Indieville : Biz

Five reasons "Pirate Radio" flopped.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:54:00 GMT

As you're doubtless aware, the weekend saw "Precious" making $6.1 million from a measly 174 screens, doing well on its probable journey towards Best Picture; "Fantastic Mr. Fox" did well too, pulling roughly the same per-theater average as "The Darjeeling Limited" in its first weekend, which means Wes Anderson may or may not still be too cool for the mainstream. Less remarked upon was the crash-and-burn failure of "Pirate Radio," Richard Curtis' tepidly...(read more)

On the underserved ballet/dance audience.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:10:30 GMT

Two (or three, if you squint) dance movies scored big over the weekend: Michael Jackson's last stand "This Is It" continued to score overseas with $29 million; meanwhile, in New York, Frederick Wiseman's documentary "La Danse" took in $21,000 in one weekend, better than any per-screen average in the U.S. box office (save, predictably, $100,000/screen for "Precious"), and Maureen Dowd felt the need to write a totally pointless column about "The Red Shoes"...(read more)

"Gentlemen Broncos" gets corralled.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:44:45 GMT

Fox Searchlight has become to the '00s what Miramax was to the '90s: a company that gets known for putting out "niche" movies that aren't honestly the toughest of sells. With the trifecta of "Napoleon Dynamite," "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Juno," they basically cracked open the window for the mainstreaming of Sundance quirk. But they've hit a wall this year, with the exception of "(500) Days of Summer": "Amelia" is tanking...(read more)

India, coming to a theater near you.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:01:00 GMT

India's Reliance Entertainment doesn't just own a chunk of DreamWorks, they're also now the 25th-largest movie theater operator in the U.S. Welcome to the globalized future! In the last 18 months, Reliance has snapped up 18 cinemas across the country; they control 181 screens. Not all of the theaters are devoted to Bollywood movies; some mix them in with Hollywood product, others have none at all. But the goal is a chain of Indian-oriented cinemas. The Indian American community numbers...(read more)

Ghosts of Christmas movie "traditions."

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:58:00 GMT

"A Christmas Carol" arrives next Friday, and I'm actually a little excited, being a fan of the perversity of "Beowulf," Robert Zemeckis' last motion-capture experiment. But by now we're as overstocked on cinematic Scrooges as we are on Jane Eyre adaptations. No matter, Disney's betting $175 million on the film itself, and lord knows how much on the marketing. The Dickens classic has been made into movies so many times that the adaptations have their own Wikipedia...(read more)

The future's so bright, it deserves a letter grade.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:25:00 GMT

It may be based in Vegas, but market research firm CinemaScore is one of the most feared organizations in Hollywood. Not feared in the style of a Harvey Weinstein or Nikki Finke -- feared because the company's proven frighteningly good at predicting accurate box-office grosses. Over at his "Big Picture" blog, Patrick Goldstein profiles Ed Mintz, the head of CinemaScore. He works like this: Opening night audiences are asked a few simple questions about what they just saw, like what letter...(read more)

How to get horror fans to do your work for you.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:37:00 GMT

"Paranormal Activity" -- the low-budget heir apparent to "The Blair Witch Project," allegedly terrifying audiences into fleeing midway in fear, as opposed to the usual disgust -- has won itself a nationwide release this weekend. Paramount's marketing campaign had fanboys clicking on a petition to "demand" the movie be shown in their city; when it hit a million people, the studio announced that, thanks to those fans, "Paranormal Activity" would go wide....(read more)

Queen of the closed loop of Hollywood news.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:55:31 GMT

What makes Tad Friend's massive New Yorker piece on Nikki Finke a must-read is its angle of genial observation. Finke is the feared, acerbic queen of the hermetic world of Hollywood industry reporting and blogging, but Friend's sympathetic depiction levels the playing field, presenting her to a wider audience in the same way the magazine would profile a respected city-planning engineer or an obscure author. She's no omniscient power-broker, just another curiosity, and Friend admirably...(read more)

How to be good.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:45:00 GMT

This past Friday, 60-odd representatives of indie film gathered at MoMA for a state of the nation meeting about what's going on in the world of indie film, whether there is a true crisis and how it can be fixed. Unlike earlier provocations like Mark Gill's "The Sky Is Falling" speech from last summer, the Indie Film Summit was a private gathering, unpublicized, with attendees encouraged to speak off the record. As Gill said in his speech, "it's fashionable to *** in the...(read more)

Free range product placement.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:13:00 GMT

Brett Ratner, modelizer, man about town and hack director responsible for such fare as "X3" and the "Rush Hour" movies, has always been best at marketing himself as the face of smooth Hollywood craftsmanship. So his talent as an adman is no surprise. Speaking Thursday at New York's Advertising Week on "consumer attention in a media-saturated world," Ratner offered advice on product placement and how to do it right. Ratner's working on "Beverly Hills IV,"...(read more)

Why Wisconsin won't be the next Hollywood.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:15:00 GMT

A few years ago, states were playing tax incentive chicken with each other to see who could offer the best deals to lure film and TV productions away from the familiar confines of California and Toronto to shoot in their neck of the woods. And now they're paying for it. As the Los Angeles Times reports, some of those states are starting to find that those tax breaks don't always add up. When Wisconsin's Department of Commerce looked at the 32 days "Public Enemies" spent shooting...(read more)

Monday morning massacre?

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:45:00 GMT

The recession is officially fading and box-office grosses are as strong as ever, but the entire film industry seems to contracting in pain today, from major to micro. Variety reports that Universal has frozen development for the rest of the year -- if your project wasn't already realistically getting made, there'll be no more cash for rewrites and meetings. Disney's allegedly doing the same, and Warner Bros. is dealing with its financial woes by stiffing writers. Meanwhile, indieWIRE's...(read more)

3D rules, OK?

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:20:00 GMT

Turns out, Jeffrey Katzenberg was right all along. Two years ago, the Dreamworks Animation CEO was confidently predicting that they're be 12-18 full 3D movies in the year 2010. At the time, it seemed like a huge gamble. And now he wins: next year there will be something like 30 3D features. And that's going to be a problem. Because, as Variety reports from the 3D Entertainment Summit in (natch) L.A. (an event Variety also happens to be co-presenting), 3D movies have been too successful too...(read more)

Disney loyalty in Tomorrowland.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:31:00 GMT

Today is day two of the first ever D23 Expo, one of the weirdest flexings of corporate muscle I've ever seen. D23 is like Comic-Con for Disney fans. Adults are invited to pay $90 for a four-day pass or $30 for one (kids get in for $66/$22) to go listen to an extended sales-pitch. Well, some of the time: the schedule is vast and unwieldy, with something for everyone (...who is rabidly into Disney). Just like in Disneyland, you can take a photo with a widely beloved character. The type of person...(read more)

It takes a village to release a Zac Efron movie.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:54:00 GMT

Richard Linklater's "Me And Orson Welles" -- which has been kicking around for a year since its premiere at Toronto 2008 -- finally has a distribution deal in place, and it's a doozy. The company that funded it -- Cinemanx, based on the Isle of Man -- has partnered with no less than four others to put the film out. Cinetic Media is managing sales, Freestyle Releasing will handle theatrical, Pandemic Marketing will tackle the (duh) marketing, and Warner Bros. will put out the DVD...(read more)