BoxOfficeFangrl

Avatar had blue CGI aliens saving another planet, American Sniper is about an Iraq War veteran, much more in the AMPAS wheelhouse. Boyhood might triumph after all but I can also see a lot of the older voters saying nothing happened and writing it off as glorified home movies and here comes a Clint Eastwood box office smash as the fresh alternative...

Shhhhh, don't ruin the narrative!

It could be close! And WTF at Viola Davis being in it, no wonder she went to TV!

Bibbity Bobbity Boo:

Like American Sniper's record-breaking limited release wasn't mostly in NY and LA, with just one theater in "Middle America"...

Somehow this line of thinking didn't stop Lincoln from being a massive hit...sure, Lincoln was around a hundred years earlier but he is definitely not an unknown quantity in America by any stretch. On paper it just seems so wrong that Selma will make around half of what 42 did, but lost in the whole outcry about the Oscar snubs is that, despite the reviews, not even the public is here for the movie. Lots of underwhelming Oscarbait performs better than Selma will. Malcolm X was how many years ago and, like, three hours long and about Malcolm X and Selma might not make as much in 2014/15 dollars. Totally whiffed on this box office prediction. The song from Selma mentions Ferguson and I wonder if it's like how Fruitvale Station was too similar to the Trayvon Martin case and it probably hurt its box office performance. So now Selma comes along and there are comparisons to the protests now and I'm sure some were like, "I can just turn on the news, thanks, now let's go see Taken," or Kevin Hart. But how long has WWII been a Hollywood staple, probably since WWII was happening, and it shows little sign of abating, but I guess the stories are more triumphant or just not about uncomfortable realities that aren't good times at the movies for America. Really glad to see moviegoing thriving in January when last month, theater-going was dooooomed! AS will go from the lowest-grossing to highest-grossing Best Picture nominee in less than week? Insane!

Weinstein knew that without stellar overall reviews and Adams being nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars, that Big Eyes wasn't going to be Shutter Island or Monuments Men and be a financial success. So, he just took his chance and hoped to lure the crowd the awards bait audience over the holidays, that had already seen Wild and missed The Imitation Game due to sellouts, lol. Better to make as much as you can than dying in limited release, lucky to scratch $1 million? Or not, depending on distribution costs.

Wonder if the college football playoff games cut into movie going yesterday. There are always New Year's bowl games but the national championship game has been well past Jan 1 for years now. Comparing it to the NFL, the conference championships don't get Super Bowl ratings but still really huge and it has an impact on movie attendance that Sunday. Yesterday was the college equivalent and early indications are that the ratings were pretty big: 15.5 for Oregon/Florida State and 15.3 for Ohio State/Alabama.

True, a couple of the stars who openly refused to watch Brokeback are...no longer with us, but a 2012 study showed that the median age of AMPAS members was 62, with only 14% of the membership being under 50. And some of these over-70 guys are like Scorcese making WoWS, but then you have a nun watching her screeners with the sisters in the abbey. You're probably right that a movie being "too gay" would be less objectionable now than it was in 2005, but does a director/studio want to bet on the progressiveness of Oscar voters? I can see why they wouldn't, even though I think it's the wrong call creatively and will seem like a worse move 10 years in the rearview mirror.

IDK, I find this to be less and less true with younger straight women, especially the ones who've been online for much of their lives, they like guy-on-guy for the same shallow reasons, maybe they do a bit more fanfic writing and real-person shipping than men do. But TIG is an Oscar movie, it has to cater to voters who couldn't deal with Brokeback. If it were a TV movie, they would have more freedom in the area of sexuality, which really doesn't say much for the movie industry, which in the late 1960s/1970s was all about being groundbreaking and seems to have regressed in some ways.

So the Deadline article on Selma's "inaccuracies" is surrounded by ads for The Imitation Game. Ava DuVernay was a publicist before she went into directing, so I think Selma will be able to withstand the controversy for now...

The Queen managed to show the Queen and Tony Blair in affectionate scenes with their spouses, even though the main plot was about how they reacted to the death of Princess Diana. I doubt many were asking for/expecting long philosophical discussions about homosexuality in the WWII workplace or a threesome while the Enigma machine was warming up, but I think when your protagonist is (do I have to spoiler? This is Turing's actual life, it's on Wikipedia, but so I don't get yelled at) for the film to avoid PDA completely is kind of a copout? Or at least as a filmmaker/studio, you leave yourself open to that allegation, no matter how much you try to deny that AMPAS's homophobic history and wanting to maximize box office played no role in the decision. Show him making eyes at some guy in a pub during a break or leaving a park with a smile on his face, or something, if two grown men kissing is "too much".

That and this is probably "safe" enough for a school to show to HS kids (Weinstein getting that field trip box office a la Lincoln). But I would say Turing's sexuality is mentioned in more than just the third act. Is anything shown? Not really, unless you count as a PDA-fest. Even US network TV is more risque these days. But no one making genuine Oscar bait wants to risk what happened to Brokeback.

TIG mentions Turing being gay but shies away from displays of affection; there was probably more action on Will & Grace. I saw it this weekend in a military-heavy area and the theater was packed.

And Oprah wasn't even in 12YAS, she was in The Butler, which made $116M without much awards traction, though to be fair, it also had less competition as a summer drama. As titles go, Selma is far less obscure for a movie about MLK leading marches in Selma, compared to The Imitation Game for the Alan Turing biopic, but I haven't seen too much complaining about that around these parts.

I said multiple global hits. All Aronofsky had on his blockbuster track record was Black Swan and that was enough for him to be handed $125M for Environmentalist Noah. Think the woman who directed The Proposal or Kathryn Bigelow or Tim Story would have ever been offered that kind of money to direct an unconventional retelling of a Bible story? Yeah no. But perhaps that is a good thing since I question the financial outlay, considering the approach to the subject matter.

Filmmakers can do whatever they want, but studios shouldn't be surprised when these efforts tank and end up being break even/money losing projects. It is show business after all. Not all filmmakers are afforded the luxury to get funding for $100+ million to make off-the-wall versions of Bible stories. At least Ridley has a track record of multiple global hits, unlike Aronofsky. But I suppose it isn't Ridley Scott or Darren Aronofsky's fault that no major studio would ever hand Lee Daniels or Kathryn Bigelow over $100 mil to make Jonah with mermaids, or even half that much, to manifest whatever wackadoo spin "creative vision" they want to put on an Old Testament story.

Being that Selma will expand nationwide around the MLK holiday it's bound to get that "school field trip" money like Lincoln...

The Butler (much worse reviews and awards support, same actors in David Oyelewo and Oprah) made $116M domestic. Also, the audience for The Butler doesn't need Selma to be called KING to know it's about MLK. They would most likely have some awareness of that already, the trailers make it pretty clear and there's plenty of advertising for it if you consume the right channels/social media. It's going into wide release the weekend before the holiday that's in honor of MLK. But keep doubting. This is going to be "Why would Unbroken make more than War Horse?" all over again.

Agreed. Being the type of movie Boyhood is, I think it had to have made more money, with Coltrane getting more Best Actor notices, for there to be such certainty it would win Best Picture at this stage. The Hurt Locker did win with its low gross, but it was about the War in Iraq, and what did it have to beat: blue alien sci-fi, Tarantino gore, Sandra Bullock in a Hallmark movie, George Clooney firing people? I doubt Hurt Locker ever could've won against a King's Speech or Argo. It's not like the best-reviewed movie always wins Best Picture...Selma will probably be the second best in reviews among all the Best Picture nominees by RT/Metacritic standards and that's been more than good enough to win BP in the past. Unbroken is securing its place in the Best Picture lineup with the strong box office start. LOL if it pulls a Gladiator and wins BP...AMPAS would get it from both sides, causing Twitter outages for sure.

For live-action movies, The Proposal (Anne Fletcher) made $163.9M and What Women Want (Nancy Meyers), $182.8M.

Movies don't make $15+ million on Christmas Day by default. Universal didn't let up with the advertising and the book has been on the bestseller list since it came out in 2010. Wouldn't be surprised at all if it plays like The Blind Side, but TBS never positioned itself as a Best Picture frontrunner so it got the "it's nice enough for what it is" reviews, while critics were harsher with Unbroken. Which, going by RT score, makes one movie seem much "worse" than the other, but the general audience probably won't see it that way.

I would say Connery and Craig are my favorite Bonds as well, but there was a long gap between the two... Maybe audiences wouldn't have gone for someone who brought out Bond's rugged/dangerous edge with the memory of Connery so fresh, and you needed a Moore, who played up different qualities of the character, for the general public to move on and accept a new guy. OTOH, they really wanted Brosnan after Moore at first and their takes on Bond aren't poles apart, but Brosnan (at the time) was just a younger, more attractive version. So they could just get some taller blond guy to replace Craig...paging Tom Felton (joking). Yep. I don't think it will be Hoult per se, but I'm not ruling out someone else in that age range. If they hit the jackpot with a 31 year old, they will get that many more movies out of him.

They have but some of the fans haven't, especially now that Jen and Angie are both vying for Oscars the same year. I guess Angie the shameless homewrecker was supposed to lose everything, while Jen was forced back to sitcoms like the basic TV girl that she is. Neither has really happened but the more invested fans on each "team" cling to any sign, no matter how flimsy, that the other is pathetic flop. At this point it obviously says less about the stars themselves than the fans who are way too invested in it all.

In one of the Sony leaks, DDL and Leo were bandied about for Cleopatra. Fingers crossed that these Unbroken/ITW numbers hold.