BoxOfficeFangrl

Hopefully, the halftime show/Oscar campaign synergy works out this time (sorry JLo)...

The box office for The Monuments Men was $156 million worldwide, Disney would be very happy if Amsterdam made anything close to that much (in 2014 or 2022 dollars). Obviously it won't, the market has changed and even by 2014 standards, that's respectable money for a poorly reviewed one-time Oscar hopeful.

In hindsight, the marketing probably should have been more overt about the real-life events that are part of the movie's plot, but are only vaguely alluded to in ads/trailers. The media would have picked it up, and you might have appealed to some history junkies out there. The studio also could have saved on the advertising budget by milking the right-wing outrage machine for free publicity. If only that crowd had known what Amsterdam is really about: they love to bash Hollyweird for "going woke" and being "preachy" with its "liberal" message. Critics might have been a bit more torn between eviscerating DOR and wanting to back a movie publicly under attack for its politics, and that possibly tilts the RT score to mediocre (50-60 percent) rather than aggressively bad. Maybe none of that turns Amstetdam into a hit, but maybe makes it less of a flop?

Just realized this is set during the 28-3 Super Bowl: who's going to be avoiding the movie more, the entire metro Atlanta area or Gisele?

When the movie was coming out, I saw a comment that it's a pattern with Wilde of just saying whatever she thinks will make herself sound good in the moment, regardless of how it might contradict whatever she said before, or reality. So, it doesn't matter that she was the one saying she wanted the trailers to have even more sex: that was last month. Now that people have seen the movie and came out of it scratching/shaking their heads at all of her "female pleasure" talk, Wilde wants to distance herself from it. And she'll still have ardent defenders, because misogyny and Booksmart, or something... I hope Miss Flo is somewhere having a good laugh...

Apparently, a $2.1m Tuesday for Smile:

Days of our Lives left network TV last month and wasted no time pushing the envelope....

Can't believe TGM is still in the Top 10! I know it's partly because the market has fewer releases than before, but people still have to respond to it. "I Ain't Worried" reaches #6 on the Hot 100:

The trailer on YouTube: So, that's what people meant about the color grading...

Licorice Pizza opened to $345,157 in 4 NY/LA locations to an average of $86,289, but it played exclusively in 70mm (higher ticket prices, bigger rooms). The one location it played in Los Angeles was a single screen but with 1,300+ seats. Two different movies can open in 4 theaters in NY/LA but the number of screens, showtimes, seating capacity and ticket prices can vary wildly for each release, not to mention runtimes affecting the number of screenings per day. And the box office is averaged out between the number of theaters, rarely if ever does the reporting say, "[Movie So-and-So] made $400,000 in 4 theaters this weekend, and just one of them brought in $250,000 alone! The other three places kinda straggled a bit." No, you just hear it was a 100K per theater average.

Pre-pandemic, the Los Angeles side of a platform release could support many more showtimes than that per day. Here's a 2019 article about Parasite's opening weekend: That's 9 screens. For a longer movie, let's say each screen does 3 showtimes per day, times 3 days for the weekend, and that's 81 showtimes from Friday to Sunday. And one of those screens had 800 seats! Even assuming a split screen or two, platform releases were once getting ~75 showtimes a weekend from two theaters in Los Angeles (and more for a shorter movie). You're just not going to get that degree of saturation by playing in a couple of AMCs by the mall. Platform opening weekend numbers won't begin to touch their former glory any time soon, as long as the Los Angeles specialty market remains in its current state. Maybe inflation or a roadshow pricing boost, but not the same attendance as before.

It doesn't help that the LA market lost the speciality theaters that treated new limited releases like the MCU. The Arclight would have a La La Land on 5-6 screens, including the Cineramadome with 800 seats, that's how movies like that could post 100K per theater averages. Now when that kind of movie debuts in Los Angeles, it just gets a couple of screens at an AMC or two. There's less capacity than before at the LA arthouse and maybe the Arclight lovers are not rushing out the same way to The Grove or wherever.

The gay actors who've openly criticized Fraser's casting aren't exactly 600 pounds, either? There aren't a lot of famous actors that size, regardless of sexuality, anyone cast would have been in a fatsuit. And even with a 600 pound actor, the source material would still be controversial.

Renner's agents must have negotiated his AH contract back when he was the next big thing poised to take over Bourne and Mission: Impossible, before both franchises were like, "Never mind!" I finally found a premise of Tár that wasn't super generic... Well, Film Twitter/TikTok will be sooooo much fun when Austin Butler and Cate win Best Actor and Best Actress for those roles. Great for Smile! The Ring had crazy legs back in the day.

The Sony email leaks revealed that the big five American Hustle stars got points, which may have lowered their upfront salaries and the budget. It also turned out that Bale/Cooper/Renner got more points than Adams/Lawrence. It caused a big outrage about gender pay disparities in Hollywood, and JLaw was openly critical. So, with Amsterdam, Margot/Anya/Zoe and other actresses probably demanded their money upfront, which upped the budget. I also imagine it took less effort to recreate 1978 (especially in 2013) than the mid-1930s (or earlier, apparently the main trio met during World War I) almost 90 years later. On paper, it makes no sense to greenlight Amsterdam. Maybe DOR found the New Regency exec whose favorite movie ever was The Sting and they have a soft spot for Great Depression-era crime comedies?

I'm probably conflating her acting attempts and soundtrack singles, but even those have petered out at the Golden Globes at most: "Today Was a Fairytale" (Valentine's Day) "Safe & Sound" (The Hunger Games) "I Don't Wanna Live Forever" (Fifty Shades Darker) "Beautiful Ghosts" (Cats) Maybe "Carolina" will do the trick; the Best Live-Action Short gambit might backfire.

I agree, general audiences don't know who David O Russell is and aren't boycotting him in large numbers. It's that his 2010s movies succeeded financially (or not) based almost entirely on the amount of critical acclaim and awards nominations they received. Now, he's made a Depression-era crime caper screwball comedy(?). In 2022, that kind of movie absolutely needs critics on its side in a big way, to be a financial success. And critics (who actually are aware of #MeToo controversies and care about their impact) were never going to give DOR's first movie since the Fall of Weinstein overall positive reviews, regardless of its quality. So, the studio has a not-great movie with a murky premise in a genre that's a tough sell to today's moviegoers. They can still try to lure audiences with the star power of the cast, but the stars and the PR team have to waste energy coming up with media responses for the "DOR problem". Do they refuse to answer questions about his controversies or working with him, do they limit promotion to "friendly" media, or do they give honest answers and risk the focus turning to that over the new movie? Over multiple days this week, my feed showed links about Bale confirming that he intervened on the American Hustle set when DOR was abusive to Amy Adams. Even if you're a "separate the art from the artist" type, those headlines take up space that could be going to Amsterdam and why people should see it now. For the sorts of movies that don't need good Metacritic scores to succeed, the director's toxic reputation matters a lot less. Taylor wants to be in respectable movies but doesn't trust her acting experience, so she sticks to supporting roles/cameos? Which would be fine if there weren't so much This Had Oscar Buzz fodder.

I read the premise on Wikipedia, the trailer says "a lot of this actually happened", but I never would have guessed what they meant based on the ads. The American Hustle trailers/ads are also more vibes than plot, but there was more overall star power in the top roles and the story took place 35 years ago (at the time) vs nearly 90 years ago for Amsterdam.

The diminishing returns started with Joy and that was pre-pandemic, before #MeToo. The next DOR movie was going to have a tougher time being accepted, even if Covid had never happened. If some studio had given him $10-20 million for a contemporary drama in January 2020, I would be cynical but from a business perspective, sure. Eighty million for a 1930s caper directed by a predator, that began filming in January 2021? Say it started at $65 million and ballooned due to Covid costs, that's still a baffling choice. Like, if his first movie back was a cheapie $5m horror, not only is it inexpensive, but there's the novelty of what a David O Russell horror movie would even be like. It would also appeal to an audience that doesn't care if the director has been "canceled", or need awards buzz to be successful. Instead, the studio just carried on like it was 2016 and the latest DOR ensemble was going to be showered with awards and $200 million worldwide. Insanity...

Why is Amsterdam in IMAX? Did any actor from it besides Bale promote it? I feel like I saw a dozen interviews with him and the rest of them peaced out after the premiere.

I'm not saying it's totally true, but there are Black people who feel Hollywood only wants to fund serious Black dramas if they are about "the struggle": slavery, Jim Crow era segregation, the Civil Rights movement, or more modern overt racism. These movies/shows can feature a lot of racially motivated violence/language/etc. that some may find extremely upsetting to watch. There's also concern about these projects being traumatic to film for the cast/crew, especially if they make multiple movies/shows of this nature in the course of a career--and most Black actors have. Not that those stories aren't important, and they can be a gateway for people to learn more about racism. But if these are topics you already know or subjects you have seen before, the cumulative effect can be exhausting. Some of this is social media outrage, where people always like to complain. If there were a five-year moratorium on movies and shows about Black slavery/discrimination, there would probably be cries it's a conspiracy to sanitize the past. It's a tricky balance. There's also suspicion that maybe Hollywood isn't entirely well-meaning, but drawn to Black trauma stories as an "acceptable" outlet to portray violence against Black people (you get the same sort of complaint about all the stories set hundreds of years ago that showcase graphic sexual assaults against women in the name of "historical accuracy"). I see why the Till producers wanted to make it clear about the kind of movie it is, and the kind of movie it's not. Personally, I saw Fruitvale Station and The Butler in theaters, but by the time 12 Years a Slave rolled around later that year, I just couldn't do it. When you go to see one movie like that, you get trailers for all the upcoming movies that are also about racism. Sometimes, you just want to laugh? Or see an awards drama with Black people where it's not about racial torment/torture (or a famous singer/athlete, the other acceptable Oscar bait topic with Black protagonists). Even if they're well done, it can be limiting.

I finally saw the trailer this week and only then realized she had a pretty big role in it. Most of the articles about her interviews have focused on her new memoir, which covers some pretty heavy life experiences. There's no good segue from on-set harassment, SA, and a suicide attempt after social media bullying to, "I'm the mom in this kids' movie with a singing crocodile, go see it!"