Quarantine is about right for a Screen Gems movie. The openings - and thus, the final numbers, are not quite what they were in recent years past, so the question is whether there is some dip in what and how they are delivering or whether the market has simply softened for those kinds of genre pictures. (My guess is the latter.)
You know, it's interesting that Sony and Disney are now the only two companies with strong niche plays... and I don't mean specialty Dependents. I mean that Sony's SPC is the only specialty arm that really focuses on foreign, doc, and lower expectation indies. And Screen Gems, with the narrowing of Rogue and the living death of Fox Atomic, is really the only studio arm so focused on raw genre, with Paramount claiming Vantage is going there and, of course, true indie Lionsgate still sawing.
Anyway...
Beverly Hills Chihuahua's drop is surprisingly small, Opening Fiday-to- Second Friday. INevnitably, the weekend drop will be smaller than the 45% estimated for yesterday.
Body of Lies will be Ridley Scott's second worst opening of this millenium (the worst is A Good Year, which Fox couldn't figure out how to sell), thought it will be in the top third of the opening histories of both Crowe and Dicaprio. The film, which Warners is telling people cost $70 million (ha ha), is headed to under $50 million total domestic. But with these actors, the internation will almost inevitably be north of $80 million and could well be over $100 million... which is why they were hired at these prices.
Universal's shot at the uplifting feel-good sports drama, The Express, just never found any momentum. To be honest, I had no idea it was even coming until a couple of weeks ago. No screening that I was even invited to. Minimal advertising. Has Rob Brown done a single show? Oh well, I guess it's better than The Babe, whihc was sold to within an inch of its life and found a similarly uninterested audience.
It's hard to know what Pramount Vantage is trying to accomplish with The Duchess. They have taken the same release tack as Pride & Prejudice, but that release happened in November and went to 1299 screens over Thanksgiving weekend. The result looks like it was about triple what The Duchess will do on this Columbus Day weekend "holiday." And with all the awards buzz around that film, it was still the best weekend they ever had.
City of Ember on 2022 screens... an unmitigated distribution car wreck. The film is heading to one of the very worst opening weekend per-screeens of this year (around #115 of 125 wide releases). The crew at Fox Walden seemed to be working without an ad budget and with a lot of energy... that didn't take. The choice to launch the film at Fantastic Fest instead of prioritizing the national media ended up defining the experience.
And, one must say, that Jeffrey Godsick's return to Fox just days ago tells us that "they" knew exactly what was about to happen, that Jeffrey was taken back onto the mother ship as the studio surely agreed to do if things didn't work out, and that the end of Fox Walden as a production entity is unannounced but inevitable.
Read the complete post at http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2008/10/friay_estimates.html