’s “emotional journey.”
And Bullock certainly included some intriguing nuggets about her character—she
tried to make herself as androgynous as possible in order to portray a woman
with a conflicted past in relation to motherhood and femininity. Then again,
who can’t be curious about the technological spectacle of it all (and a rumored
17-minute long opening take)? When asked if making a film entirely out of very
long shots was a challenge Cuarón joked, “It’s not difficult for me. It’s
difficult for everyone around me.”

Low-budget horror movie 'The Conjuring' tops expensive tentpoles

As the East Coast and Midwest endured a heat wave, the spine-chilling The Conjuring performed some magic this weekend as it opened to $41.5 million. Made for just half its opening gross, the horror feature combined great reviews with a stellar marketing campaign to coast to the top. Meanwhile, news wasn't nearly as good for the other three wide releases this weekend, which were far more expensive to make.

DreamWorks Animation's Turbo opened in third with $21.5 million, with a five-day total of $31.2 million. That's a disappointment for the animation studio, which spent at least $135 million in production. Meanwhile, Despicable Me 2, which cost just $76 million to make, racked up another $25 million in its third week, easily outshining the debut of Turbo.

Red 2 posted totals of $18.5 million, a few million less than the original. Older males comprised the majority of the audience. The action feature about aging spies performed similarly to The Expendables 2, which starring aging action heroes. That sequel's opening also dropped slightly from that of the original.

The Men in Black-like supernatural buddy cop action-comedy R.I.P.D. bombed, maybe because it included just too many genres. With $12.7 million, it's slightly better than some projections, which doubted if the movie could top $10 million, but this feature will definitely lead to a big writedown at Universal.

In 353 locations, Girl Most Likely averaged $2,000 a screen for a total of $736,000. That's less than expected for the Kristen Wiig-led comedy, which unfortunately has been plagued by poor reviews. Another star-led indie, Only God Forgives, had double the per-screen average, $4,000, for a total of $315,000. Thanks to the star power of Ryan Gosling, the Radius-TWC release is expected to post strong VOD numbers. Meanwhile, The Way, Way Back continued its slow burn, going up 100% as it added locations for another $2.2 million in its third week. The indie beach comedy will expand into over 650 locations on Friday.

This Friday, Wolverine will lead the pack of new releases, while The To-Do List opens in a moderate 500 locations. Also on the menu is Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine.