..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

19 Weeks To Go
Cash And Carrion

A big part of negotiating the season each year is the placement of The Product.  When will the film be ready to be seen?  When should it be shown? Festivals or no festivals? And most importantly than anything else, how to release the film into theaters?

The Los Angeles Times did a piece on Thursday that was a mixed bag of truths, falsehoods, spin, and reaction to one piece of mean-spirited, self-serving gossip mongering.  The story, by Rachel Abramowitz and loaded with on-the-record quotes, dealt with an alleged problem market for quality films this season. 

The biggest failure in the piece is the lack of historical perspective.  Of course, a little perspective might have spiked the piece.

To wit, let’s look at last year’s fall season awards-chasers as of late October.  Excluding docs, there were sixteen films that fit this category as of this time last year as compared to 20 this year.  An increase to be sure… but not quite as dramatic as it has been made out to be. 

A total of six films released last September and October with serious awards intentions ever passed $20 million in domestic box office (The Black Dahlia, Flags of Our Fathers, Babel, The Prestige, The Queen, and The Departed).  More significantly, two of three films that did get nominated last season – The Departed being a commercial machine from the start, loaded with movie stars and genre power – were not even close to being the kinds of successes cited in the LAT piece by the end of October.  Babel had just had its first exclusive release weekend as of this date last year, but more importantly, never had a single weekend in its $34 million domestic run with a gross higher than $5.6 million.  The Queen, released in September, had only $6.3 million in the till by the end of October, its biggest-ever weekend gross just $4 million.

By comparison, we already have four Sept/Oct aspiring pictures this year over $20 million (3:10 to Yuma, The Brave One, Michael Clayton, and We Own the Night) and two more about to cross the line (Across the Universe, Eastern Promises). 

Looking to compete in failure? 

The movies that came up short this year did come up, as a rule, even shorter than last year.  Of course, we aren’t at the end of the box office lives of all of this year’s failed hopefuls.  So will Into The Wild, now at $7.2 million, pass The Last King of Scotland’s $17.6 million domestic total?  Likely.  Will Gone Baby Gone pass Hollywoodland’s $14.4 million.   Yup.  The Darjeeling Limited will do more than Running With Scissors.  The Valley of Elah is right behind All The King’s Men’s $7.2 million total and  Rendition will be a bit ahead of it.  $4.3 millon for Catch A Fire last year is a low bar unlikely to be matched by any of the Dependents’ releases… unless it’s Focus’ Reservation Road, which has a soft limited opening last weekend.

The point is… except for the need for a story and Crazy Nikki Finke taking her Jeff Robinov vendetta out on George Clooney, there is no real story here.  It’s a little more crowded and there is a little more star power in some of these misses, but it’s business as usual when you take a real look at it. 

And about Michael Clayton… after 11 days of wide release, even eliminating the first week gross on 15 screens, the film is running $1.8 million ahead of last year’s Flags Of Our Fathers, which was an Eastwood/Spielberg epic much ballyhooed on the way out of the box.  The only eventual nominee last year, aside from The Departed, that was even competitive in early gross was Little Miss Sunshine, which was release quite differently (in August), but after 9 days on 7 screens, a week on 58, a week on 153, a week on 691, and six on 1430 – 36 days total to Clayton’s 20 with 13 in wide release – LMS was at $25.4 million while Michael Clayton is at $23.2. 

How about this one?  Day 27 of Clooney’s Syriana – which eventually grossed just over $50 million domestic to LMS’s $59.8 million total – was at $23.2 million… exactly the same as Clayton’s Day 27 total. 

The much applauded Best Picture nominee, Good Night, And Good Luck hit $23 million in its thirteenth weekend. 

The lowest gross of a film going into its Oscar nomination week in the last five years was Capote’s $15.4 million.  That same season, GN,AGL was at $25 million when nominated.  Crash, the third and final film with a pre-December release, was at $53 million.  Would a trio of nominees including 3:10 to Yuma (currently at $52.9m), Michael Clayton ($23.2m currently), and Into the Wild ($7.2m currently and still on just 658 screens) look much different?  This trio is only behind Babel, The Queen, and Little Miss Sunshine’s pre-nom total of $119 million by $36 million and already surpasses that group’s end-of-October total of $66 million by more than $17 million.

It’s all very clever to sound alarm bells over a movie that sat on the shelf for almost two full years and then got dumped by a major - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – because it stars Brad Pitt. But it still hasn't appeared on more than 301 screens at once and grossing $2.4 million.  Getting upset about an NC-17-rated Mandarin language drama grossing “just” $2.3 million after weekends on 1, 17, 77, and 125 screens is downright dumb.  Wes Anderson’s follow-up to his biggest hit, The Royal Tenenbaums, lost more than half the previous film’s audience and The Darjeeling Limited seems to be on its way to matching that feat. 

The two legitimate stiffs are Elizabeth: The Golden Age and In The Valley of Elah… two challenging-to-market titles with bad dates and no box office draw in the lead.  Is that worse than Catch A Fire and Marie Antoinette?  You decide for yourself.  But keep in mind that E2 is Cate Blanchett’s scond biggest opening in a lead role in her history (behind The Missing’s $10.8 million) and that E1 didn’t match E2’s $12 million two week gross until weekend six.  So if the movie didn’t open, should anyone be surprised?

Look… there is a real discussion to be had about how independent-minded movies are being released, how screens are held and lost, and what the future for this kind of product really might be.  But hysteria over a few films that didn’t catch in limited releases is short-sighted hooey.  This is the same mentality that derided Ratatouille this summer before that film ended up with more than $200 million domestic and over $515 million worldwide… in the top half of all Pixar films and passing cars’ worldwide gross by over $50 million.  (Cars was a licensing boon… but that’s a different discussion.)

There are already a dozen Oscar-hopeful corpses littering multiplex lobbies, praying for handouts from the actors come January.  Another dozen will be coming up to bat in the next month.  Only five can get nominated.  Last year, only a dozen films from Sept-Nov that were seriously chasing Oscar ever cracked $10 million.  This year will surely beat that number by a fair margin.

Performing in theatrical release is very important to the perception of your film as  success when it comes to awards, make no mistake about it.  But $40 million for a film like Michael Clayton is plenty to make the case for Best Picture.  The BP chances for 3:10 to Yuma will not be based on its box office.  Into The Wild really needs to crack $20 million to stay in the game.  A movie like Lars & The Real Girl is going to have to find at least $15 million at the box office if it wants to have a prayer of getting more than a screenwriting nomination.  And American Gangster will aspire to being this year’s The Departed, with a rare-for-awards-push gross of over $100 million… an $80 million gross will play as “no one cared” which is not really fair.

But what’s so new about that?

This Week's Charts

October 18, 2007
The Post-Toronto Chart - September 21, 2007
The Pre-Toronto Chart - September 6, 2007
The First Chart - June 21, 2007

- Email David Poland