Box Office - 2007 will be a record year

[Penelope]

Off the top of my head, I can only think of John Wayne's The Green Berets (1968) and Mark Robson's Limbo (1972), about soldiers wives waiting for their men to return from Vietnam.

[rolotomasi99]

RENDITION definitely bombed. along with THE VALLEY OF ELAH and THE KINGDOM, apparently audiences are just not interested in films about the middle east or the war. this does not bode well for LIONS FOR LAMBS or CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR.

Is this really a surprise? We see godawful news from the Middle East everyday and reports about how evil our government is, so why would audiences want to go to the cinema to see this all over again?

well, it took awhile for people to be able to watch vietnam films, but COMING HOME ($32 m), THE DEER HUNTER ($48 m), APOCALYPSE NOW ($78 m), PLATOON ($138 m), BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY ($70 m) when adjusted for inflation could definitely be called financially successful.
i am too young to know this, but were there any vietnam films before COMING HOME which were successful with audiences? i guess you could say MASH, even though it took place in korea and did not show the horrors of war.
there are also plenty of vietnam films which failed at the box office. i guess people are just not ready for middle east-set films. i still say the best film about our current situation in the middle east is almost a decade old: THREE KINGS.

[Penelope]

Also, I find it interesting that after Michael Clayton had what seemed to be a disappointing opening weekend, commentators immediately jumped on that (take a gander at Slate's comments, for example) as evidence that a) George Clooney isn't a box-office attraction; b) another example of how "adult" movies are dead; c) that the movie was receiving poor word of mouth. Now that the film is holding steady--and proving that adult audiences don't rush out to see a film right away--will they change their tune?

[Penelope]

RENDITION definitely bombed. along with THE VALLEY OF ELAH and THE KINGDOM, apparently audiences are just not interested in films about the middle east or the war. this does not bode well for LIONS FOR LAMBS or CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR.

Is this really a surprise? We see godawful news from the Middle East everyday and reports about how evil our government is, so why would audiences want to go to the cinema to see this all over again?

[rolotomasi99]

well, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT was number one as expected. WHY DID I GET MARRIED did not drop as much as i thought it would, and someone at disney has clearly sold their soul to satan to get the grosses on movies like WILD HOGS and THE GAME PLAN up so high.
the big winner of the weekend though is MICHAEL CLAYTON which stayed at number four this weekend. considering a record number of new releases opened this weekend, it only slipped 30% from last week compared to WE OWN THE NIGHT and THE GOLDEN AGE's 50% tumble. we can see how getting good reviews can still be important for smart films, even if it has absolutely no effect on bad films (which is ironic when you think about it).
new release "serious" films did not do well. RENDITION definitely bombed. along with THE VALLEY OF ELAH and THE KINGDOM, apparently audiences are just not interested in films about the middle east or the war. this does not bode well for LIONS FOR LAMBS or CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR.
THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE and RESERVATION ROAD did about as well as depressing films usually do, and the film with the best per screen average is more than a decade old.
what a strange weekend.

[Sabin]

I've read several interviews where she expressed desire to be a better Catholic.

Well, she got an annulment and is out gallavanting with the most eligible billionaires in the world, so she's off to a good start. But she's got a lot of kids to molest to play catch up.

[Damien]

I think she got a Church-approved annulment so she can marry under the Catholic Church.

Typical Catholic Church bullshit -- one set of rules for celebrities. another for the rest of us.

[anonymous1980]

Anyway, I expect Nicole Kidman to defend this film from the likes of William Donahue since she is, after all, a practicing Catholic.

How can she be a practicing Catholic? She's divorced and re-married (granted the first marriage was never consummated but still . . . .)

I think she got a Church-approved annulment so she can marry under the Catholic Church. One of the reasons she and Tom Cruise broke up was because she wanted to raise the kids Catholic while Cruise wanted them to be Scientologists.

I've read several interviews where she expressed desire to be a better Catholic.

[OscarGuy]

For niche, limitedly-advertised films like Gone Baby Gone and Reservation Road, I'm not expecting stellar box office. Rendition, though, did have a lot of press...but I want to see those Per-Screen totals to see how they compare to the rest of this year's malaise of box office...because they wouldn't be the first high-profile films with low totals this year.

[Big Magilla]

I'm not surprised. None of these films appeal to the kids who make up the bulk of today's audiences. Films that appeal to older audiences are barely released during the first seven months of the year and then lumped together in the last three. Not only do we have too many films to choose from all at once, many of us have gotten out of the habit of going to the movies and to get us to drag our tails out to see one instead of waiting for the DVD, there has to be something really appealing.

None of these films opened to glowing reviews, though Gone Baby Gone comes close.

If this keeps up, Hollywood may have to come up with a new distribution plan. Going back to releasing adult themed, older audience appealing films regularly throughout the year won't work. It's too late. More likely, if the major distirbuters don't stop greenlighting such projects altogether, they will release them for a week in major markets and then send them straight to DVD.

[dws1982]

That's only for Friday, dws. Saturday and Sunday figures aren't out and I'd look towards per screen for the weekend before I'd look at totals.

I know that. The point was that these movies bombed yesterday. I doubt we'll be waking up Monday to see articles about "Rendition tops the box-office!; Things We Lost In The Fire posts record grosses on 1100 screens!; Reservation Road sells out in limited release!" because their Friday numbers--which are a good indicator of how a movie will do over the weekend--indicate that they tanked.

[OscarGuy]

The studios sure are taking a bath in their Oscar-bait releases this weekend.

Rendition made $1.2 million on 2,250 screens yesterday.
Things We Lost In The Fire made $505,000 on 1,142 screens.
And in limited release, Reservation Road opened with a giant thud. $11,000 on 13 screens. At this rate it'll be out of theatres by early November and on DVD by early January.
Embarrassment of the week has to be Sarah London And The Paranormal Hour (whatever that is), which made $175,000 on 1115 screens.

Gone Baby Gone did decently, with $1.9 million on 1713 screens. (I thought it would tank, since I never saw many ads for it.)

Meanwhile, Michael Clayton had a solid hold, and will definitely outgross most of the new releases this weekend. Grosses for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, meanwhile, seems to be a sign that there won't be a third Blanchett/Kapur Elizabeth film.

That's only for Friday, dws. Saturday and Sunday figures aren't out and I'd look towards per screen for the weekend before I'd look at totals.

[Damien]

Anyway, I expect Nicole Kidman to defend this film from the likes of William Donahue since she is, after all, a practicing Catholic.

How can she be a practicing Catholic? She's divorced and re-married (granted the first marriage was never consummated but still . . . .)

[dws1982]

The studios sure are taking a bath in their Oscar-bait releases this weekend.

Rendition made $1.2 million on 2,250 screens yesterday.
Things We Lost In The Fire made $505,000 on 1,142 screens.
And in limited release, Reservation Road opened with a giant thud. $11,000 on 13 screens. At this rate it'll be out of theatres by early November and on DVD by early January.
Embarrassment of the week has to be Sarah London And The Paranormal Hour (whatever that is), which made $175,000 on 1115 screens.

Gone Baby Gone did decently, with $1.9 million on 1713 screens. (I thought it would tank, since I never saw many ads for it.)

Meanwhile, Michael Clayton had a solid hold, and will definitely outgross most of the new releases this weekend. Grosses for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, meanwhile, seems to be a sign that there won't be a third Blanchett/Kapur Elizabeth film.

[Okri]

I'm mixed on this. While you can sanitize the first book of it's anti-religious leanings a bit and not have it suck, you can't for the next too without gutting it horribly, ruining the theme, destroying the characters, and in general creating a different text. I can definitely see the anti-religious bias pissing people off (especially if strongly religious parents buy the next two books, read them, and discover just how far Pullman was willing to go).

I'm looking forward to it, though.