Movie Nation

It opened to brisk business Thursday, and appears to have the sustained interest to keep that up all weekend long.

But will “Man of Steel” better the “Toy Story 3” record ($110 million) for a film opening in June? It’s on over 4,200 screens. It’s in 3D/IMAX 3D in some locations. $100 million seems a gimme. But reviews, which had leaned quite positive pre-release, have dropped into negative territory. I was indifferent on it, and most critics agree. That won’t help.

Box Office Mojo says this movie will pull in $139 million by Sunday night.

Variety figures $100 million for the weekend is within easy reach. A record?

The Box Office Guru figures this is closer to a fanboy-only picture. A lot of enthusiasm there, but with a no name lead and lesser known villain, this thing could only manage $85 by Sunday. It’ll do well overseas. But they spent $250 million making it and another $150 marketing it, according to Variety. It’ll have to.

And if it does, we’ll be on track for a record summer. “Iron Man 3” and “Fast & Furious 6” have made hundreds of millions, little stuff like “The Purge” blew up and there’s a Pixar sequel, “World War Z,”and  “Lone Ranger” and a lot of possible break-outs in July.

“This is the End” figures to do something in the range of “Pineapple Express” numbers — mid-high $30s, according to Mojo. It’s on a lot of screens, has a lot of stars (an of them really truly “box office?”) and has earned great reviews. The Guru predicts something in the high $20s. “Pineapple” did $41, and I dare say it’ll be closer to that.

“Before Midnight” opens on 900 screens and could better the take on its prequels, “Before Midnight” and “Before Sunrise.” Those earned in the $5-6 million range, total. This one could do that and more in a weekend. Great reviews for “Before Midnight.”

“The Bling Ring” only opens on half a dozen screens, and has earned mixed reviews. I loved it. Emma Watson fans in NY/LA will show up.

Jon Favreau as a fired chef who opens a food truck? Some pitches sell themselves. He wrote it and Open Road just picked it up, with Sofia Vergara, Scarlett Johansson, John Leguizamo and Robert Downey Jr. in the cast. Favreau, I am assuming, will also direct. Continue reading →

Seth Rogen’s co-directing debut is earning comparisons to “Pineapple Express.” “This is the End” is what “RApture-Palooza” could have been, with a staggering number of cameos, a bigger budget and a better script.
It’s a hoot. America’s critics agree — irreverent, blasphemous, even but also kind of positive in its message — and fall-down on the floor hilarious in stretches. Danny McBride pulls out all the stops.

British critics weighed in on “Man of Steel” first and they sang it to the moon. Must have loved that a Brit was playing the dude. And that the Americaness of the character seems lost.
Strip those reviews out and this one would be in the 50% range, tops.
Most American critics are giving it indifferent marks. As in “Where are the thrills?” “Where’s the heart?” “Where’s the wit?”
Which my review reflected as well.

“The Bling Ring”, Sofia Coppola’s latest, is getting “Internship” reviews. People are passing judgment on the culture depicted, not on the fine and pointed comic thriller Coppola cooked up from it. “Internship” took a beating from Google haters (Nobody hates Google more than me, but hey, the movie’s better than the company the guys intern with).

“Vehicle 19” is an ineptly filmed South African drama that puts Paul Walker in a minivan and chases him all over Johannesburg. Some good moments, but the excitement level is damped down by showing things only from inside the mini van.

“Twenty Feet From Stardom” is earning rapturous notices. Music’s long-in-the-shadows backup singers are getting their due. I thought the third act, a recording session, bogged it down. And it’s seriously repetitive. But it’s fun, tuneful and quite educational.

“Pandora’s Promise” is another doc opening Friday in some markets. It’s a pro-nuclear power film that stacks the deck a bit, even if everybody in it (for the most part) is an actual environmentalist who has come to see nukes as the one thing that can ward off global climate change. That “stacked deck” business explains the middling reviews for this one.

Many markets, Orlando included, get Richard Linklater’s “Before Midnight” this weekend. It’s fine, honest and adult in its themes and treatment of them. Something to see if you’re not a comic book fan.
‘

A small studio grabbed this Princess Diana bio-pic, so Oscar odds for it are starting off long. Surely the Weinsteins would have moved heaven and their banks to buy it had they seen Naomi Watts’ turn as Princess Diana in this bio-pic an Oscar sure thing. The cast of this fall release has one big name in it — her.
But the teaser trailer to “Diana” shows not jut the resemblance, but a pretty full overview of her life — princess, fashion icon, mother, land mine activist, romantic. Pretty nice.

I’ve  chatted with the “Finding Neverland/Casino Royale” and “Machine Gun Preacher” director Marc Forster several times before, and always found him to be refreshingly candid.

For instance, here he admits that “Preacher” was a bit of a muddle because he could never quite make up his mind about the trigger-happy biker-for-Jesus who inspired the film.

“World War Z” is the umpteenth treatment of zombies that the big and small screen have served up in recent years. It got delayed, has taken on the tint of a “troubled production,” and it comes out a week after “Man of Steel” opens. So it could get killed. Seriously.

Got questions for Forster, about his take on the novel, the production, anything? Post’em as comments below and I will get to them.