Thompson On Hollywood

ShoWest: The $100 Million-Plus Honor Reel

ShoWest started off Tuesday with the annual Honor Reel of films that made over $100 million, 28 last year, starring Peter Parker, Harry Potter and Jack Sparrow, among others, with two from the Judd Apatow comedy factory, several big FX and comics flicks, musicals (Enchanted, Hairspray, and Alvin and the Chipmunks), and big animation titles like Ratatouille (which stuck out amid all the other stuff as a Quality Film) and The Simpsons. (Every one of the $100-million-plus club had some digital playdates as well.) There were seven $200-million-plus pics, and four that grossed over $300 million.

While these films may have grossed a lot, they didn't all return pots of money, because some, like Evan Almighty and Blades of Glory, were very expensive. Rush Hour 3 ended up making up for its lackluster b.o. on DVD. I was also struck by how many movies appealed to adults as well as kids. (One Sony exec explained that the current Vantage Point did as well as it did by playing to the boomer crowd.)

And there are a few stars left in the Hollywood firmament, it seems: Depp, Cage (with two biggies), Willis and Smith among them, and in the comedy world, Carrell and Sandler.

300 reminded me that we should expect a rash of imitators to turn up soon.

Oscar Watch: Bay Hosts Transformers Tech Show

Transformers director Michael Bay returned to the scene of the crime Thursday night at the Cary Grant mixing stage at the Sony lot to revisit the Oscar-nominated achievements in VFX and sound. The place was packed with filmmaking geeks eager to hear and see the behind-the-scenes machinations that go into a formidable FX epic like Transformers.

It was tough for Bay to go back, he admitted after the show, as he's already deep into pre-production on Transformers 2, which is set to start filming on June 2. Bay didn't let the strike stop him. "The strike was a drag," he said. "But I like to write myself. So I wrote 60 pages. I showed the writers something to look at. We'll get back to the torture chamber on Monday." Transformers 2 will deepen the different robot characters as well as the humor, he said. "There's a geriatric robot. If there's an actors strike we'll just stop and start again. We'll make our date." (The movie is scheduled to open June 26, 2009.)

After The Rock, Armageddon, and Pearl Harbor, Bay is tight with the Pentagon and thinks nothing of picking up the phone to get them to reroute a C130 gunship with Seals in it for a few hours. "We pay for the fuel," he says. "The military looks at this as a recruiting effort. The jargon is real. I told them what was happening, and that's what they said. I shot it like a documentary."

Bay, who has a reputation for being tough on crews, endured some good-humored riffing during the show-and-tell, from star Shia LaBeouf as well as his sound designers, editors, and mixers and special FX and ILM VFX artists. Bay was proud that he made Transformers "for a price" he said, in California and New Mexico. "We have the best crews."

For Bay, sound is "50 % of the movie, while the visual effects are a whole other movie unto itself." He shot as much of the film as possible in real locations with live (often dangerous) on-camera stunts and real FX supervised by the legendary John Frazier. In stark contrast to a Star Wars episode which boasts mostly blue screen shots, Transformers had only two days of blue-screen shooting (when the young leads climbed on the shoulders of the robots).

Even the famous shot of the bus that is split apart by a giant robot was a live-action bus blown in two going 60 mph on the freeway with a 30-foot CG robot added six months later. "There's one million details these guys put in the movie," said Frazier, who tried to keep enormous spaces open in the shots for the CG animators to work in.

For LaBeouf and the other actors, "acting without anything there is hard," said Bay. "It's so different when you don't have any environment to react to." LaBeouf described a P.A. holding a long big stick with a green ball on top and shaking it. "They're angry now, shake it faster," he described Bay saying. ILM VFX supervisor Scott Farrar showed the actors a pre-vis--"a cartoon of what's going on in the scene," said Bay, adding, "I always like to put my actors under duress." According to LaBeouf, hanging from a building 20 feet in the air to talk to Megatron or being surrounded by explosions while the cameras wore protective gear was the norm.

Harry Potter: Weekend Boxoffice Stats

Fandango Five – Ticket Sales (as of 7/19/07 9:00 a.m. PT)

Movie Fandango User Rating % of Fandango’s Sales

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix “Go” 58%

Hairspray “Must Go” 9%

Ratatouille ` “Must Go” 9%

Transformers “Must Go” 8%

The Simpsons Movie “Must Go” 2%

Fandango Weekly Poll (as of 7/19/07 9:00 a.m. PT)

I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK AND LARRY, starring Adam Sandler and Kevin James, is in theaters this week. Among the following Sandler comedies, which one is your favorite?

Happy Gilmore 28%

Billy Madison 14%

50 First Dates 17%

Click 10%

Big Daddy 14%

The Wedding Singer 17%

Harry Potter Update: First Deathly Hallows Review

First, despite all efforts to control the release of Deathly Hallows, at least one Muggle got an early copy, reports The Baltimore Sun:

And in Maryland, one surprised customer opened his mail to find his own copy -- delivered four days before the official worldwide release. Jon Hopkins, a 25-year-old software engineer, said he has no plans to divulge the book's secrets.

"I couldn't believe it," he said yesterday after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows arrived at his Davidsonville home. He had ordered the book from DeepDiscount.com on June 3. On Friday, he received an e-mail saying his order had been shipped. He never thought it would come this early.

Neither did Scholastic Inc., the Potter publisher. Scholastic has cracked down on Web sites purporting to have obtained the book, going so far as to send one a subpoena. Libraries were made to sign strict contracts to keep the book locked up until Saturday. And pallets of the books on delivery trucks have been fitted with alarms.

So the publisher wasn't happy to hear of the case of Harry Potter and the Early Delivery.

"You're kidding me," said Kyle Good, a Scholastic spokeswoman. The company has spent millions orchestrating the launch of the last Potter book -- and Internet leaks or early delivery of the novel could spoil that plan. Readers are eager to learn what happens to their beloved characters. Author J.K. Rowling has hinted that one or more of them might die, perhaps even Harry himself..

Maybe there was a mail diversion to Baltimore, because The Sun's book reviewer also got an early copy and posted the book's first review today. That website should get a healthy spike in traffic! UPDATE: And here's Michiko Kakutani in the NYT.

Meanwhile, watchdog the National Legal and Policy Center continues to pursue movie pirates far and wide, and discovered downloads of Transformers and Order of the Phoenix available on Google Video Wednesday. (Both films have been taken down.)

"Continuing to expose blockbuster films posted in advance of their release or while they’re still in theatres, NLPC hopes to spotlight Google’s ostensible oversight of intellectual property rights and its lackluster enforcement of its 'hash' technology that prevents repeated uploads of the same copyrighted material," wrote a company representative.

Meanwhile MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman is also on the warpath against pirates: “Reports on the theft of the latest installment of Harry Potter underscores that robbery of intellectual property extends far beyond the movies, to music, publishing, computer software and other creative outputs that are the foundation of our modern information economy," he wrote in a statement.

Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix Ticket Stats

It's no surprise that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix got off to a rip-roaring start. Nora was among the throngs who bought advance tickets to a midnight show Tuesday morning.

Here are this weekend's Fandango Five – Ticket Sales (as of 7/12/07 9:00 a.m. PT):

Movie User Rating % of Fandango’s Sales

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix “Must Go” 95%

Transformers “Must Go” 2%

Ratatouille ` Must Go” 1%

Live Free or Die Hard “Must Go” <1%

License to Wed "Go” <1%

Fandango Weekly Poll (as of 7/12/07 9:00 a.m. PT)

Are you planning to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix more than once?

Yes 60%

No 40%

Transformers: MPAA Vs. Camcorder Pirates

Watch out for the MPAA Police! Once a popular genre movie like Live Free or Die Hard is in release, countless movie pirates infiltrate theatres with their camcorders and cell phone cameras, ready to upload their data files online. The MPAA has tracked down five movie thieves with camcorders at Transformers showings in New York, California, Georgia, Illinois and Florida.

Inside the movie download community, which is wary and watchful of the MPAA, pirates like these are seen as rebel warriors. ""These are the unsung heroes that sacrifice so much for the enjoyment of so many," writes one unapologetic movie downloader. The studios see themselves as fighting the good and righteous fight against movie pirates to preserve the status quo for everyone who works in the movie business. But on some level they are turning their own customers into criminals, who enjoy their maverick status in the download underworld.

It's a tricky wicket. Lowering the price on legit high-quality downloads ASAP is one solution--which the studios won't do because they are still making so much cash on DVD sales commandeered by giant retailers like Wallmart, who call the shots. But that won't last forever.

Classic library titles are one place to start. I still don't understand why the studos don't sell those titles themselves online and let the long tail rule, as it does on Netflix.

Here's the Variety story.

Transformers: Bay Squabbles with Producers Over Credit

Like many Hollywood folks today, Michael Bay knows that maintaining a good homepage and blog is the best way to promote yourself with fans. But sometimes pushing that publish button on a late-night blog post is not a great idea. Luckily for us, while the offending blog post attacking his Transformers producers Tom DeSanto and Don Murphy has been taken down, several folks have saved it for our reading pleasure.

I can tell you this. While DeSanto and Murphy acquired the movie rights from Hasbro and shopped them, once DreamWorks and Paramount got involved, they placed studio producer Lorenzo DiBonaventura in charge of the movie for Paramount and production exec Adam Goodman for DreamWorks. DeSanto and Murphy had little to do but handle some marketing and PR chores and deal directly with the fans. Two people, Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay, ran this movie. Thanks to DreamWorks, the script is better than Bay's other pictures, and with a summer blockbuster to his credit, Bay wants to take full responsibility for repairing his reputation post-The Island.

UPDATE: The NYT reports on how Murphy and Bay used their web sites to communicate with fans.

Here's more from Bay in EW.

And Transformers continues to score at the boxoffice, according to this Fandango release:

Transformers: VFX Revealed

Here's a great example of what a magazine can do--and then do online. Unlike some monthlies, Popular Mechanics does both. We used to do these summer VFX stories when Popular Mechanics editor Jim Meigs was editor of Premiere.

UPDATE: Here's EW's FX takeout.

Transformers: LaBeouf Does Vanity Fair

He's very good in Transformers. And Harrison Ford is passing the torch to the next generation in Indiana Jones 4. Here's our next every man boy star: Shia LaBeouf. I hope Hollywood doesn't spoil him too much. You have to have a good head on your shoulders to stay above the madness.

Transformers: LAFF Premiere

Transformers took over Westwood last night, playing on multiple screens with crowds jamming Broxton Avenue will-call tables and an after-party on the street.

Transformers looks really expensive. The ILM and Digital Domain effects are extraordinarily complex, with countless huge robots changing forms like rippling rubics' cubes. Some are bad guys (Megatron!), some are good guys (Optimus Prime!), and for some reason they choose to travel as shiny trucks and cars rather than fly. My fave Transformer is Bumblebee, who initially befriends our hero (well-played by Shia LaBeouf) in the form of a yellow Camaro (his first car), and I actually choked up when Bumblebee suffers in the line of battle.

Bay said he enjoyed working every day with the animators, recording voices, making changes, fixing this and enhancing that. They did great work here. Undeniably, Bay has a great eye: there are some amazing action sequences and shots, including some cool real-life locations, exterior and interior, at the Hoover Dam.

Producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura said it became a macho game for the filmmakers to prove that they could shoot a movie on this scale in L.A. for less than $150 million. DreamWorks' Stacey Snider insisted that the movie cost less than $150 million. Producer Don Murphy quoted $147 million. Bay grabbed my arm and bet me $2000 that it cost less than $150 million. "Make that $5000!" he said.

"They only went a little bit over," said one Paramount executive. The studio certainly scrimped on the party menu: they served July 4th finger food, Burger King burgers and fries, and ice cream.

Transformers works because Bay channeling Spielberg is a good thing. Some of the touches that one might ascribe to Spielberg were actually Bay's, including a moment when a little girl (who looks like Drew Barrymore in E.T.), sees a Transformer in her back yard and asks him if he's the tooth fairy.

The script is charming and comedic and the first 2/3 of the movie is great fun. I am not the target audience for this, so the climactic battles wore me out. The sheer pixel-packed scale of these relentless images tires the eyes. Transformers will score big with men: manly soldiers fight well for the side, the president is incompetent, the Secretary of Defense (Jon Voight) is ineffectual; as always, John Turturro makes an entertaining villain; and the two femme leads are silly, sexy babes.

Was Bay trying to drive women away? The way I hear it, his wishes carried the day: this is how he sees women. "They look like they're about to display their thongs," commented Nora. She loved the movie, and adores LaBeouf. We didn't spot him in the crowd, but we did see Superman star Bryan Routh, looking slim and unbuff. Nora wanted to know why so many reality stars were invited. I didn't recognize any of them.

Paramount distribution chief Jim Tharpe and marketing head Gerry Rich looked remarkably relaxed, mainly because they're spending a fortune to open Transformers, and its six-day holiday weekend launch makes it harder to measure against other openings. As a non-sequel, it's not expected to be a record-breaker anyway.

Safe to say Transformers is not The Island. One nugget I gleaned last night: Michael Bay is such a big name in Korea that The Island did great business there.

Summer Blockbusters: VFX Under Duress

Variety's David Cohen wrote a terrific piece last month on the pressures facing VFX movies and the houses that make them possible. FX Guide interviews him on the toll blockbusters are taking on VFX.

CAA, Transformers and Toy Stories

Writing about the Hollywood talent agencies is a dangerous game. You can't win. So the NYT's Michael Cieply figured out that you can get away with a story about the hazards of being the number one agency if you lead off by embarrassing them. Cieply states many facts about CAA's size and increasing dominance, but before he goes there, he writes about the defection of Hasbro Toys--which is behind the upcoming summer tentpole Transformers--to the William Morris Agency.

Thus Cieply managed to avoid infuriating the other agencies. WMA got to gloat over its win, while Cieply also handed little plums to CAA's other would-be rivals to keep them from going apoplectic. In the sensitive agency world, where each agent is trying to hang on to each and every slippery client, perception is everything. And with CAA especially dominant on the film talent side, nobody wants the newspaper of record to overstate that fact.

Also, many corporate clients are loss leaders for the agencies, mainly offering the agency chieftans chances to hang out with new media big-wigs at such places as Herbert Allen's Sun Valley annual retreat. But most agencies would trade in a decent movie star for a dozen corporate clients.

On the other hand, Cieply's piece contains a few twisted turns of phrase that my brain struggled with, like: "But the embarrassment comes just as [CAA] is trying to prove that it can mirror, if not exactly match, the intricacy and reach of the media conglomerates and consumer and technology companies that have come to define the entertainment world." Say what?

Meanwhile, Variety got its Transformers-hooked toy story in days before the LAT got around to it.

Disturbia's LaBeouf Hits Big

The sign of a rising movie star is a little movie that unexpectedly opens big on mixed reviews. (Disturbia rated a 62 from Metacritic.) With Shia LaBeouf and Disturbia, some of the credit for a $23 million opening goes to a well-mounted thriller hitting at just the right time. (There's a reason studios love to do genre remakes for young audiences: they don't know the difference between the technologically enhanced new model and the superior original, in this case, Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window.)

And it's no coincidence that Paramount/DreamWorks announced right before the weekend that LaBeouf is co-starring with Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones 4, which starts filming in L.A. in June. (Something Variety reported on March 7.) DreamWorks' Steven Spielberg really believes in this kid: LaBeouf not only carries Disturbia but the summer tentpole Transformers, which opens July 4. (He's also doing voice work on Sony's upcoming animated comedy Surf's Up.) Nora's been a fan of LaBeouf's since 2003's Holes, the Disney Channel's Even Stevens and the Project Greenlight series on the making of The Ballad of Shaker Heights.

And she likes to remind me that Shia rhymes with Maya: see this NBC.com link to April 14's Saturday NIght Live. Here's Access Hollywood's backstage interview before the show:

Transformers Wrap Poem

This poem--by anonymous-- is making the Hollywood e-mail rounds today. It is assumed by many to be written by one of Transformer's many producers, Angry Films' Don Murphy (who has called rival Transformer producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura Skorponok on his blog, and has squabbled with DreamWorks production head Adam Goodman throughout production). But Murphy denies authorship. Here's the original link dated September 29 from Transformers Live. "It isn't by me," says Murphy, who got his first email of the poem at 4 AM this morning from AICN's Drew McWeeny, followed by 15 more. "It's a disgruntled fan. It was never on my website. It has nothing to do with me. I like the movie! I think it's going to be a big hit." While Murphy wishes this little ditty would just go away, it's going to be tough to put this cat back in the bag. UPDATE: Another Transformers producer insists: "Things are going great on the movie. My guess is it is an internet fan who was pissed at some creative decision. But I really could not be happier with the movie...promise."

The film is a wrap? Wow how about that! It’s still loads of crap. And the Stooges swallow this pap?

Murphy and Desanto lead the cheerleader charge
While Skorponok takes credit by and large.
The fact is today
There is nothing okay
The content of the film’s not fit for a barge.

Let your sugary friend answer the clamor
All you sweet kiddles want in on the drama?
The trouble beginning to end
Is named A-D-A-M Goodman

New studio head Snider
Decided him to fire
But then in a Hail Mary pass
Goodman kissed the right piece of ass

“Do not fire me, no do not please”
The chubby young Goodman said on his knees
I can do something you don’t want to do
I can control Michael Bay just for you.

New studio head Snider
Knew he’s a liar
But decided to stay out of the mess
“Sure Mr. Chubwon, you control Bay-san
And keep this boy’s movie shit off my dress”

Then dumb Mr. Goodman
As only a dunce can
Proceeded to hide in the sand
For the first time in history
It was a complete mystery
How one director had ALL of the power!!!!!!

The film is what it is and that’s all that it is
Most trufans will want to take a long whiz
And though valiant and Brave Tom Ian and Don slaved
Fact is Goodman gave the keys to the Kingdom to Bayed.

If you hate the dumb story
And realize the characters are a worry
And wonder how Bay could screwup so bad
Remember the missive that Sugarboy brought you
It wasn’t just Michael but Goodman too!

Here's the trailer:

Hairspray Rocks Vegas

The annual theater convention in Las Vegas, Showest, is a ritual that I usually enjoy. You get a peek at some footage from upcoming movies, schmooze with theater owners from around the country along with studio marketing and distribution honchos, check out some panels and screenings and enjoy a party or two from the studios that are riding high and feeling an obligation to share the love. The big lunch extravaganza with show-reel was mounted by indie Lionsgate this year, which tells you something about the state of things. It's fun to gauge reactions, figure out what's going to play well, and what looks weak.

Thanks to moving to my new gig, I didn't go this March. But as Variety's Michael Speier reports, the highlight of the convention was clearly New Line Cinema's musical version of Hairspray:

In front of a bouncy 3,000-plus crowd at the main Paris hotel ballroom, the minimajor showed off several scenes from the upcoming remake of John Waters' film and knocked it cleanly out of the park. Everything's there: a bright, colorful look, a joyous spirit, a kitschy cast (who all showed up) and, most importantly, Marc Shaiman's Tony award-winning tunes. This one feels like a counterprogramming gem to all the pirates, Transformers and Spider-men coming down the pike.

And the LAT's Sheigh Crabtree and Rachel Abramowitz also covered the waterfront, including a summer preview: