BoxOfficeFangrl

Hitting HBO Max in a week:

A medieval-era he said/she said movie with multiple perspectives of a rape accusation making $100 million? Maybe in the nineties, but with a nineties script: they focus mostly on the men (Daniel Day-Lewis vs I don’t know, Tom Cruise? But Tom insists on good hair and refuses to play a pathetic oaf) and their big macho fight at the end. The movie would play up the ambiguity and leave the audience more conflicted about what really transpired. The "he said" version with DDL and Sophie Marceau would have been a steamy consensual love scene with nudity. The "she said" side is more about how the accusation makes Tom feel, him saving face, and the script doesn't care about making her sympathetic. It may be an old story but the final script was very post #MeToo, a product of its time. But The Last Duel, as it is? Maybe it does slightly better in 2019 ($30-40m domestic) but the subject matter was still already no-go for a lot of women by then, so IMO it's still a money loser theatrically. When was the last medieval-era hit movie without a fantasy element? It's like people now only go for the Middle Ages if there are dragons/elves/magic thrown in.

Given the tone/subject matter, I figured TÁR would be divisive to audiences, but not quite so brain-breaking for professional journalists... (possible spoilers in the links) Before there was much public info about the movie, I figured TÁR was a biopic, because it's not like there are tons of movies being made about conductors. The name wasn't familiar, but what do I know about today's classical music scene? When I learned Lydia Tár was fictional (via some profile about Cate when it premiered), I thought, "Oh, okay," and kept it moving. Apparently, I should have had an existential crisis about this news? LOL

Another daily movie game for the collection: https://moviedle.xyz/ It's pretty new, hopefully the answers get a bit more challenging in time.

A24 is trying to stage off Even More Discourse and cruel memes as long as possible? But in a way, hiding how the character looks in the movie can be viewed as kind of fetishizing it...

"Honor the man, honor the film" is the underlying campaign of almost every biopic (especially musicians), Harvey was just more brazen about it. His exile from the industry was long overdue, but sometimes I've wondered how he would have handled different awards season scenarios, had his fall from grace not happened. Would he have acquired CODA or been behind Power of the Dog, and what takedown angle would he have tried on the other? Which is not to say the Oscars were purely about merit until Weinstein came along: awards campaigning goes way back. * The more that The Rock tries pumping up Black Adam's success, the more I see how similar he and Vin Diesel are. No wonder they didn't get along...

I think $25 million for Tár would have always been extremely optimistic. Blanchett may be getting Blue Jasmine-level reviews, but IMO Notes on a Scandal or Carol might be better reference points for potential audience appeal. Even the power of the Weinstein machine (they even tried pretending Carol was a thriller!) only got it to $12.7 million domestic back in 2015. Todd Field’s last movie, Little Children, made less than half that. Best Actress buzz drives internet traffic and awards podcasts, but the box office track record on Actress frontrunners is much more mixed. * For me, the box office for Till is completely unsurprising. It was advertised well enough, but it's about the horrific death of a real-life child due to racial violence. Even if the violence is offscreen, people of several demographics will find that subject too traumatic/intense for a trip to the movies in 2022. There was also a miniseries about Emmett Till's mother earlier this year on ABC. For many, the story is already well known and too heavy to revisit, regardless of how well done this latest iteration may be.

AMPAS voters will go for something they don't personally enjoy if it's "important" somehow, or they think it's someone's "time" to win and no one else strikes them as a better option. I just don't know if they will embrace Tár that way for the win; practically all of Cate's competition will be easier for AMPAS to watch. I think Fraser will face the same issue in Best Actor, but even that has the transformation element and a more sympathetic character. Watch I Wanna Dance with Somebody be a hit during the holidays and the voters will just check off the biopic performance. Film Twitter will explode as Elvis and Whitney become Oscar-winning roles in the same year...

Just saw Tár (in a 200-seat auditorium, all 8 of us had plenty of room) and Cate will be all right with two Oscars... I agree with the assessment that the performance is more DDL in Phantom Thread than There Will Be Blood. Who knows how awards season will play out, but IMO Tár's the kind of movie/character with a high potential to play very badly with the Anonymous Oscar Ballot types.

After all the jokes about it, I think Gisele and Pete would avoid that even if they crossed paths and actually liked each other. But I feel like she'll bring real "revenge" energy with whomever she dates next. The TMZ reporter must be embedded at the courthouse:

I guess he'll play until 50 now... Maybe his image will rebound by the time "80 For Brady" comes out...

"Error", sure...

It just needs an another adjective or something and they'd be good to go. Even knockoffs from The Asylum have better titles. I still wanna see it. * Incredible Tuesday bump for Ticket to Paradise!

I thought there was a difference in the box office effect of Halloween on the weekend vs a weekday? Falling on the weekend is bad for box office because potential moviegoers are busy with other things: older teens/young adults go to parties, and parents of younger kids are dealing with Halloween stuff for their children instead of having a night out for themselves. When Halloween is in the middle of the week, the parties are mostly on the weekend, so that's more people free to go to movies on the 31st. A movie night (especially horror) is a way to do something celebratory on Halloween itself, when there's still work/classes tomorrow. For the young parents it's a wash, a lot of them are probably busy on Halloween night but school nights aren't a prime moviegoing time for families.

I guess it depends on how much of today's "faith-based" movie audience wants to hear that they're too judgmental and not actually Christ-like.

The old numbers threads are archived in this forum: https://forums.boxofficetheory.com/forum/76-numbers-and-data/

Movie Math is generally out on Sunday afternoons so it's "First!" in a way, if you want video analysis of the weekend box office. She does talk about diversity breakdowns, sometimes awkwardly, but at the moment, she's not totally "Get woke, go broke!" about it, and so many YouTube channels are. I kind of get what GR meant about Black Adam: if it had opened to $90-$100M, I doubt she would be saying a drop in the 50s is bad, because it would be on track for a higher total overall. BA's budget is around $200M and with typical drops, the movie won't make that much domestically. I can see how a box office watcher would view BA's total so far as not great, considering everything. But you do have to remember with Grace how her views on a particular subject (in this case, the DCEU) affect how she spins the box office results.

EEAAO got to 50K (in 10 theaters!) and Licorice Pizza was over 80K per theater in 4, but the latter was in 70mm exclusively at first, so the biggest auditoriums with the highest ticket prices. But yeah, even with current inflation, we are a long way from the OW averages of La La Land (176K) or American Sniper (169K). $6.4 million still isn't bad for Ticket to Paradise considering the previews. I think it would’ve opened even better if the younger cast had more star power, but it seems like it was mostly made for the international audience, anyway...

The titular role doesn't necessarily mean the leading role, though. Obviously, this isn't a Rebecca situation (where the title character never appears onscreen), but maybe Lyle is only in it so much compared to the parents (or the kid, but "kid performance = Supporting", generally). Or, if anyone is going to shatter the voice acting nomination barrier at the Oscars, it'll probably happen in Supporting. Not that Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile is the movie likely to make awards history, but it's hardly the first FYC ad that ever promoted an unlikely outcome....

I thought she'd hang on long enough to outlast the Lettuce Liz livestream: Is The Crown really more fictional than any of the biopics starred in by Dame Judi herself? The industry makes biographical movies and shows based on recent events all the time, they all take liberties and The Crown isn't making stuff up on the level of Blonde or anything. Everyone is just worked up because they've reached the Peak Charles/Diana/Camilla years. It was an infamously public Hot Mess, and there are still unresolved feelings about all of it. But honestly, Charles and the royalists should be really grateful The Crown declined to introduce Dale Tryon or Janet Jenkins as characters on the show...

It probably depends on how competitive the categories are next year, and if this year's gambit works. She Said's reviews aren't great so it may not.

Lol, she posted a page from the book Heartburn. It may or may not be the infamous special salad dressing that allegedly won Harry's heart and had Jason Sudeikis losing his got damn mind...

If they were hoping to pull in high school/college kids with this, the daughter would have been played by someone with a following, like a Euphoria person or some singer trying to act. But Ticket to Paradise costs $60 million as it is, that probably wasn't in the budget.