October
26
Weekend Boxoffice: Musical and Horror Sequels, and W. vs. Bees
This weekend's High School Musical 3 (63% Tomatometer) scored even bigger than expected with teen girls, and Saw 5, which was not screened, played to the guys. (True confession: I have never seen a Saw movie. Not my idea of a good time.)
For grown-ups, Changeling delivered a strong per screen average on its opening weekend, while Gina Prince-Blythewood's The Secret Life of Bees pulled ahead of Oliver Stone's W. on their second weekend. Here's Variety's weekend b.o. wrap:
“W.” dropped 49% to $5.3. Cume for the George Bush pic is $18.8 million, with a gross in the $25 million range likely after a post-Election Day exit.
This is a classic case of too much competition on the second weekend after a strong opening supported by a big ad spend and Oliver Stone's ubiquitous media presence. After I had just seen him on Charlie Rose, CNN's Larry King Live and Shootout and heard him on NPR, I did a phoner with him at NY's Four Seasons Hotel. Stone had just spotted one of the characters in his movie, ex-CIA chief George Tenet, in the restaurant. "Did you go over to him?" I asked. "Oh, no," Stone said.
Did he feel that he had to open the $30 million movie before the election? Was the timing right for this? He could have pushed it back if he wanted to, Stone says: "Let's be clear about this. I had the right to hold. It was a good faith effort to try and make the October 17 date. I had final cut, I could have delivered in December for a January release." But he was into the rhythm of finishing it in time, opening it this fall before the election.
Stone knows the downside of being rushed into opening a picture too soon--Alexander was not finished when it opened; the sober re-edited DVD version is far superior. Stone left thousands of feet of film on the edit-room floor on Alexander. By contrast, W. was shot fast on a tight budget; there was no waste. He shot on 26 locations in 46 days and edited in seven weeks. "There were no reshoots," he says. "We rehearsed with a great repertory company, nobody was making mistakes. We got what we needed." Only a few deleted fantasy scenes will make it to the DVD.
It's hard to calibrate timing with a topical movie like this, Stone admits. He had no idea George W. Bush would be so down and out when the movie opened. He had thought the White House might come after them, fighting, but "Bush is defeated," he says. "He is weakened now. We could not have foreseen that then. He's hated now. Will people be interested?"
Would waiting until after the inauguration have been better, as "he's leaving office, and we're exorcising the ghost?" he asks. Stone would have taken that course "if it had not fallen in, if we needed reshoots." Finally, the momentum was moving fast toward an October opening and he was ready to open the movie on schedule.
The Secret Life of Bees did better than W. on its second weekend on fewer screens (1630) with a higher $5.9 million weekend gross and a total of $19.2 to date. Searchlight worked hard to achieve these results, chasing not only fans of the bestseller--which is hugely popular--but literate women in general, and African-American audiences. They're building buzz on an $11 million movie.
"We were judicious in our spend," says Fox Searchlight COO Nancy Utley. "We were scared to death of reviews." That's because older women tend to take reviews more seriously, and sure enough, they were mixed (58% on Rotten Tomatoes). But some key critics were fans, including Roger Ebert, USA Today and People. And Oprah Winfrey devoted a show to the film.
Utley comforted herself with the fact that some movies hit without reviews, like Ya-Ya Sisterhood. On the other hand, Denzel Washington's Antoine Fisher had not scored with African American audiences, but it was less of a known title. Bees was a "faithful straight-on adaptation" of an "extraordinary book," Utley says.
And Bees had no ordinary ensemble either--Queen Latifah, Alicia Keyes, Jennifer Hudson, Dakota Fanning, Sophie Okonedo. Searchlight targeted book clubs and the morning talk shows, bought TV spots on BET and Desperate Housewives, and took advantage of some faith-based endeavors. The distrib booked the movie in areas where not only African-American pics had scored but literary films like Atonement.
Definite recommends in the exit polls were A or A+ across every demo. Searchlight's own poll was 90%. Among African Americans, it was 91% and non-African Americans, 86%. "It's a color-blind movie," says Utley. 'We're hopeful."
[Photo of Oliver Stone by Jeffrey Wells]
Subscribe to this blog's feed
I am pretty tired of Rotten Tomatoes having a different standard for "kid" and "tween" movies. In a majority of the reviews for HSM 3, was a qualification. "For what it is"..."for a teen audience"...Why do they rate this in the same way as Secret Life of Bees, or last year's Across The Universe, or Sweeney Todd?
Posted by: Sam | October 27, 2008 at 10:54 AM
It's so great that The Secret Life of Bees is finding an audience. Fox Searchlight is one of the best at targeting the women's market. Word of mouth will continue to build for this with not too many female centric releases in the coming weeks. Let's just hope it can remain in theatres as it continues to build.
Posted by: Melissa Silverstein | October 28, 2008 at 05:37 AM
THe Ciama THeather in my area only had the movie in the thether for one day , HOw do I let the movie industry know this , NEW HArtford NY < near UTICa ,NY
Posted by: Shakur | October 28, 2008 at 07:22 PM