Craig's MovieBlog

Sony Shrinking Windows?

From today’s New York Times:

In an industry first, Sony Pictures’ hoped-for blockbuster Hancock, starring Mr. Smith as a bungling superhero, hits theaters on Wednesday and will be available — after its theater run but before release on DVD — over the Internet, directly to viewers’ television sets. That is, if they own a Sony Bravia TV with a Web connection.

…

In November, after Hancock has had its run in theaters, it will be available for a fee with the click of a remote control for consumers who own Internet-equipped Sony Bravia televisions. The Bravia Internet link adds $299 to the cost of the television.

…

Sony executives are adamant that the Hancock experiment is just that — an experiment that is as much about showcasing the potential of Sony’s Internet-enabled Bravia television sets as it is about the future possibilities of movie watching. It is not, they said, a push to change Hollywood’s carefully calibrated windows for the various outlets in which a film is released: theater, DVD and pay television.

Sony makes the content, makes the PS3 game console (with an internet connection and Blu-Ray support), and makes the TV (also connected to the net).  It’s a huge company, but I would honestly be more surprised if they didn’t pull something off that makes everything work better together.

Wanted: Second Biggest #2 Debut Ever

Does that even make sense?  Wanted opened to $51.1 million this weekend, and while it wasn’t enough to beat Wall-E ($62.5 million), it was the second biggest debut ever that didn’t hit #1. 

I love stats like this.  Also, I am a dork.

Here are the top five #2 debuts of all time (via Box Office Mojo)

Rank	Title	Opening	Weekend Winner (Weekend Gross)
1	The Day After Tomorrow	$68.7 million	Shrek 2 ($72.1 million)
2	Wanted	$51.1 million	Wall-E ($62.5 million)
3	The Longest Yard	$47.6 million	Revenge of the Sith ($55.2 million)
4	Alvin and the Chipmunks	$44.3 million	I Am Legend ($77.2 million)
5	Casino Royale	$40.8 million	Happy Feet ($41.5 million)

More Wordle Fun: Guess the Movie!

I’ve already posted once about Wordle, but The Jay inspired me today, so I took three of my favorite monologues and Wordled them.  Care to guess what movies they’re from?  No fair Googling the words… that’s too easy.  Besides, these aren’t very hard.

Note: language is a bit R-rated.  Click on each Wordle picture for the answer.

Here’s #1:

And #2:

And #3:

Craigslist

• David Poland says Hancock “is easily the most ambitious action script of the summer to date.”
• It’s Brad Pitt’s world.  We’re all just living in it.  Check out the trailers for Burn After Reading and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, directed by The Coen Brothers and David Fincher, respectively.
• So best.  Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: The Abridged Script.  Go read it and remind yourself how truly disappointing that film was.  I wonder if George Lucas is gonna just go and destroy all my childhood dreams.  Maybe he can remake Fletch, Ghostbusters, and Ferris Bueller next.
• This is old, but I still don’t get it.  Blockbuster is “testing in-store kiosks allowing consumers to download movies onto their portable devices.”  Wow.  Too bad I actually have to go to Blockbuster to do this… you know, the place where all the DVDs are anyway?  Gosh, if there was only a device in the home that was connected to the Internet, could download a movie the same way, and could sync content to my portable devices. Schmucks…
• If Film Studios Developed Videogames.  John August is brilliant.

Wanted is Getting Good Reviews (So Far)

I know, it’s early yet.  But still, this gets my hopes up.

Now That’s What I’m Talking About!

         

Wordle is very, very cool.

 

More Dumb Math

E! Online is reporting today that Iron Man just broke the $300 threshold at the North American box office today.  Their lead sentence is:

“The biggest movie of the summer just became the biggest movie of the year.”

Um… no. 

It already was the biggest movie of the year and had been for some time.  Does it not count as the biggest movie of the year until it breaks $300 million?  Why don’t they consider it the biggest movie of the year at $250 million, or $200 million, or the second it passed the previous number 1 film, Horton Hears a Who when it (here’s the key) moved into first place on the list of domestic box office grossing films?!?!?!

I know.  Film is a visual medium.  Numbers is hard.

Thank Goodness Someone Is Paying Attention

Hats off to Nathaniel R over at Film Experience Blog who beat me to the punch today.  I mean, I know math and stuff is hard since we’re all so busy watching The Hills and Living Lohan, but why is everyone in the industry so happy that the new Hulk film opened to $55 million with a $150 budget, while the so-called Ang Lee bomb from a few years ago opened to $62 million with a lower ($137 million) budget?

To recap, here’s a handy table:

	The Incredible Hulk	Hulk
Year	2008	2003
Director	Louis Leterrier	Ang Lee
Stars	Ed Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth	Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly
Production Budget	$150 million	$137 million
Opening Weekend	$55.4 million	$62.1 million
Per Screen Average	$15,810	$16,974
Industry Buzz	Yay!	Boo!

Yes, opening weekend is just one measure of success, as the 2003 Hulk suffered a severe drop off and bad word of mouth, but can we all stop salivating and crying a sigh of relief when the numbers are clearly worse? 

Expectations must have been god awful to celebrate this way…

Oh, and as David Poland rightfully points out, the new Hulk film “faces Wall-E, Wanted, and Hancock while Hulk faced Charlie’s Angels 2, Legally Blonde 2, and Terminator 3.”

Let’s not break our arms patting ourselves on the back, shall we?

Yes, I'll Be First In Line - 7 Minutes of Wanted

   

There’s a seven minute clip from Wanted over at Empire Online, and I just couldn’t be more eager to see this thing.  I’m not sure why people are so jaded about it… it’s not getting the buzz that I thought it would – too much like The Matrix?  James McAvoy not a big enough star?  Morgan Freeman doing his all-knowing wise sage act again?

 

Anyway, I was worried that they had already shown us all the cool stuff, but I can see just from this clip alone that they seem to have lots of surprises up their sleeves.

Playing Chicken

According to Box Office Mojo, Get Smart has a production budget of $80 million, while The Love Guru has a budget of $62 million.  Neither of those numbers include the massive costs sunk into marketing these two films.

Let’s just say, these are big investments.

So why… why oh why… why would the Warner Bros and Paramount plan on releasing these two films, both big budget comedies, both with big stars that came from television, both targeting the exact same audience, why would they release them on the same day?

There’s a good piece in the LA Times discussing that there are more films being released each year than ever before, and (I don’t know if you’ve noticed) the number of weeks in a year is remaining remarkably constant.

That’s a nice excuse, but are you telling me you couldn’t find a single weekend to do some appropriate counter-marketing?  You couldn’t release one of those films this weekend against The Incredible Hulk and The Happening?  What new film are women going to see this weekend?  Not those two, but maybe they would have seen that big action spy movie with that funny Anne Hathaway that they loved so much in The Devil Wears Prada (which, if you remember did a brilliant job of counter-marketing against Superman Returns, to the tune of a $27 million opening and a $125 million gross domestically.)

This smells of nothing but ego, pure and simple.  Someone picked a date, another person picked a date, and no one wanted to “show weakness” and move, even though it probably would have made them another $50 million.  Silly.

What Hath Sex And The City Wrought?

If He's Just Not That Into You didn't have enough estrogen for you, you're in luck.

I don't think there's a single penis in this entire preview.  Unless Meg Ryan is hiding one (entirely possible given all the work she's had done).

Enjoy The Women.