WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Samuel L. Jackson Moves In

Samuel L. Jackson living next door to you is apparently horrifying to everyone except perhaps the people at Screen Gems, as they celebrate the number one opening of LAKEVIEW TERRACE, in which a happy couple move to the suburbs only to find that they are living next to the neighborhood terrorist. So if you are not with the Screen Gems camp and you discover Mr. Jackson lurking around your rose bushes, I suggest you call your realtor.


LAKEVIEW TERRACE opened solidly with fifteen and a half million and a sturdy per screen average of over $6K. This would not be enough though to elevate the overall box office to the same levels as the pack of Hollywood hits from last weekend did. LAKEVIEW TERRACE is certainly the only successful wide opening of the weekend. Opening just below in third and fourth respectively was the romantic comedy, MY BEST FRIEND’S GIRL and the animated IGOR. Both films earned mediocre per screens of $3K and poor reviews. The weekend’s only other wide opener, the David Koepp directed GHOST TOWN, opened on a good chunk less screens but found a similar sized audience for an eighth place debut. All four films found their own audiences and found at the same time that these audiences weren’t all that big.


Brad Pitt was feeling generous this week when he gave $100K to support the gay community looking to keep gay marriage legal in California when the subject comes up for debate in the coming election. It’s no surprise he’s out there giving it away as he is clearly riding high on the success of his latest, BURN AFTER READING. The Coen Brothers directed pic held steady with only a 41% loss for a 2nd place finish. Good word of mouth and strong critical response has made it the must-see September title. This isn’t saying that much given the competition but it’s still something. Last week’s other holdover titles all plummeted by nearly 50% or more, showing absolutely no staying power whatsoever.


Two high profile festival favorites made their platform debuts to spectacular results this weekend. The Ed Harris directed western, APPALOOSA, scored an $18K per screen average on 14 screens. The other title outshined even that with a $29K average on a mere 7 screens. This would be the Saul Dibb directed, THE DUCHESS, starring Keira Knightly. Both will expand slowly in the weeks to come and will hopefully do so more smoothly than TOWELHEAD. After a stellar platform last week, the film fizzled after adding 14 screens, the Alan Ball directorial debut saw its per screen average drop from $13K to under $4K. The true test comes this weekend when it expands to 90 screens. If it doesn’t work out, Ball might want to change his name to Baghead because he might not want to show his face for a while.

NEXT WEEK: What is with all this overcrowding? Aside from three high profile wide releases, there are no less than a dozen limited releases vying for the North American dollar. The biggies include the Shia LaBeouf thriller, EAGLE-EYE, the repairing of Richard Gere and Diane Lane, NIGHT AT RODANTHE and the latest Spike Lee mess, I mean, joint, MIRACLE AT ST, ANNA. Meanwhile, BLINDNESS, CHOKE and THE LUCKY ONES are just a few of the indies hoping to find a place in the crowd. C’mon, Hollywood, spread the love!

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: The Coens Burn 'Em All

So I didn’t bother with the box office report last weekend. It’s not like anyone bothered going to the movies last weekend either so no big deal. With four major wide releases all pulling in above $10 million to secure the top four spots, the fall box office is back and up and running. There were even a few surprises amongst the fall colours to keep people guessing and I’m not referring to Nicolas Cage’s BANGKOK DANGEROUS plummeting nearly 70% in its second week after barely making anything in first place last week. That wasn’t the least bit surprising.


First of all, the Coen brothers must most definitely be surprised as they find themselves debuting at number one for the first time with BURN AFTER READING. The Coens’s films do not ordinarily open wide. In fact, after THE BIG LEBOWSKI, THE LADYKILLERS and INTOLERABLE CRUELTY, BURN AFTER READING is only the fourth Coen brother film to open wide right away and it is certainly the first to debut on top with such robust numbers. Of all the major releases this week, this was the only picture to garner critical support. That, in combination with the immensely marketable cast and the buzz they earned with their Oscar win for last year’s NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, gave the Coens exactly what they needed to finally convince the masses that they can make movies for them too.


Although it wouldn’t be the first time, Tyler Perry might have been surprised to find his latest, TYLER PERRY’S THE FAMILY THAT PREYS settling for second. Almost all of Perry’s previous offerings have surpassed expectations at the box office to the point where racking up $18 million seems below standard practically. Still, the film generated the highest per screen average of any film in the Top 10 and only came up a couple of million shy of this spring’s MEET THE BROWNS.


The good people at Overture must be surprised. After all, how could a picture that boasts the two greatest actors of our generation for the first time together on screen – apparently the marketing folks have conveniently forgotten HEAT – open below a quirky comedy and a movie with a marginalized audience. RIGHTEOUS KILL, starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, opened wider than any other film and only managed an average of $5K. It may be modest but it is by no means an embarrassing gross for an opening weekend – that is unless your film stars Pacino AND De Niro. Yes, I’m sure the folks at Overture are still shaking their heads.


Let’s not forget the ladies even though they conveniently forget the men. Diane English’s remake of the 30’s classic, THE WOMEN features Annette Bening, Meg Ryan, Eva Mendes, Jada Pinkett Smith, Debra Messing and not a single man. That’s right. There are no men to be found in this picture – even if one of the women is walking down a busy New York street. Though the film battled scathing reviews to muster a $10 million dollar debut, I’m sure English was surprised the take was not bigger. After female-skewed hits like SEX AND THE CITY and MAMMA MIA! performed so well, PictureHouse was hoping to capitalize on the trend. Those films were hits because they reached past their core markets and brought in unexpected male audiences though. Maybe it’s because they actually had guys in them.


The final surprise this week is for Alan Ball. The Academy Award winning screenwriter of AMERICAN BEAUTY and creator of HBO’s “Six Feet Under” made his directorial debut this week to mixed reviews and polarized controversy with TOWELHEAD. The film, in which an Arab-American girl struggles with a sexual obsession, scored an impressive average of over $13K on just four screens and secured its expansion.

NEXT WEEK: It is another busy week for Hollywood next week, except with less high profile bows. Still another four wide releases will hit. GHOST TOWN finds Ricky Gervais seeing dead people. John Cusack gets animated in IGOR. Samuel L. Jackson makes trouble for neighbour, Patrick Wilson, in LAKEVIEW TERRACE. And Dane Cook steals Kate Hudson from Jason Biggs in MY BEST FRIEND’S GIRL. This is the widest of the four releases. You’d think we cared or something.

Fall Foliage: September

BLACK SHEEP'S FALL FILM PREVIEW


Summertime. Who doesn’t love it? Countless hours roasting at the beach, just swirling your tongue around a chocolate covered waffle cone, making sure that every last bite of that sweet, soft vanilla ice cream makes it into your hot mouth. And if your imagination happens to be running wild under the influence of a mild heat stroke, you can always seek shelter in a cool, dark auditorium for a big, summer movie. You like strapping superheroes? You got it! You like babes and bombs? It’s all waiting for you! If you’re anything like me though, you see the summer as just a few months of mostly mindless distraction designed to pass the time before the fall. Fall is a time for prestige and pedigree, thought and revelation. Fall is a time for cerebral celebration. And while summer is not quite done with us yet, the fall is just around the corner. Over the next few weeks, Black Sheep will be looking at each of the coming months, one by one, and highlighting the most exciting films to be appearing amidst the changing leaves. So as not to get too far ahead of ourselves, how about we begin with September?

Last fall brought us the eventual Oscar winner and 2007 Mouton d'Or winner for Best Picture, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, by the infamous writer/director siblings, Joel & Ethan Coen. This September, the brothers are back and while there is little to no Oscar buzz this time around, the cool factor that used to surround every project they were involved with is finally back after a string of disappointments. BURN AFTER READING is certainly lighter in tone than their last picture as two dodgy gym employees decide to use a computer disc containing potential CIA secrets they find in a changing room as leverage to get what they want out of life. As per usual, all the stars, from Clooney to Malkovich, to Swinton, McDormand and Pitt are out for the occasion.

Opening the same weekend, “Murphy Brown” writer, Diane English’s THE WOMEN looks to continue the trend of successful female driven pictures that proved themselves and then some this summer (see SEX AND THE CITY and MAMMA MIA!). A remake of the 1939 classic, English has rounded up a stellar cast that includes Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Jada Pinkett Smith, Debra Messing and Eva Mendes. If English pulls it off, this could be the picture that finally gets Bening her Oscar and even more impressively, gets America to fall back in love with Meg Ryan.

You would think that winning an Academy Award for writing a screenplay that genuinely struck a chord with audiences or creating a groundbreaking television series that forced people to face death in a whole new way would be plenty to get your first directorial effort sold in no time. Apparently not so. Alan Ball, the writer of AMERICAN BEAUTY and creator of “Six Feet Under”, screened TOWELHEAD at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival and it was days before it was bought up by the now defunct Warner Independent. At the time, it was called NOTHING IS PRIVATE but when it resurfaced at this year’s Sundance festival, it had gone back to the title of the novel it was based on.

Spike Lee is still making joints and not pictures but they are nothing like his earlier work. Or so it would seem on the surface. His later works might have a greater reach after mainstream success like THE INSIDE MAN but Lee is still fighting for the cause of the African-American people just by making sure they are front and center and getting their stories told in a fashion that is neither exploitative nor watered down for a wider audience. MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA is a fresh WWII story about a battalion of black soldiers that only gets heard in 1984, after a postal worker who served in that same battalion commits a seemingly inexplicable murder.

The month closes with a throwback to the summer time. Not every fall movie is Oscar bait. Believe it or not, some people still want to have an explosive good time. Enter Shia LaBeouf in EAGLE EYE. This terrorist thriller reteams LaBeouf with the director that propelled him to stardom. No, I’m not talking about the Shia-obsessed, Steven Spielberg, but rather DISTURBIA director, D.J. Caruso. LaBoeuf, along with blossoming starlet, Michelle Monaghan, unwittingly become roped into a terrorist plot that I’m sure they will be desperately trying to foil. This production was a bit of a rush, has many a writer to its credit and was pushed back from an earlier August release date. Ordinarily these would all be very bad signs but LaBeouf is the hottest young star on the planet so if anyone can change the direction of the harsh fall wind, he can.

Also in September … Nicolas Cage kills for money in BANGKOK DANGEROUS … Box-office golden boy, Tyler Perry takes a road trip in THE FAMILY THAT PREYS … Al Pacino and Robert Deniro reteam to the delight of every man’s inner boy in RIGHTEOUS KILL … Samuel Jackson torments his beautiful new mixed race neighbours (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) in LAKEVIEW TERRACE … Keira Knightly throws on her best Victorian wig in THE DUCHESS … As previously reported, CITY OF GOD director, Fernando Meirelles gives us a world without sight in BLINDNESS … Actor Ed Harris directs for the first time since POLLACK with the western, APPALOOSA … John Cusack voices the little guy who finally demands his glory in IGOR … One of Hollywood’s favorite writers, David Koepp, returns to directing with GHOST TOWN, a vehicle for Ricky Gervais where he can talk to dead people … Rachel McAdams, Tim Robbins and Michael Pena are a trio of soldiers road tripping through a homeland they no longer recognize in THE LUCKY ONES … and Richard Gere and Diane Lane reunite for love in the Nicholas Sparks adaptation, NIGHTS IN RODANTHE.

Tune in next week to see how Hollywood intends to scare the crap out of you in October!