Can Fox And Dreamworks Combined Challenge Disney's Animation Empire?

 

During the summer of 2013, there will be six animated (or live-action/animated hybrid) entries.  At a glance, it would seem like healthy competition as each of the major current players are offering an official entry into the summer box office sweepstakes.  You've got 20th Century Fox taking a shot at proving they can do more than Ice Age sequels, delivering the somewhat on-the-nose-titled Epic over Memorial Day weekend.  Pixar unleashes their official summer entry, the Monsters Inc. prequel Monsters University on June 21st.  Universal delivers its trump card with Despicable Me 2 over July 4th weekend while Dreamworks releases its snail-racing comedy Turbo on July 17th, a frankly unusual release date for them, but no matter.  Sony delivers The Smurfs 2 on July 31st while Disney offers up the previously straight-to-DVD entry Planes on August 9th.

Paramount And MGM Did Everything Right With 'G.I. Joe: Retaliation' (Except Make A Good Movie).

It's no secret that I didn't much care of G.I. Joe: Retaliation when I saw it at the All-Media screening just under two weeks ago. Heck, I'm one of maybe ten critics on the planet who actually preferred Stephen Summers's first (and I'd argue, underrated) G.I. Joe picture from summer 2009. But despite my personal preferences, the film is a solid hit worldwide, ushering in an almost immediate green-light for G.I. Joe 3.  Paramount did a few very smart things during the production of this Jon Chu-helmed sequel. In fact, other than the fact that it's not a very good movie (arguably the hardest variable to plan on, natch), Paramount Pictures and MGM's handling of G.I. Joe: Retaliation may be a primer on how to successfully launch a tentpole film in today's marketplace.  First of all, that much-debated nine-month delay from June 2012 to March 2013 turned out to be the right call.  Aside from the obvious 10-20% bump in ticket prices per 3D-ticket sold, overseas audiences went for the 3D, and the delay in order to convert the film to 3D is partially responsible for its strong $232 million-and-counting worldwide total, or already within reach of the $300 million that Rise of Cobra earned altogether.

Why Guillermo del Toro's 'Pacific Rim' Will Be a Bigger Hit if Summer 2013 is an Artistic Failure...

As I mentioned last week, the success of Guillermo del Toro's large-scale monsters vs. robots action tale Pacific Rim is at least partially predicated on how well-received the previous two months of summer films happen to be.  This summer will mark the ten year anniversary of Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.  As most of you know, the Disney pirate adventure was a surprise of sorts, both in terms of its unexpected quality and its huge financial success.  The film was a proverbial dark horse of summer 2003, a film based on pirates (box office poison!) starring Johnny Depp (usually box office poison way back when) and based on a theme park ride.  On paper, the $130 million film was seemingly a recipe for disaster.  But two things happened that summer.  Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was very good and a large portion of the May/June summer releases were not.  As such, by early July, summer movie audiences were primed for a would-be tent-pole that actually delivered the goods.  Gore Verbinski's pirate adventure was the one we were waiting for, and audiences responded accordingly with a $73 million five-day opening and a $303 million final domestic total.

Why it may be a good thing if no films pass $1 billion in 2013...

Just a few years ago, had I written a piece entitled "There are no films guaranteed to gross $1 billion this year", you likely would have laughed and said "Of course not!".  As recently as 2010, the idea that any movie could or would gross $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales was somewhat of a pipe dream.  From 1997 to 2006, there were just two films to reach that milestone, they being Titanic  (the biggest movie of all-time with a seemingly insurmountable $1.8 billion) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the Oscar-winning chapter to what can be argued is the finest screen trilogy of our time (that's a debate for another day).  In 2006, we saw the powerhouse success of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest which parlayed the unexpected popularity of the first film into an even larger haul for its sequel, breaking the domestic opening weekend record at the time ($135 million) and earning a massive $423 million in America and $642 million overseas.  In 2008, The Dark Knight pulled another "massively popular sequel to unexpectedly well-liked original" trick to the tune of $533 million in America (good for the second biggest grosser of all time in America, if only for a year) and just over $1 billion worldwide despite not playing in China due to that pesky "Chinese gangster hides Gotham mob money" subplot. 2009 saw James Cameron do that trick that James Cameron does yet again, with Avatar earning $1 billion worldwide in about seventeen days and going on to earn an eye-popping $2.7 billion.

Summer Movie Marketing Challenge: Tease, Don't Spoil!

Review: 42 (2013)

Writer/director Brian Helgeland's 42 is an openly earnest and sentimental bit of old-school hokum.  It is the kind of studio programmer biopic that was once a standard issue release, and it is absolutely successful in its respective goals.  It doesn't aim to be an all-encompassing epic of race relations in the 1940's, nor does it even strive to use the Jackie Robinson story as a grand statement on the eventual Civil Rights movement to come, even as its characters are all-too-aware of the color barrier being broken.  It masks a certain subtly and nuance beyond sweeping music and sometimes obvious monologues.  Released in April instead of October or November, it is surely not intended to win Oscars but merely to tell an educational story to a generation for whom its significance may have lessened over the years.

Scott Mendelson goes to Forbes! A word about the future...

I was going to write this on Thursday, but then Roger Ebert died and I just didn't have it in me.  So I apologize to those who follow this blog but not my social media outlets and have no idea where I've been since Thursday.  Long-story short, I have been hired to write about box office and marketing for Forbes.  It's not a king's ransom, but it's a token amount of extra money to do what I've been doing purely for fun for five years going.  The "bad" news is two-fold.  First of all, the pieces that go on Forbes are exclusive to Forbes for five days, so if you're wondering where my weekend box office column is, it's right here.  Now certain pieces, like the first two I wrote for the site, aren't quite as time-sensitive and thus can be republished here in a week's time.  For those who don't want to go to Forbes to read my work (although I wish you would, since I get extra commission based on traffic), I will do my best to republish the work here in good time.  The other "bad" news is that this means that I will be altering my focus just a bit.

Roger Ebert has died. But cinema is more alive than ever...

If the film critic has any kind of noble purpose, it is to shine a light on the good and the unexpectedly great in film.  No one gets into film criticism because they hate movies.  We got into this because we love the cinema and we love the singular experience of watching great movies.  If we have any kind of noble goal, it is to highlight what we love, even if its a minority opinion and even if it opens us up to ridicule from our peers.  If we have a social good, it is in highlighting the great movies that may have slipped under the radar.  It is in highlighting the little-seen independent film that desperately needs the publicity to stand out alongside its peers. It is also in highlighting the genuine artistry found in mainstream studio pictures, especially in a time when so many film scholars are all-too willing to write off every would-be 'big movie' and thus declare that cinema is dead.  Cinema is not dead.  Cinema is as alive as it's ever been.

Scott Mendelson: On seeing Jurassic Park 20 years ago...

I'll make this simple.  My first theatrical viewing of Jurassic Park remains, without question, the best theatrical movie going experience of my life. It encapsulated pretty much everything good about the theatrical experience, including any number of elements that are perhaps non-replicable in today's film culture.  The viewing was an unexpected advance-night screening, back before every movie opened on Thursday at 12:00 am, if not 10:00 pm or earlier.  Jurassic Park had a whole slate of advance screenings on Thursday the 10th of June, starting at I believe 8:00 pm.  I had presumed I would be seeing it sometime that weekend, but my mother informed me that my dad was coming home from a business trip and he was picking me up in time for a 10:00 pm screening.  Obviously excited, I hurriedly rushed to finish the original Michael Crichton novel that I had been blazing through.  We got to the theater early enough and the auditorium, as well as the auditoriums around us, were absolutely jammed packed.  Everyone was excited to be there, but nobody really knew what they were in for.

Guest Review: Evil Dead (2013) is a solid horror remake...

Evil Dead

2013

92 minutes

Rated R

Evil Dead is a surprisingly faithful yet reimagined retread of the legendary Sam Raimi film that pushes the limits of commercial theatrical wide release horror films.  This is a horror film that isn't afraid or ashamed to be one.  With a intense, blood-drenched finale that should leave a packed theater cheering, Evil Dead falls on the side of good remakes.

The story of this iteration of Evil Dead surrounds a girl, Mia (Jane Levy), who is being taken out to an old abandoned secluded cabin, once owned by her family, to hopefully detox her current drug problem.  Along the way to assist, are 2 of her friends and her brother with his girlfriend.  Upon exploring a smell in the basement, Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) and David (Shiloh Fernandez) find a ritualistic set of dead cats and the Book of the Dead.  After reading some passages, wild things begin to happen to Mia.  Should her friends believe the things she says or is it her trying to escape cold turkey detox?