Thompson On Hollywood

Weekend Boxoffice: Iron Man vs. Speed Racer

Iron Man and Speed Racer will duke it out for the top spot this weekend as advance ticket sales for Indiana Jones 4, Narnia 2 and Sex and the City heat up. (Sex and the City's tracking is fascinating; its awareness and want-to-see are strong with women and off the charts terrible for men, especially those under 25: 3 % definite interest! Which makes this a two and a half quadrant movie targeted at women and gay men. Here's Peter Bart on the subject of chick flicks.)

The LAT analyzes Speed Racer's presumed boxoffice weakness: why does this movie have to be number one and be a blockbuster? Why can't it just open? Family movies tend to last longer in the marketplace. Just asking. It didn't land good reviews: 36% on the Tomatometer (Rotten). It looks like I like Speed Racer better than most, along with Richard Corliss, who says it's the future of movies. UPDATE: Some critics just didn't get the movie at all. It's for kids! Salon's Stephanie Zacharek writes:

"Andy and Larry Wachowski's "Speed Racer" is so bereft of intelligence, style and excitement that I can't figure out who in the world it's supposed to appeal to: baby boomers nostalgic for the old Japanamation cartoon on which it's based? Parents who want to cultivate ADD in their kids?"

Fantasy Moguls has its own take on on why Speed Racer may struggle this weekend. Steve Mason calls it the "death slot." The second weekend of the summer is where you don't want to be.

In 8 of the past 10 years, the movie that signaled the start of Hollywood’s most lucrative season went on to win the next weekend. This weekend on the release schedule has included full-on disasters, like 2006’s Poseidon, medieval action film A Knight’s Tale in 2001and 2000’s horrific laugher Battlefield Earth.

Speed Racer will not be a disaster. This may be remembered as a disappointment domestically, but, especially with the presence of Asian music superstar Rain, the film will perform well overseas, particularly in Japan, South Korea and China where he has a huge following.

Fandango Five – Ticket Sales (as of 5/9/08 10:00 a.m. PT)

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

Iron Man “Must Go” 33%

Speed Racer “Go” 32%

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull “Must Go” 11%

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian “Go” 7%

Sex and the City “Go” 6%

Fandango Weekly Poll (as of 5/9/08 10:00 a.m. PT)

Iron Man's now playing everywhere. Among previous comic book/graphic novel movies listed below, which one is your favorite?

Batman Begins 29%

Spider-Man 22%

X-Men 18%

300 17%

Superman Returns 8%

Sin City 6%

Batman vs. Iron Man: Summer Playboy Action Heroes

Two playboy superheroes with sidekicks and gadgets and comics fans are duking it out at the summer b.o.: DC's Batman and Marvel's Iron Man. Watch the two action heroes take each other on:

Jackson is in Iron Man After All

Yes, Samuel Jackson as Nick Fury is in Iron Man--his scene runs after all the credits. Marvel withheld it from press screening prints. I was visiting the Balboa Theater in San Francisco this weekend, where theater manager Gary Meyer (also co-director of the Telluride Film Fest) was having some ILM folks talk about the effects afterwards, and I saw the clip setting up the next movie, which will also, I am told, give Stark sidekick Terrence Howard's Rhodey the chance to morph into War Machine. Marvel is going full steam ahead on their next batch of pics, including Iron Man II, but may have to pay Downey a little extra to get him back--I had understood that he signed for three pics.

Weekend Boxoffice: Iron Man Passes $100 Million

Fantasy Moguls' Steve Mason has been predicting a $100 million opening weekend gross (including Thursday night figures) for Iron Man. And he was right.

Official estimates collected Sunday reveal that the pic grossed about $100.7 million over the three day weekend, plus $3.5 million Thursday night, for a total of $104.2 million. So much for the tracking! Women did show; the movie skewed 57% over the age of 25.

Summer Begins: Iron Man, Speed Racer, and Superheroes

Let the summer games begin. The LAT's Ken Turan takes on summer blockbuster syndrome, while The Huffington Post addresses summer superheroes.

The summer starts off with Thursday night's opening of Iron Man, which earned 95% fresh reviews on Rotten Tomatoes so far. The NYT's A.O. Scott calls it "an unusually good superhero picture." The New Yorker's David Denby calls it a "whooshing junk pile." Everybody likes Robert Downey. (Variety reviews the Iron Man viedeogame.)

The movie is expected to open well, between $65 and $100 million, depending on how seriously you take the tracking that shows young women are not interested in seeing the picture--only 19% first choice-- which makes it a "three quadrant" movie for starters. The biggest blockbusters, like Narnia, wind up pulling everybody. Young men under 25 have 95% awareness of Iron Man, 65% definite interest and 35% first choice. Women over 25 are more interested in Downey and Gwenyth Paltrow; they will spread the word that Downey is fun and Paltrow actually has a decent role. So the picture could hold well.

Luckily for Paramount, next weekend's Speed Racer (well-reviewed by Variety) is not pulling strong advance tracking numbers, so that might give Iron Man some room to breathe before they open Indiana Jones on May 22. Here's the weekend forecast from Fantasy Moguls and Variety.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Speed Racer from the advance marketing, so I was pleasantly surprised. First, it's really a little kids' movie, more like Pixar's Cars than anything else. Second, the Wachowskis have a solid story with a strong moral theme to hang their gorgeous stylized pyrotechnics on. I don't particularly care about car racing, but I cared about the characters and the family led by John Goodman and Susan Sarandon at the film's center. Speed Racer Emile Hirsch and gal pal Christina Ricci are fine (utterly sexless couples are a theme of the summer so far). And I was dazzled by the Wachowski's eye candy. You can read the movie as a parable of the filmmakers' experience in Hollywood--they're rooting for creative innocence and pure instinct over the corrupt vagaries of the marketplace.

The other movie opening this weekend that roots for innocent indie filmmaking over the compromises of the star system is Son of Rambow, a hit at Sundance 2007 that was fought over; Paramount Vantage grabbed it for $8 million. But the film was delayed by various rights legalities (having to do with Carolco's Rambo) and finally arrives late on the scene with its momentum lost. (It is a hit in the U.K.) And it follows in the wake of the similar Be Kind Rewind, which died at the boxoffice.

In this delightful and expertly executed 80s-set British comedy from Hammer and Tongs (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), two unlikely schoolmate-collaborators pool their resources to shoot a short and suddenly find themselves hugely popular at school. One soaks up the attention, the other doesn't. Here's Variety's Speed Racer Blockbuster Page, with review, clips, trailers and a cool feature on VFX whiz John Gaeta.

The movie has played 27 fests since its Sundance debut, and Vantage hopes that means it has built up some good WOM. It opens in NY and LA this weekend, moves to 30-35 screens in the top 12 markets May 9, and expands to 70-80 screens in the top 25 markets on May 16. By the 23rd of May it should be on 200 screens in the top 60-65 markets. UPDATE: Rotten Tomatoes reviews so far are at 77%; I'm surprised they aren't even better. The genre seems to confuse people. That is, it's a smart movie set in the 80s about kids that's for adults.

Iron Man: Downey and Favreau Rock

I managed to convince Paramount to show me Iron Man earlier this week, and grabbed director Jon Favreau for a phone interview from the European leg of his round-the-world press tour, from Paris to Rome to the London Premiere. Here's my Iron Man column, which even explains why Samuel Jackson and Hilary Swank aren't in the movie.

The movie rocks, in case you were wondering. It's light-on-its-feet, nimbly blending comedy, action, and VFX. Robert Downey, Jr. as a 60s-style playboy weapons mogul and anti-superhero and Gwenyth Paltrow as his updated Miss Moneypenny have real chemistry. And yes, Marvel and the Iron Man team have got themselves a franchise. Fantasy Moguls Steve Mason has upped his prediction of how the movie will open on May 2 from $60 million to $100 million, the kind of b.o. forecasting that is giving Paramount execs heartburn.

Here's the first of Variety.com's ongoing look at summer blockbusters. And here are Todd McCarthy's Iron Man reviews for Variety and Reelz:

Summer Movies: May Boxoffice Could Surge

The 2008 boxoffice has been dismal so far, and has dipped from last year. But May is looming and with it the promise of some light and nifty summer movie nourishment. Pam McClintock predicts a boffo May boxoffice, launched by what promises to be a mighty Iron Man.

Paramount Will Launch Iron Man Midnight Screenings

Demand is so over-heated for Iron Man--which word is, may actually be good--that Paramount is planning to play the game of debuting the film the night before, on May 1. The Arclight in L.A. is selling tickets to a Thursday night midnight show. At the same time the studio is worried that the film may be overhyped, so it's trying to keep most media breaks closer to release and not overheat expectations that this will be one BEHEMOTH of an opening. If Paramount says $45 million, expect as much as $70 million. Fantasy Moguls' Steve Mason reports that tracking is pointing toward a huge Iron Man opening of $60 million plus.

Here's one example of who's coming out of Iron Man way ahead: Robert Downey Jr., who talks to EW here.

Iron Man's Cool House

Director Jon Favreau conducts a tour of the Iron Man house.

Wildly Popular Iron Man Trailer Inspires Onion

This Iron Man news story from The Onion is hilarious.

Iron Man Mexico Press Conference

Iron Man was first unveiled to the Latin American media. UPDATE: And premiered in Sydney, Australia.

The movie was also screened for exhibitors last week. Paramount is expecting to get very good terms, using Indiana Jones as further leverage. If the studio is downplaying expectations for Iron Man's opening weekend ($45 to $50 million) based on the movie not being a sequel, the studio still has high long-term expectations for both films well exceeding $200 million.

Here's the press conference in Mexico.

Here's a report from an exhib who saw Iron Man, along with some footage from other summer pics:

I saw IRON MAN yesterday. I have never read the comic and know almost nothing about the character. But I had seen some clips of Downey developing the suit and was amused. Well I can report the movie is terrific. It is a thinking person's superhero film with more character development than special effects and action scenes (though there are plenty of those which are nicely balanced so we get involved in the story rather than bored by non-stop effects.). Downey is terrific...funny, smart and charming...and very buff. Paltrow seems right out of 60's superhero comics or Money Penny from early Bond: proper and subservient assistant who is smart below the surface and more than a little enamored of her boss.

It should be a hit but 200 million is a long way to go when it is undercut in subsequent weeks by more blockbusters.

The opening robbery scene from DARK KNIGHT promised a terrific, critical hit, a ten minute scene from HANCOCK promises a very different superhero movie with Will Smith but footage from THE INCREDIBLE HULK played very flat.

By the way, also saw about 15 minutes of TROPIC THUNDER. Hilarious plus a mock trailer called SATAN'S ALLEY with a Searchlight logo a featuring Downey and Tobey Maguire is very funny and evidently one of 3 fakes trailers, each with non Paramount logos.

UPDATE: Here are some other updates.

Iron Man: Why it Will be Huge

Those of us who saw Paramount's first Iron Man materials at Comic-Con--and witnessed the hordes lining up just to see the damned costume unveiled--don't need to be convinced that this picture will be a summer boxoffice juggernaut. It should easily pass $200 million. Will it get to $300 million is another question.

Why?

1. NEW ACTION HERO. This may be the robust male action fantasy hero that we've been waiting for. A new contemporary complex male who isn't Batman or Superman. (Face it, they've been around for a while.) Check out the latest clip and our photo gallery. Who wouldn't want to fly around like that? While Iron Man comicbook fans are legion, this is a new modern movie hero who kicks ass. And he's not a nice guy.

2. NEW STAR. Robert Downey Jr. has reached that magic moment when an edgy up-and-coming character actor ages into a certain masculine gravitas. No one ever doubted Downey's gift of gab, comedy and sexy appeal. But now Downey seems to have put his demons behind him. The one-two punch of actioner Iron Man and the late summer comedy Tropic Thunder may push him into real movie stardom.

3. SMART DIRECTOR. Jon Favreau is a gifted filmmaker with real chops. He can do character comedy: Elf, Swingers. He's smart. I don't care if Zathura tanked. It was a delightful smart fast-moving family adventure comedy. Selling it as a sequel to Jimanji was a mistake. But studios are loathe to sell originals and the movie never would have been made otherwise.

4. FUN MARVEL TOYS. My Iron Man action figure (above) is the envy of the office. (Launching repulsor projectile!) There's a lot more where that came from.

5. FEMME APPEAL. Add Gwenyth Paltrow to the mix, and I see a three quadrant movie. Who's left out? Older women. But I really want to see the movie. So who knows?

6. ORIGINAL. While Paramount can sell the movie to Iron Man comics fans, it is not a sequel, remake or retread of any kind. It is the presumable launch of a franchise. Every franchise had to start somewhere, as an original. They're harder to market, but if they work, you're off.

7. EARLY SUMMER LAUNCH. Iron Man opens wide on May 2 (basically the Spider Man date) at the start of the summer, when audiences are starving for a big popcorn picture. Things haven't gotten crowded yet. It should have a wide open playing field. Made of Honor will get the girls. Summer blockbuster sequel Narnia: Prince Caspian opens May 16, and Indy 4 May 22. (UPDATE: The Latin American press have seen the pic. Nothing yet for us stateside.)

Here's the trailer.

Polling Summer 2008: Indy 4 and Dark Knight Lead the Pack

Fandango pollsters report that their filmgoers most want to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Dark Knight during the summer of 2008.

Here are the results of Fandango.com's online nationwide survey, conducted from March 13 to March 30:

Most Anticipated Summer 2008 Movie:

1. INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (82%)

2. THE DARK KNIGHT (42%)

3. IRON MAN (38%)

4. THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN (37%)

5. THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR (30%)

6. GET SMART (29%)

7. THE INCREDIBLE HULK (22%)

8. THE UNTITLED X-FILES SEQUEL (20%)

9. SPEED RACER (19%)

10. SEX AND THE CITY (19%)

ShoWest: Summer Preview

Every year ShoWest screens an honor reel of movies that grossed over $100-million the year before. Which of the 2008 ShoWest promo pics will be on next year's reel?

Based on what I saw and reactions gleaned, here's my best guess:

Movie that could pass $300 million: the sequel The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, which will likely improve on its predecessor with more action and more mature protagonists.

Movies that could go well past $200 million: sequels The Dark Knight, starring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger, Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, starring Harrison Ford and Shia LeBeouf, Rob Cohen's China-shot Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, starring Brendan Fraser, Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh, and Guillermo del Toro's epic-scale actioner Hellboy II: The Golden Army; plus non-sequels Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman as assassins training rookie James McAvoy, the invulnerable Will Smith as a homeless hero in Hancock, Judd Apatow's dumb male comedy Step Brothers, starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, Marvel's Iron Man, which boasts femme appeal via Robert Downey Jr. and co-star Gwenyth Paltrow, and animated family originals Kung Fu Panda (DreamWorks Animation) and Wall-E (Disney/Pixar).

Movies that could break $100 million: a remake of Marvel's The Incredible Hulk, starring Edward Norton as a thinking man's Bruce Banner; for the femme audience, a remake of the HBO classic Sex and the City, a remake of the boomer TV show Get Smart, starring Steve Carell and Ann Hathaway, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's surrogate nightmare comedy Baby Mama, and a movie version of the Broadway musical Mamma Mia (also for musical fans); Judd Apatow factory comedies Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Pineapple Express; Ben Stiller's starry R-rated action comedy Tropic Thunder, starring Stiller, Downey, Jack Black and Steve Coogan; the frere Wachowski's adaptation of the anime classic Speed Racer, starring Emile Hirsch and Christina Ricci; and George Lucas's animated sequel Star Wars: The Clone Wars. (Am I the only one who feels a shock that the film is going out through Warners? Even though Lucasfilm controls and markets the movies and collects the lions' share of the take, I feel like all Star Wars movies are supposed to have the Fox fanfare in front of them.)

ShoWest, Young Man

I'm off to the annual exhibitor's convention in Las Vegas, ShoWest, to explore the latest in digital projection and 3D and sour candy and summer trailers and much, much more. Will Indy 4 or the Wachowskis' Speedracer (see trailer below) save the summer? Will report back.

UPDATE: The Reeler is reporting that WB's Speedracer may close Tribeca on May 6, right before its May 9 opening.

Here's Variety's ShoWest coverage. Michael Speier covers how four studios' trailers played at Monday's International Day.

Preview of 2008

Tis the season for previews of 2008.

Here's this weekend's annual LAT sneak preview of 2008.

Reelz Channel.

Jeff Sneider.

The Vanity Fair cover story on Indy 4, plus follow-up blog.

[Vanity Fair photo by Annie Leibovitz.]

Comic-Con Wrap: Iron Man, Marvel, Hulk, Watchmen, Narnia, Golden Compass, Shoot 'Em Up

While Comic-Cons past have heralded the advent of such future blockbusters as 300 and Superman Returns, this year only Jon Favreau’s new Marvel entry starring Robert Downey, Jr. as the mighty Iron Man roused the fan hordes in the 6000-seat Hall H to rise up and give a standing O. The crowds also responded well to Pixar's Wall-E, from Finding Nemo creator Andrew Stanton, about a robot trash compactor left behind on earth, who is being "voiced" by sound wizard Ben Burtt, who created the whistle-language for Star Wars' R2D2.

Many of the big fanboy titles had no footage to show because they were just heading into production, from 300 director Zach Snyder’s The Watchmen, an adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic classic, to Edward Norton’s page-one rewrite of Marvel’s latest iteration of The Hulk. Snyder, Norton and Favreau all promised fans to stay true to the spirit of the source material. "We're not going to make it accessible to teenyboppers for marketing reasons," said Snyder, who is setting “The Watchmen” in the R-rated 80s and drawing his way through the novel, shot by shot. "It doesn't feel PG-13. It makes sense that now it's a period film. It has resonance, it's separated from the Cold War, it's almost cool to go back."

Snyder had hoped to announce his Watchmen cast at the Con, but was scooped by the press by several days. "We have real actors for this movie," he said. "This movie has no stars in it! 300 had no stars in it either. A couple people saw it." The actors will start out young and evolve into old age with the help of CGI, he said. “Technology is on my side.” Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson and Jason Patric didn’t show, but Jackie Earle Haley and Malin Akerman were on hand. The crowd in Hall H applauded when The Hulk producer Gale Ann Hurd assured them that this time--as opposed to Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk, which did not score a bullseye with fans--The Hulk would remain the same size throughout the film. Marvel’s latest design for The Hulk seemed to play for fans.

Disney’s Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian panel promised a deeper, richer, more action-packed realistic take on the next installment of the fantasy series, which will now unspool at the rate of one a year. (It will be interesting to see how much interest there is in the lesser known books that don't feature the four kids.) Audiences were wowed by an well-paced animatic of the capture of a castle featuring airborne sword fights.

On the other hand, New Line Cinema’s bid for a new fantasy franchise, Chris Weitz’s adaptation of The Golden Compass, starring Nicole Kidman, Dakota Blue Richards and many CG polar bears, yielded a more muted response. Kidman keeps rolling her tongue around something called "the Aletheometer lethiometer." Like Stardust, The Golden Compass features flying ships and witches. But it also looks all too familiar...

While Twentieth Century Fox cancelled its show-and-tell, citing materials that were too hard-R for a family-friendly event (which nonetheless showed plenty of violent, edgy material), the studio did send a convoy of trucks to promote the movie Jumper emblazoned with black-and-white billboards reading “If you were a jumper you’d be home now.”

Short action clips from Shoot ‘Em Up, starring Clive Owen as a Chow Yun Fat-inspired gunfighter toting a baby amid blood-splattering mayhem, played well in Hall H; the full-length movie screened Thursday night to a wide range of reactions. The pic clearly plays best for hard-core action fans with a taste for a taboo-busting, hard-edged R. (A women gives birth during a gun battle; when the baby cries, Owen shoves the infant onto her breast to shut him up. And there's more.) Storyboard-artist-turned director Michael Davis thanked Angry Films for rescuing him from oblivion after 35 screenplays just as he was about to give up his filmmaking career. Owen thanked Davis "for making an original movie in a time of sequels," he said.
Here's Variety's review.

Neil Marshall’s viral thriller Doomsday generated some fan heat, along with Rob Zombie’s reimagining of Halloween, the graphic novel-based 30 Days of Night, a hard-R return to killer vampires who terrorize an isolated town in bleak midwinter, and writer-director Frank Darabont’s reunion with Stephen King on the $17-million “The Mist.” But many other horror titles fell flat, including Warners’ Japanese remake One Missed Call, the conclusion of Paul Anderson's zombie trilogy, Resident Evil: The Extinction, and Silver’s The Invasion, yet another version of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

“Comic-Con elder” Darabont, who started coming to The Con as a teenager in 1973 when it was held for 1000 people at the El Cortez Hotel, had a good time this trip. “Every year it’s gotten crazier and bigger.”

Comic-Con: Marvel Unveils Iron Man

Word spread through the Con that Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau would sign Iron Man stuff for the fans at 1:30 PM Saturday after the unveiling of the new Iron Man costume (there are two looks in the clips we saw in Hall H, early first stage clunky iron armor and later flying suit, which this one resembles). There was a mob of onlookers as the director, star and FX master Stan Winston posed for photographers. Erin was close to the wooden crate; I was aiming my Nikon at a screen farther away.

[Posted by Erin Maxwell] Things I learned while trying to snap a pic of Iron Man:

1. Sometimes being only five feet tall kinda bites.

2. Most Comic-Con attendees will let you in at the front of the line if you ask nicely.

3. Camera phones can be more reliable than normal cameras.

I would like to thank the nice gentleman who helped me off the floor when the mad rush of Marvel fans knocked me to the ground. Thank you, sir. I have never met a finer man. And yes, I meant it when I said that I liked your outfit. You make that Punisher costume work for you.