BoxOfficeFangrl

There's a difference between not caring for a movie and acting like anything that doesn't appeal to you simply shouldn't have a right to exist, and it's pretty easy to spot which attitude a person has.

LOL at the idea of a Hallmark version of 50 Shades, an edit of the theatrical movie would be like 5 minutes long to meet that channel's Standards and Practices. Hallmark would make their own version, where Christian "tortures" Ana...as her personal trainer! As he whips her into shape, Ana feels new confidence in herself and opens her heart to love...and he's secretly an incognito prince...and they get married at Christmas! But Lifetime churns out the crazy stalker ex movies pretty regularly and they did do their own 50 Shades knockoff, the woman was older and divorced or something instead of a naive college girl.

I would ask how one sassily runs to the bathroom, but I suspect sassy running ends up being related to the amount of melanin in one's skin while engaging in the act, rather than the way in which a person actually runs. The bathroom sequence is played broadly to start but But if some people want to reduce all that to sassy, okay. I'm not saying everyone will like it or that you personally have to get HF's appeal, but it's no more difficult to watch for general audiences than The Imitation Game or A Beautiful Mind. It's very broad and populist in nature and definitely not only made to appeal to math nerds. It will easily make back its budget and then some; it's not like it's a chess movie--nothing against chess but as a genre, the box office returns are truly Sad!

Denzel didn't even have to take that much of an awards bait salary cut, really, I swear Fences has about three sets. You would never look at Fences and Hidden Figures back to back and think their budgets were $1m apart.

First Man? Thought it was about an a fictional husband of a female POTUS... When Emma Watson left the project to do Beauty and the Beast Chazelle reached out to Emma Stone and then once you have Stone, why not consider Gosling? Also Lionsgate was willing to increase LLL's budget with the casting upgrade change: So that might have tipped the scales on the casting decision, juuuuust a bit... As for this movie, it covers 1961-1969 in Neil Armstrong's life, he had his share of personal tragedy amidst the professional triumph: There might be enough for Mrs. Armstrong to do in the movie that it could be a sought-after role for an actress, you know, the classic supportive wife role that wins Oscars. I don't know how much Chazelle is going to care about sticking close to reality with her appearance, usually in biopics the Hollywood version is moderately to infinitely more attractive, but here's the real Janet Armstrong back then:

As for La La Land

Even immortalized in song (NSFW language):

Saw this (literally down the road from NASA Langley, woohoo!), it's well acted and put together, I'd say the trailers and ads capture the tone pretty well: the women handle the insults/slights/adversities with humor, dignity and determination. Obviously racism is an element in the story, it was early 1960s Virginia, home of Massive Resistance, but it's a PG movie, not Mississippi Burning or The Butler even. Like the trailers showed, various white characters are portrayed with a range of attitudes about race. Off to read the book now, to see what was real and what was dramatized for the screen. Not that HF wasn't enjoyable but the treatment of the characters and story felt a bit...surface? at times, but there was a lot of material covered, so something has to give.

People go to the movies with their families at Christmastime (multiple generations in groups are a very common sight at our theaters this time of year), or to escape all the family togetherness if your relatives drive you crazy. If you go to church on Christmas Eve, that leaves Christmas Day free for other things. And you have many people who don't celebrate Christmas but still have lots of time off...

There's a Hallmark movie that's a total ripoff of The Holiday, except they trade houses on the East and West Coasts instead of the UK/US (TV movie budgets and all). It's great, the made-for-TV movies that aren't just a tweak of the five basic templates for these things ("C-list British actor as a fake European royal who falls for a plucky American gal down on her luck", "big city career woman learning the true meaning of Christmas/life after blizzard leaves her stuck in a small town", "people in the holiday industry--toy factory, Christmas tree farm, ornament factory, North Pole--losing sight of the true Christmas spirit", "woman going home for Christmas brings along a friend/colleague to pose as her fake boyfriend/fiance", "young widow/er finds love again and rediscovers the joy of the season", bonus points if a wedding is involved) it's just a ripoff of a "real" movie. Like Groundhog Day on Christmas Eve, or Sliding Doors, except she misses a flight around Christmastime instead of a random subway train, starring Hilary Duff's sister. I'm telling you, Hallmark/Lifetime/ION/etc. are why theatrical holiday movies can't get the same foothold now. Just lower the star power and budget of Collateral Beauty, and it's not out of place in the Hallmark Channel lineup.

Sony should have been upfront about the twist and tried appealing to Twilight/Fifty Shades fans, how many thinkpieces did those movies inspire but women showed up in droves.

Miss Sloane is about a gun control lobbyist and busted Oscar bait, don't think it was ever going to be anything other than a flop or make the Fox News Channel top 10 movies list even if Chastain only ever tweeted about puppies and cats. Hey Collateral Beauty managed to drag some people away from the Hallmark Channel and into theaters!

Sure it's not the same but awards contenders have very different rollouts and legs than movies outside of that bubble, just look at the prestige pics this decade for examples.

Unless plans changed last minute, they really shouldn't have advertised it being "everywhere" on Christmas Day if that wasn't going to be the case, it gets people's hopes up unnecessarily. Still, the plan is for LLL to have the legs of an awards contender, not a tentpole. Chicago (already a popular Broadway musical with an established following) didn't hit 1000+ theaters until February and its peak theater count wasn't until the last weekend in March. Oscar season was longer then but Miramax hardly left money on the table. La La Land will be fine.

The LLL Coming Soon site says it will be "everywhere January 6", plus it includes the cities/theaters where it will be releasing on 12/16 and 12/25, rather long so behind a spoiler cut:

Portman wins the first televised award, the race is back on!

AND GBH has a shorter runtime than La La Land, by nearly a half hour = more showings. Excellent start!

Aren't Fifty Shades Darker and Dunkirk both 2017 movies? So it would be the same awards season. It would also be 1D vs. 1D which the media would make into a thing, even if they've personally moved on from the drama. Initially, though, not liking this Taylor/Zayn collaboration as much as the songs from 50SoG.

$45M for Office Christmas Party, does this party have a petting zoo of reindeer imported from the North Pole? Aniston's a bigger star than anyone in Bad Moms but that only cost $20m or so.

I doubt studio execs were thinking that there was a big overlap between Mo'Nique and Jen Aniston fans... Maybe they wanted some distance from Bad Santa 2, not expecting it to be quite such a flop.

Shouldn't Office Christmas Party have come out earlier, to make as much money as it could before 12/25?

Yeah, I've wondered if "everywhere Christmas Day" means 600 theaters everywhere (BOM's definition of a wide release), 1800 theaters everywhere or 3000 theaters everywhere. Even if it ultimately loses the Oscar it should get multiple Golden Globe wins, then the Oscar nominations, and they can center expansions around the phases of awards season. Musicals that strike an emotional chord tend to have very leggy runs, so I think La La Land will be OK even without rushing to make all its money ahead of Rogue One.

Jackie's critical reception really took a tumble, maybe AMPAS goes for it anyway, but for now I think Stone edges out Portman.