BoxOfficeFangrl

We Are Your Friends will hurt Straight Outta Compton's box office the same way Rent derailed Walk the Line's run ten years ago...

It was awful, Universal was quick to apologize for the casting call and point out that the casting agency were the ones who wrote it up, not the studio. Not the brightest bulb who wrote that notice...I mean, just send out a notice for all ethnicities and choose according to whatever misguided preferences you have. The attitudes sadly weren't shocking at all, the colorism and "good hair" mentality goes back for centuries, against the black community as well as within it. To look at many rap videos through the years, it's clear that there are many rappers who've felt the same way about which women are desirable and which ones aren't, it was just sort of shocking to see it so bluntly put in writing like that.

That's Ice Cube's real-life son!

In VA schools used to go back in August but the theme park owners lobbied the state legislature to make it so that public schools couldn't begin their school years before Labor Day (to get that last bit of summer vacay business on a holiday weekend and to keep their summer work force). Districts can try to get exceptions but schools generally don't begin here until September. Colloquially it's known as the King's Dominion Law, after one of the biggest amusement parks in the state. I would agree that people don't want to go to the movies to be reminded of racial strife unless there's some sort 'triumph" or uplift at the end, storywise, commiserate to the amount of suffering that preceded it.

Gravity was must-see 3D and about 90 minutes long; will The Martian have the same box office advantages?

It's about a teenage girl's emerging sexuality/sex life...a tad different than the Wimpy Kid books!

I've always felt that way but looking back, I wonder... Titanic did start out with competition in James Bond in December (people weren't even sure it would win the OW) and the other Oscar movies in Jan/Feb pulling away the adult audience (As Good As It Gets adjusts to $257M, Good Will Hunting about $240M). In the summer, the competition was more action-oriented but Titanic lured people in other ways, with the romance and the historical angles, but then maybe all the guys who got dragged to Titanic might have opted for MIB/Air Force One/Contact instead. OTOH, think of all the obsessed girls who could've just lived at the movie theater during the summer weekdays instead of having to go to school. Maybe it's a wash... Not sure the world was demanding a new Vacation? I guess this doesn't mean good things for any Home Alone: Next Generation movies...

Maybe so. It's just weird to picture it being out the same time as Men In Black and a summer movie, as it was originally planned. A big part of the movie itself is how they're freezing in the water, and it was huge in the winter, kind of like how Frozen was a big hit as there were record blizzards (though it was probably 75 degrees the whole time in LA, so...). Maybe being a summer movie might have helped Titanic even more with all those teen girl viewers who were supposedly the sole reason it made so much (I know that's not the reality).

It was #1 for 15 weekends straight. All things Titanic were just everywhere for months and months and caused a huge backlash that wouldn't have been quite so bad if it had stayed a July 4th weekend movie (more competition, lower box office, maybe $400-450M, it only wins tech awards but not double-digit Oscars). A nice total so far for Amy—another win for A24.

He's losing his touch. About Ray and Macbeth are going VOD. If he isn't going to get people awards, either, eventually that's going to affect who wants to sell their movies to The Weinstein Co. $56 million for RN, wasn't expecting that much of a multiplier after Friday.

Interesting... It isn't that I don't think any teenagers would like the movie, I'm just not surprised that there wasn't much of an effort to tone things down in the script/filming so the rating would be teen friendly. That often happens with biopics when they are the kind of movie that will end up being shown in schools, or with movies full of HS/college age characters. But the trailer never made it look like either of those things, and the R-rating has had a box-office resurgence.

Would teenagers really care? Just because they grew up with iPhones, doesn't mean they'd go see a movie about Steve Jobs. Everything about this seems to skew older than The Social Network.

NY Times: How Hip-Hop Is Becoming The Oldies tl;dr Many examples (with numbers) of stations shifting to this format being instant massive success stories. One station in Indiana went from 15th in its market to 1st in three weeks after shifting from Hot AC to Classic Hip-Hop. Which may explain why a music biopic in August is tracking for a $40 million-plus OW.

Saw the trailer before the Amy Winehouse doc, people were really feeling it.

She also went out with Michelle Rodriguez for a bit, now she's with St. Vincent (probably even more of a "Who?" than Cara for most people). Modeling fame isn't what it used to be but she's one of the more famous runway people to come around in the past five years (up until Kendall Jenner, at least).

The boobs weren't part of a sex scene but purely an exercise in "art", with Kate even bringing up Monet, lol. Notice how they don't kiss until she's covered up again. For the actual love scene, there's not any nudity. Still having a big studio on their side probably helped their case. How many millions would you guess were added to Titanic's total because the tween/teen audience (in the dial-up era) could buy their own tickets for toplessness and sex?

Drive ins are well off their peak, I'm glad though surprised they haven't completely died out, but they were cheaper for families (no need to hire a babysitter) and once upon a time they were a massive hang out for teens. I don't know how it goes now but some places charged by the car and if they weren't strict about checking the car, you could cram a few extra people in the trunk and see a movie for cheap (if you've ever seen Grease there's an instance of this during the drive-in scene). Also, if the drive-in wasn't *ahem* vigilant about security, they provided one of the better make-out/hookup opportunities a teen couple ever had. And some actually like watching a movie under the stars.

Probably a not-small part of the audience was running around with family activities, not good for a "ladies' night" sort of movie. Horrible Bosses 2 wouldn't have touched the first in any case but Thanksgiving was an especially bad time for it.

Sure, movie studios aren't so stuck up about that they won't brag about success and they'd rather have money than not. It's just not surprising that as a studio gets more established that they'd rather make money with properties higher up the cinematic food chain than horror. The quest for respectability happens all the time in Hollywood.

Horror is kind of like the tacky side piece of Hollywood. The studios like the money it gives them but the image is just so trashy. It's like how the premium cable channels will do everything to trumpet Girls, Masters of Sex, Outlander, shows that will give them buzz or critical cache, but aren't sending out press releases about the ratings for stuff like The Cathouse or Gigolos. Good to see Minions come in on the high side of estimates. Universal is having an outstanding year, wonder how long the "course correction" will take and we'll all be thinking, "Remember when..."

Just in case you didn't know, the budget for The Gallows was $100,000.

There were Shrek babies (triplets?) and Justin Timberlake was the voice of some faraway relative who could inherit the throne after Fiona's father died. Fiona wasn't the successor for some reason. I mostly remember JT being in it because he and Cameron Diaz had broken up by the time the movie was released and the promo tour was awkward... Silly rabbit, who else is there? (that's sarcasm BTW)

Ah, memories of the time fanboys were 100% absolutely sure the unsinkable ship was going down. NBC News segment about Titanic fever:

Titanic's shoot was...tumultuous (lengthy, injuries, fifty people hospitalized after on-set food was drugged with hallucinogens) and every other blockbuster wannabe didn't cost $200M or even $100M back then. The budget was really considered extravagant but almost in a decadent way, a symptom of all that was wrong with Hollywood. There was sizeable skepticism that Cameron, well known for futuristic sci-fi action films, could do justice to a historical romantic drama. The media figured Titanic would be another "most expensive movie ever made" like Waterworld or Cleopatra that would be a critical and commercial flop. Leo and Kate on the red carpet before the Golden Globes:

Original Recipe Trailer? Seems to have a broader focus than just the found footage, may spoil the final movie: