Much to my, and I think many other analysts' (man, it's fun to think of myself as an 'analyst'), surprise, the family comedy The Game Plan dominated the box office this weekend with $22 million from 3,103 theatres for a $7.3k average. Numbers like this baffle me. I know that parents want a movie they can take their kids to, but Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson as an ex-football star suddenly saddled with a precocious eight-year-old daughter? Not only is it a lame concept, it's completely unoriginal and accompanied by a painfully unfunny trailer.
Please, stay home and watch The Incredibles again. The Neverending Story. Anything. Your kids will be dumber for having been subjected to comedies like this, and will demand less of movies when they grow up. Or worse yet, become studio executives.
If there's a silver lining to The Game Plan's big win, it's that I kind of like The Rock. He's got a certain goofy charisma that worked well for him in The Rundown and the otherwise atrocious Be Cool. And I can only hope that this success will somehow transfer over to Southland Tales, Rock's next big release. It's from Richard Kelly, the writer and director behind Donnie Darko, and all of the advance word on it is bad. It was shredded at Cannes, it's been in the editing room ever since, and now it's finally set to get a limited release November 9th.
Sadly, at preview screenings, even the Darko friendly have called this film a big misstep for Kelly, and I suspect they're right (although I love the trailer). Still, Kelly's recently launched production company has some interesting projects in the works, and I've read enough of Kelly's scripts to know that he's an amazingly talented, Charlie Kaufman level guy who deserves to get some more work (I especially love an almost-brilliant script of his I read several years ago called Bessie, that is about- and I couldn't make this up if I wanted to- a talking cow that takes over the world. Now why can't he find studio financing for that?).
So here's hoping that Game Plan's success translates to some decent returns for Southland and Richard Kelly.
I will have trouble finding a silver lining surrounding the numbers for Peter Berg's The Kingdom. It was expected to take the top spot, but instead finished second with $17.6 million from 2,793 theatres for a decent but unspectacular $6.3k average. I like Berg as both a director and actor (Very Bad Things is a guilty pleasure, as is his marvelous sap in John Dahl's The Last Seduction), but he has yet to reach blockbuster status. Universal had high hopes for this flick, which also boasts an impressive cast that includes Jaime Foxx (who's now officially in trouble as an A-list star), Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, and Jeremy Piven, but it's clearly fallen short of those expectations.
And worse still, this could spell financial doom for many of the upcoming Oscar bait pics. Awhile back, I ran down a short list of the Iraq war related movies being released between now and the new year, and I would have to say they're all in trouble. The Kingdom is certainly the most commercially geared of them, so if it didn't hit big, what will happen to the starless Redacted? The talky Lions for Lambs? We've already seen the number for Haggis's In the Valley of Elah fall steadily as the theatre count climbs (it brought in $1.5 million from 762 theatres for a foreboding $2k average), and at this point I wonder if it will even get a thousand-theatre release, Oscar buzz or no.
I'm guessing this attitude will continue, and as these movies fall by the financial wayside- I won't venture a guess as to their quality- I believe they will clear a path for No Country for Old Men to take Best Picture this year. What does everyone else think?
In other news, Resident Evil: Extinction fell predictably hard in its second week, crumbling 66% to $8 million and a $36 million total. Still, it only has to hit $45 million to match the original's domestic take, and has already taken in $8 million overseas. Good Luck Chuck followed in fourth, continuing its utterly unremarkable performance by falling 53% to $6.3 million and a $23 million total. And that's all I have to say about that.
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Enjoy your thoughts each week on the movie biz and the numbers game!
Nathaniel R. who writes a blog called "The Film Experience" has the film Lust, Caution as Taiwan's official foreign language Oscar submission.
1 of 1 | Posted by moasey | Posted on October 2, 2007 8:31 AM