Now Playing

By Steve Mason

August 3, 2006

I think we paid too much for this hotel room.

New at BOP:
Share & Save
Digg Button  
Print this column
Box office is up 6%, but the movie business is still in trouble

Hollywood is relieved. After three consecutive down years, some believed that movie box office would move into perpetual decline. After all, network television has been watching its ratings fall off for the last decade as it tries to compete in the 500-channel universe. Couldn't the same fate be in the cards for the movie business?

2006 ticket sales are up 6% over the first seven months of 2006. Most of the increase is accounted for by higher ticket prices, but still, it's an improvement. Unfortunately, it hides the underlying weakness in film industry. There is a complete lack of creativity.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Buena Vista) is officially a cultural phenomenon. It will exceed $400 million at the box office, and fans are anxiously looking forward to the third film in the series next summer. Jack Sparrow has driven the 2006 summer box office, and he'll be counted on to do the same in 2007. Hollywood will also offer new installments of popular franchises like Harry Potter, Spider-Man, Shrek, Fantastic Four, Rush Hour, Ocean's Eleven and Matt Damon's Bourne films. This is a huge problem.

Increasingly, moviegoers are fed a steady diet of sequels, remakes and relatively inexpensive animated pictures. Where are the film visionaries? Is there a single creative maverick left in Hollywood? Where is our Louis B. Mayer? Who is the Darryl Zanuck or Carl Laemmle of the new millennium? Is there a studio head around today with the bravado and balls of a Robert Evans or Samuel Goldwyn?

The new rule in Hollywood is to play it safe. Companies like News Corp, Disney and Time Warner care only about the bottom line. A film is not a work of art. It is a commodity to be sold. That explains why, at the most recent Academy Awards, only one of the five Best Picture nominees was from the major studios. To make matters worse only one of the five Best Director nominees, one of the five Best Actor nominees and two of the five Best Actress nominees were from major studio releases. The most talented actors, writers and directors have taken their gifts to smaller projects.

In 1980, the Top 25 domestic box office performers included four sequels, one animated film and two remakes. The Empire Strikes Back was the #1 film of that year, but the Top 25 included 19 "original" films. For our purposes, "original" means non-animated, non-sequel and non-remake. Other hits included 9 to 5, Stir Crazy, Airplane!, Private Benjamin, Coal Miner's Daughter, The Blue Lagoon, Ordinary People, Urban Cowboy, Dressed To Kill, Friday the 13th and Caddyshack. These were distinctive and unique movies that have stood the test of time and served as important cultural landmarks.

1980 - Top 25 – Domestic Box Office
4 sequels
1 animated
2 remakes
19 originals

Twenty years ago, Top Gun was the top performing film, followed by Crocodile Dundee and Platoon. That year (1986), there were five sequels in the Top 25 along with one animated film and one remake.

1986 - Top 25 – Domestic Box Office
5 sequels
1 animated
1 remake
18 originals

Skip a decade to 1996, and the Top 5 grossing pictures were all "originals", with Independence Day at #1 followed by Twister, Mission: Impossible (adapted from the television series, but not a remake of another film), Jerry Maguire and Ransom.

1996 - Top 25 – Domestic Box Office
1 sequel
3 animated
3 remakes
18 originals

Now, look at the last five years using these standards.

2002 - Top 25 – Domestic Box Office
9 sequels
2 animated
0 remakes
14 originals

2003 - Top 25 – Domestic Box Office
10 sequels
1 animated
1 remake
12 originals

2004 - Top 25 – Domestic Box Office
7 sequels
3 animated
0 remakes
15 originals

2005 - Top 25 – Domestic Box Office
4 sequels
3 animated
6 remakes
12 original films

2006 - Top 25 – Domestic Box Office
9 sequels
3 animated
3 remakes
11 original films
(Ice Age: The Meltdown is an animated sequel)

Hollywood has become decidedly unoriginal. This year, the local multiplexes are overloaded with animated films and the latest, Ant Bully (Warner Bros.) tanked last weekend. Of the nine sequels that have been released, several didn't merit another installment. Was anyone really waiting for Big Momma's House 2 or Fast & the Furious: Tokyo Drift? And the three remakes, Superman Returns, The Pink Panther and The Shaggy Dog, were really designed to create new franchises (and therefore more sequels).

The movie industry is not healthy. Which of this year's Top 25 performers will be remembered fondly in years to come? In my estimation, only Pirates, The Devil Wears Prada, The Inside Man and V for Vendetta feel fresh. When you're flipping through the pay cable movie channels in ten years, will you stop on RV or Failure To Launch? Don't let the industry flacks cow you into thinking the good times are back.




Advertisement



Nobody does horror like Lionsgate

On the heels of the successful Saw films and January's Hostel, Lionsgate is back in theatres this weekend with The Descent. British-born Neil Marshall grabbed the attention of horror film fans in 2002 with a down-and-dirty scare-fest called Dog Soldiers. It never received an American release, but later, picked up a cult following. I was able to catch up with Marshall on the eve of his first-ever US release.

Mason: How did the success of your debut film Dog Soldiers change your career/life?

Marshall: To be honest, the success of Dog Soldiers only really changed my life in so far as it opened a few more doors to me and enabled me to get my second feature made. Although it was critically acclaimed on its theatrical debut in the UK and has since garnered a strong cult following, Dogs didn't get a theatrical release in the US and was in fact premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel there.

Mason: How was the deal made for The Descent? Did Lionsgate pick up the film after it was completed?

Marshall: The deal for The Descent was that Celador Films funded it outright from the word go. Only when it was completed did we sell it around the world. That's when Lionsgate picked it up.

Mason: Lionsgate has distributed two of the most successful horror films of the last five years with Saw and Hostel. Have they figured out the best way to "sell" a good horror film?

Marshall: I don't know if there's such a thing as figuring out how best to sell a good horror film, but Lionsgate seems to have come as close to cornering the market as is possible in recent years. So much so that they're now perceived as the horror studio, almost like a brand name or stamp of quality for horror movies, and as such I don't think we could have found ourselves in better hands!

Mason: Two facets of The Descent make it especially interesting. It's set in caves, and it features all female protagonists. Why did you make those choices?

Marshall: As a filmmaker I'm always looking for something fresh and original, and in this day and age that's not always easy to do. Sometimes it seems like all the new ideas have already been taken... and then you think about setting a horror story almost entirely in a cave, and you think... "I've never seen that before", then you think what if it was an all-female ensemble... and you think, "I've never seen that before either!" And I hadn't, so it seemed such a unique and dynamic recipe for a contemporary horror movie! So I ran with it.

Mason: Dog Soldiers has a sense of humor while The Descent is pure horror. Was that a conscious choice?

Marshall: Absolutely, the humour of Dog Soldiers comes directly from the lunacy of the situation and the characters of the British soldiers - it's that trench humour that's so important to British squaddies, finding some sick or twisted humour in the most horrendous circumstances, sometimes for the sake of moral, sometimes out of desperation, but it's always there and that's what I wanted to tap into with Dog Soldiers. But with The Descent, I wanted to explores the darker side of human nature with a bunch of girls who aren't soldiers, aren't trained to deal with and respond to life or death situations. Because of this there was no room for the same kind of tongue in cheek humour that accompanied Dogs. Besides, I wanted to put the audience through the blender on this one. I didn't want to offer them any comic relief.

Mason: The all-female spelunking team encounters "the crawlers" in those caves. Describe what they are and how you achieved the look you wanted.

Marshall: The Crawlers are an off-shoot of the human race. At some point, thousands of years of ago, the rest of us left the cave and evolved, while they stayed, moving deeper into the shadows and devolving into this subterranean sub-species, perfectly adapted to their environment - blind, using their hearing to hunt, using sonar, like bats, exceptional climbers and savage killers. I gave this notion to the make-up effects supervisor Paul Hyatt and he came up with series of designs. I literally went along the row of sculpted heads and picks the ones I liked.

Mason: What's the current state of the horror genre? They're not working at the box office right now. Is there something missing from the films?

Marshall: That's a tricky one. Horror films have always been with us, and always will be. How they perform at the box office seems to change on a monthly basis, so I believe that's not a genre issue but more about individual films. I don't think there's anything missing from the films. It's more a case of what's missing from the audience - the ability to be shocked or truly scared. We see worse things on the news everyday than any film can serve up. The likes of Hostel and The Hills Have Eyes may not have some the same kind of business as X3 or Pirates 2, but then again they were never likely to. The horror audience is small but loyal and very discerning, and those films did as well as they were ever going to. The point here is that these films did okay, and cost a fraction of the amount of X3 or Pirates 2, so I'm sure they're not complaining.

Mason: In a horror film, is there such a thing as "too scary" or "too much gore"?

Marshall: A horror film can never be 'too scary', but it can be 'too gory', to the point at which you're either not watching any more, or too desensitized to care about what you're watching anymore. Gore for gore's sake was what created the so-called 'Video Nasties' in which the blood and guts were ladled on thick and heavy. But what they failed to pay attention to in those films was story, character and plot. You know, the little things that actually make a film worth watching because you get emotionally involved at some level with the film, and are not simply repulsed by it. You look back on those films now and most of them are pretty shit! That said, I'm certainly not against using plenty of gore. My films stands testament to that! But it has to be there for a good reason and be a genuine part of the world of the story.

Mason: What are your favorite horror films of all time?

Marshall: In no particular order - The Shining, An American Werewolf In London, Alien, The Thing, The Fog, The Omen, Evil Dead 2, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Braindead, Bad Taste.... to name a few.

Mason: Will you continue in the horror genre or are you looking to do something different as your next project?

Marshall: For the moment I'm looking to explore other genres, but I have a few more horror projects up my sleeve, and since I enjoy scaring people so much I doubt it'll be too long before I'm up to my neck in blood and guts again!

Will Ferrell drives into theaters this weekend

For my money, Anchorman is one of the funniest movies of the last ten years. It always makes me regret that I gave up the jazz flute, but, "when in Rome..."

Now comes Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (Sony). The film needs to thread the needle. Skewer the NASCAR culture enough to satisfy the Blue State crowd, but still be respectful enough to win over the Red Staters. By all accounts, Will Farrell succeeds along with the always good John C. Reilly and a terrific turn by Gary Cole.

My sources tell me that the tracking is very solid, and it's safe to expect $35 million for the weekend with a real chance for an upside surprise.

Talladega Nights – By the Numbers

Top 5 Will Ferrell Films - Domestic Box Office
1. Wedding Crashers - $209,255,000
2. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me - $206,040,000
3. Elf - $173,398,000
4. Starsky & Hutch - $88,237,000
5. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy - $85,288,000

Top 5 John C. Reilly Films - Domestic Box Office
1. The Perfect Storm - $182,618,000
2. Chicago - $170,687,000
3.Anger Management - $135,645
4. The Aviator - $102,610
5. Days of Thunder - $82,670,000

Nobody does horror like Lionsgate. Here's what television ads for The Descent say...

"People are concerned that the amount of blood and gore in horror films goes too far. On August 4, the studio that brought you Saw and Hostel goes over the edge .The Descent, rated R."

With 2,000 plus screens, The Descent won't finish ahead of the second weekend of Miami Vice or the still-strong Pirates 2, but $8-$10 million is doable.

The Descent – By the Numbers

Top 5 Horror Films of 2006 - Domestic Box Office
1. Underworld: Evolution - $62,318,000
2. The Omen - $54,495,000
3. Final Destination 3 - $54,098,000
4. When A Stranger Calls - $47,860,000
5. Hostel - $47,326,000

Yet another animated film rolls out this weekend. Paramount, fresh from the success of Over the Hedge, has a more uphill climb with Barnyard. With Monster House and Ant Bully released in the last few weeks, there must be some real "animation fatigue". As always, animated films are virtually impossible to gauge from tracking, but a $10 million opening weekend seems to be in the cards.

Barnyard – By the Numbers

Top 5 Animated Films of 2006 – Domestic Box Office
1. Cars - $235,589,000
2. Ice Age 2: The Meltdown - $195,094
3. Over the Hedge - $152,762
4. Hoodwinked - $51,386,000
5. Monster House - $47,481,000

Predicted order of finish, August 4th - 6th:

Talladega Nights
Pirates 2
Miami Vice
Barnyard
The Descent


     


 
 

Need to contact us? E-mail a Box Office Prophet.
Friday, March 29, 2024
© 2024 Box Office Prophets, a division of One Of Us, Inc.