Category: Hollywood

Spielberg and Moses: the ultimate team-up?

It appears Steven Spibelberg is set to cement his reputation as a modern-day Cecil B. DeMille by taking on an epic movie based on the life of Moses. The flick, which has a working title of Gods and Kings, follows in the shadow cast by DeMille’s 1956 classic, The Ten Commandments.

Spielberg’s version will emphasize Moses as a warrior and military leader, according to early online reports. Amazingly, 3D presentation is not currently being contemplated, despite the uniqueness that could afford key scenes, especially the Red Sea crossing.

There almost certainly will be no musical numbers, and therefore no chance to include a junior drum set or anything like that. But pairing one of Tinseltown’s greatest directors with the story of one of Judaism’s greatest heroes is the sort of chemistry that made The Ten Commandments such a winner. Can lightning strike twice?

Bleak winter release list

The only thing bleaker than winter weather this year is the upcoming list of movie releases for the next few months. Although a couple of them may appeal more once their ad campaigns kick into high gear, looking ahead there’s really nothing coming to theaters for the next several months that really grab my interest.

I suppose out of pure desperation some of these movies will do okay, but flicks like John Carter and a movie version of 21 Jump Street don’t do much for me. The next major release that raises my interest at all comes out in late March, when The Hunger Games jumps from print to the silver screen. And I’m not even sure about that one.

Sure, by May the summer blockbuster season starts and then things get interesting again. The Joss Whedon-directed Avengers movie, to start, looks promising. Dark Shadows might be fun. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter holds potential. And July should be huge, with the relaunched Amazing Spider-Man movie franchise, the final Dark Knight movie, and Ice Age: Continental Drift, since I can’t ever get enough of Scritch. That trio could spawn a lot of gifts for a man’s office in secondary marketing alone.

But until July, it’s a fairly dismal list. Even some of the sequels scheduled look boring.

True Grit could win third weekend

If Friday results are any indication, True Grit, the Coen Brothers remake of the John Wayne classic, could win a third consecutive weekend at the box office. Early receipts showed True Grit heading toward a weekend north of $15 million, while Little Fockers trailed behind, but close behind.

The week’s only new major release, the Nic Cage-starrer, Season of the Witch, was showing a distant third, on pace for something just barely north of $10 million. That would be a disappointment despite the modest $40 million budget, or about half the cost of a new PS3.

Nothing else seemed to be headed toward at least $10 million, so it’s a three movie race right now, with True Grit holding all the advantages. That’s just the way The Duke would have wanted it… except that he’d probably prefer to be alive and starring in the movie himself, rather than watching Jeff Bridges imitate him.

Tron Legacy connects, Yogi doesn’t

OK, I did not expect this.

Tron Legacy, a pricey remake of a film that was kinda-sorta a bomb for Disney in the 1980s, connected with my fellow GenXers somehow. The film grossed $44 million over its first weekend at the box office, and is now up to $62.3 million since then, with an additional $23 million in foreign receipt for a grand total of around $85 million. I expected the film to bomb. And with a $170 million budget, it’s not out of the woods yet; but it did far better than I expected, that’s for sure.

The live action-animated remix of Yogi Bear, which only cost $80 million and which I expected would connect with the same folks who appreciated Tangled and Harry Potter, didn’t connect nearly as well as hoped. It drew only $16.4 million domestically in its opening weekend, far behind Tron Legacy, for a distant second-place finish. It’s now up to $24 million, but wow. That’s underperforming for the holiday season in a big way.

Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader was a weak third place with $12.3 million domestically and hadn’t even topped Tron’s three-day take after ten days in theaters; however, the foreign box office already has pushed the film into profit mode, so who cares, right? The Fighter expanded to wide release for forth place with $12.1 million and the $25 million indie flick is going to do OK. Behind those, nothing really made more than about $8.7 million or less.

Christmas weekend is already interesting, however, as three strong films entered the fray. Little Fockers, the second sequel to Meet the Parents, is sure to do well as a family-themed adult comedy for the holidays; Gulliver’s Travels with Jack Black could go either way, but is expected to hold broad appeal.

But the third film leaves me in a quandry. The Coen Brothers and Jeff Bridges have joined forces to remake TRUE GRIT, the film that won John Wayne his only career Oscar after a lifetime’s worth of great work. Bridges is looking for his second Oscar.

My problem is this; Wayne’s version was actually rated G and fun for the whole family. While the Coen Brothers have restrained themselves to a PG-13 rating, you can bet the violence level and language would make The Duke blush fifty shades of red, and then punch each and every one of them in the jaw.

Plus, there’s the whole “whizzing on Wayne’s legacy” aspect of it. Once an actor wins an Oscar for playing a certain role, future actors should be barred from being Oscar-eligible for trying to one-up them on the remake.

Hang your head, Jeff Bridges. Hang your head and cry. Hang your head, Jeff Bridges. Poor boy, you’re bound to die.

(To be interpreted as, yeah, I want to see someone else win the Oscar, not you.)

Sometimes I think Hollywood’s so out of ideas, they’re getting the latest remake brainstorms by scraping the toilets of San Diego.

Labor deals going smoothly this time … so far

Drawn-out labor negotiations nearly killed off a full season in Hollywood a couple years ago; shows like HEROES lost important momentum that led directly to their demise. So there were a lot of nervous folks in Hollywood when those contracts were due to expire.

But so far, things are going well. SAG and AFTRA negotiated as a united front this time, and ballots for approval are already out to membership. Writers (WGA) are also just about wrapped up as well. The new agreements all seem set for easy approval, so it appears labor peace will hold.

Much of this has to do with the down economy; the Hollywood unions realize that it’s not the time to complain about being underpaid with national unemployment rates over ten percent. Someone drew the right analysis from their Blackberry playbook this time around.

Complete domination

Complete and total box office domination; that’s what the debut of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows pulled off this weekend, as the film grossed a stunning $125 million in the US alone, and added $205 million worldwide for a total of $330 million in only its first three days of business. Only one movie, MegaMind, even scored within ten percent of that take.

It’s an absolute victory for Warner Brothers, for whom the film is a year-making tent-pole. To make things even nicer, the film lived up to expectations, delivering on high stakes drama, heart-touching moments and a more maturing take on Potter and his world. It’s a fitting penultimate chapter to a tale that is certain to become one of the all-time classics.

Megamind’s $16.1 million paled in comparison, but was good enough for second place, and Unstoppable barely managed $13 million in new business, making the film’s outlook to earn back its $100 million budget bleak indeed. The only other major new release, The Next Three Days, scored just under $7 million for a fifth place finish, and probably better than it deserved for attempting to open on the same weekend as Harry Potter.

As impressive as it was, Deathly Hollows’ opening bow was only good enough to rank sixth on the all-time list. The Dark Knight ranks first with $158 million, followed by Spider-Man 3, Twilight: New Moon, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Iron Man 2.

Disney’s Tangled opens over Thanksgiving weekend and may come close, but otherwise expect Harry Potter to continue to reign supreme next weekend, from Black Friday all the way through Cyber Monday.

Trio of new movies breathe life into September

Three debut movies are looking like solid bets to breathe life back into a dead September box office picture. Based on Friday’s receipts, it appears the Ben Affleck vehicle, The Town, will be the weekend’s champ, drawing in over $8.3 million on its first day of release.

The comedy, Easy A, drew in $6.8 million based largely on the possibility, fueled by her Twitter post, that if may be the last movie in Amanda Byrnes’ career; she Tweeted that she had decided to retire from the movies “because it’s not fun anymore” shortly after wrapping production on Easy A. We’ll see how long her retirement lasts once she realizes most jobs don’t pay millions of dollars for a few weeks’ work.

Finally, Devil, the new M. Night Shyamalan-scripted thriller, debuted to just under $5 million on Friday, which is lower than some of his movies but not bad considering he didn’t direct the flick himself.

We’ll have a fuller set of results later on, but behind those three, none of the films in theaters drew more than $3 million on Friday, including last weekend’s champ, Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D. That means everything else will likely end up drawing less than $10 million on the weekend. Might be hard for the producers to even buy an extended laptop warranty with numbers like that.

Evil box office numbers

The 3D escapade of blood-and-guts known as Resident Evil Afterlife was an easy, and completely dominant, winner at the box office this weekend, raking in $27.7 million in its first week of release. The film cost only $60 million to make despite being an effects-heavy movie, so that’s not a bad start for the latest chapter in the videogame-inspired franchise, which has become about as creative and interesting as insurance quotes.

But below that, it was an incredibly down week at the US box office. The number two film, Takers, raked in a mere $6.1 million and it got quickly more dismal from there. Overall, US box office for the top films totaled a mere $67 million, the lowest total in 2010 by far, and the lowest total since the weekend of September 5-7, 2008!

Four big releases promise to bring at least some help Hollywood’s way next weekend; the animated Alpha and Omega dog-oriented movie looks to perk of the children’s movie scene, while the M. Night Shyamalan-scripted Devil promises some genuine chills; Easy A looks the most promising of the crop, with a rom-com flair for couples, while guys sick of The Expendables and Takers by now can look forward to the crime drama, The City.

I’m not looking for any of these movies to be huge, but together they ought to combine to perk up box office results back into the $100 million plus territory.

Personally, my favorite movie of the weekend (just opening locally here but in its second week of limited release nationally) is the new Rob Reiner film, Flipped, a gentle 1950s-era childhood romance movie that is sweet and touching and modest… a great antidote for everything that’s ailing the Twilight Generation.

Once upon a time, Reiner could release a film similar to this – Stand By Me – and dominate the box office for several weeks. These days, it’s barely a blip on the box office radar, showing on only about 442 screens nationwide and taking in a mere half-million. It’s an injustice for such a great film to be so totally ignored.

Idol rumors

Well folks, the Ellen DeGeneres era on American Idol is, thankfully, over.

The stand-up comic and daytime talk host was out of her area of strength on Idol, and her departure will hopefully mean that Fox will have a judge panel next season who all have music backgrounds. That was the biggest and most legitimate critique of DeGeneres – her lack of a music industry background.

Personally, I’d love to see Ellen join the judges panel of the next season of NBC’s Last Comic Standing; she’d immediately become the top judge and draw of the show, and has way more credibility and humor than any of this season’s judges. The woman knows comedy, not music, and could help make Last Comic Standing a way more legitimate show.

That aside, it’s a relief to have her off Idol, where she was outside her area of expertise.

Now to the rumor mill: word is (and no, I have no security cameras at Fox) that Idol has come to terms already with Jennifer Lopez as Ellen’s replacement. Huge improvement; while J-Lo needs an image boost after being dumped by her record label and her latest movie bombing, she’s an ideal Idol judge due to being a legit pop star – just as Paula Abdul was.

Simon’s replacement is still in the works; I’d love to hear that Apprentice winner Bret Michaels is the choice, although the rumor mill has Steven Tyler as more likely. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if it was Nigel Lythgow himself, who is returning to Idol after a couple seasons as just on So You Think You Can Dance.

The remaining questions are these: will Fox retain Kara DioGuardi as a fourth judge? The word is, she’s already been told she won’t be returning, and her deal was a year-to-year contract.

The bigger question is whether Fox will retain Randy Jackson as a connection to Idol’s past, or if they want to clean house and start fresh. Hard to say.

Personally, I’d love to see Idol free up Randy; that way, when Simon Cowell’s X-Factor debuts in 2011, he could potentially re-team with both Paula and Randy, reuniting the original three-judge panel that worked so well for years on Idol.

Now if only we knew when Ryan Seacrest’s contract was up, and whether he’d consider re-teaming with Cowell on X-Factor, or if CNN is in his future instead.

John Stamos to join Glee?

In the Glee season finale, Emma revealed to Will that she was over him and dating her dentist now. Spoiler alert, but rumors all around the internet are that former “Uncle Jesse” actor John Stamos has been pegged to join Glee next fall as said dentist.

Stamos should prove a worthy rival to Schuster; even if he plays the role with a hint of villainy and is closer in age to Sue Sylvester than Emma, he still comes off with the charm of a guy who’s spent hours in the gym after downing some particularly effective vitamin supplements.

Could a sing-off between the two suitors be far behind? This is Glee… what do you think?

Scream 4 will hand off to next-gen cast

Scripter Kevin Williamson and director Wes Craven are together again for SCREAM 4, and while most people now know that Neve Campbell, David Arquette and Courtney Cox – the survivors of the previous trilogy – will likely appear, it will only be to hand things off to a next-gen cast.

Now, it appears that some of the actors on the Williamson-Craven wish list are becoming apparent. Included in the rumor mill are HEROES alumn Hayden Panettiere, Twilight’s Ashley Greene, Boy Meets World graduate Rory Culkin, and Surface/Boston Legal survivor, Lake Bell.

All this is intriguing, but a Lipofuze review might be more interesting until more is known about the plot. Alas, it’s largely under wraps… at least for now. Let’s hope it’s a case of talent well-used, not wasted.

Breaking Dawn gets a director

Summit Entertainment’s two-movies-from-one-book finale of the Twilight saga, inspired by the Stephanie Meyer book series, Breaking Dawn, finally has a director: Bill Condon.

A quick credit report on Condon reveals he was the director behind Dreamgirls, Kinsey, Gods and Monsters, and even scripted the movie version of Chicago. So he’s directed a lot of well-received movies but has no genre direction credits to speak of.

Still, he’s a big name and that counts for something; in fact, he’s probably the most established and decorated director to take on the teen angst vampire series to day. And considering the decidedly adult content of Breaking Dawn, it might be just the sort of director-to-material match the series needed at this point. Time will tell how well his treatment of the material is received.