BoxOfficeFangrl

How many studios would be screwed if they ever cracked down like this in America?

Curiously enough, The Identical didn't, I'm surprised it didn't lose more theaters: 2014 Date (click to view chart) Rank Weekend Gross % Change Theaters Change / Avg. Gross-to-Date Week # Sep 5–7 12 $1,587,137 - 1,956 - $811 $1,587,137 1 Sep 12–14 23 $401,983 -74.7% 1,274 -682 $316 $2,576,495 2 Sep 19–21 70 $18,750 -95.3% 66 -1,208 $284 $2,817,092 3

I guess. The premise of the story hangs on something so flimsy, though, I didn't get how either side looked at a Dan Brown book and thought it genuinely exposed deep dark Christian secrets, or it was powerful enough to drive people away from the Church. The clichés, the drawn out cliffhangers, the three-page chapters (Dave Barry did a great parody: spoiler alert for the actual book) ...but there really was a whole cottage industry for a while with books, videos and TV specials about Cracking the Da Vinci Code, The Real Da Vinci Code, Da Vinci Decoded, Da Vinci Declassified, etc. One of those "had to be there" pop culture moments to understand how massive it was. Would Allegiant have done any better if it had clearly been the last movie? Fans really hate the book but at least it wouldn't have been a Part 1. Wow, did the Detergent franchise die on the vine.

I never understood why The da Vinci Code was ever taken seriously and so controversial, because the writing/plotting of the actual book was so goofy and stupid.

Miracles from Heaven wasn't super cheap for a Christian movie (God's Not Dead cost $2M) but the budget's not that high. From Variety:

IDK, by the end of the HP movies my impression was that DR was the most eager to shed the Potter image and be seen as an AC-TOR, and the most willing to work hard for it. Emma was the most conventionally attractive of the three, but seemed to have other life interests, plus Hollywood never seems to love actresses as much as when they're in their twenties, but her competition maybe spent years in drama school or grew up playing a wide variety or roles or are just more innately talented than her. So, unless she showed some amazing range or brought huge box office to the table, she was never going to be at the top of the list for very long, once the HP novelty wore off. She was attached to another musical before BatB and if she really shines in that, it could give her career a whole new life. Regression is eventually bound to be one of those movies that "premieres" on a premium cable channel on a Saturday at 1 AM or {gasp} Lifetime, right?

Compared to? Evanna was a fan who got the role of a lifetime, Bonnie Wright had a facial expression and a half, Katie didn't get a ton of screen time. It's one thing to come off well in movies that don't require much in the way of acting, but another to go up against the world's best and brightest playing grown-up roles. Perhaps Emma would have done better in a world where rom-coms were still a thing; maybe roles like that are more suited to her skill set than gritty indie queen. She has Beauty and the Beast coming up, it will probably be another winning Disney live-action adaptation, if Disney plays their cards right she could get a Golden Globe nod out of it.

Not Nicholas Sparks...the Sparks 2012 movie had Zac Efron and the lead from Orange Is The New Black. The Vow is based on a book written by a real couple who lived through that experience, but it does seem like a Nicholas Sparks plot and has the star of The Notebook.

BOM doesn't even have a director page for Haynes, that's how not commercial his films have been. I mean, I think if Cameron had done a Lesbian Lusitania followup to Titanic, it would've made at least Brokeback Mountain money because he'd have gone for the sort of sentiment that gets a good response from the GA. I guess Weinstein's heard the allegations that Carol is "cold" and not working for the masses as a love story and is trying a new strategy:

WAT Interesting choice... Mildly surprised it's not Tyler Perry's Madea's Harvest/Hallelujer Festival instead.

Fans complain 'Money Monster' trailer gives away ending

Nah, they just don't like the grinning/singing/stupid slaves on display in the movie. Some can look past it and focus on Scarlett, Melanie and Rhett and Tara, others can't. No one expected constant whippings, sex abuse or children ripped from their mothers' arms on the auction block, but it just takes them out of the story to root for people who gladly own slaves, to see the minstrel show imagery and/or the happy, loyal former slaves marveling at the fancy new house where they'll be still be drudges to the people who used to own them and regard them as property, but yay, a mansion! If some modern audiences think that's unforgivably gross, fine. If other people regard GWTW as a product of its time and don't see the racial depictions as dealbreakers to enjoying it, IMO that's fine too. If they look at GWTW and conclude hey, wasn't life so much better in the Antebellum South... It wasn't like the Northerners were all yay, intergration! or that all, or most, Southern whites all had plantations and slaves. But in the South, the institution reinforced a hierarchy and for people who were poor and white, they could look at themselves and say, well, least they were free and could feel superior to slaves. And maybe someday, if the system stayed in place, maybe they wouldn't always be poor and they'd have slaves of their own. Then came the North wanting to blow up that world for good, trying to give black people their freedom, the right to own property and vote. So where would that leave someone poor and white who didn't necessarily have very much to begin with, if they had new competition for property and jobs? It's a familiar pattern in US history, that the group feeling they're on the next-to-the-lowest rung ends up being the most defensive about keeping someone else—someone "other"— further down the ladder, out of their own self-interest. After GWTW, what is the most controversial on the all-time adjusted list, The Exorcist?

Though if it came out now, it wouldn't be written the same way in the first place. It would probably be more like a Cold Mountain thing where the Southern characters get torn apart by the Civil War, yet the story finds a way to largely sidestep slavery, or Scarlett would be a secret Unionist and Mammy would be young and pretty and get to have her own love life, too. Or, Scarlett would learn she's, like, 1/32nd black, after her grandmother's deathbed confession that she was born on Monticello, the daughter of Sally Hemings (allegedly). LOL, let me stop now. Another less incendiary controversy, if GWTW were being first made today, is that fans are huge sticklers for canon now and the more popular the book, the more rabid the fanbase, the more producers feel they can't make major changes. People who've only heard about GWTW think it's long, but the movie cut out major plots and characters just to get it down to four hours. Today, no studio would even try to make a story like GWTW into one or two movies, but they'd treat it like a limited series, lean on Margaret Mitchell to come up with storyline suggestions to pad out the stories for the supporting characters or the next generation, and crank out 4-5 seasons Downton Abbey-style. So we'd never know what sort of box office it would have now, I don't think.

GWTW was a very popular/acclaimed book but also extremely long, with fans having a lot to say about its casting. It wasn't that the media thought no one would care about a GWTW film, just that it was very costly, between getting Gable as Rhett (studio contracts were a huge consideration back then), the Scarlett search, the first director being fired three weeks into filming (unofficially, there were three in all) and the producer ordering a massive rewrite midway through filming. And the screenplay, the biggest issue was cutting down the story (the first draft was said to make a 6-hr movie) but even then, minority groups protested elements of the story and the studio did tone down the racism of the books. Plus, censorship threatened the story's most famous line. Imagine if you combined the fan interest of the first Harry Potter crossed with a Titanic/Avatar-level lavishness with the biggest budget ever, accused of glorifying slavery, and yeah, the press would be all over that, wondering if it would fail.

I can see it both ways...people went to the movies way more often, but the domestic population now is nearly 3x as big. We adjust expectations from market to market due to population differences in the present day. It's just another thing to consider, comparing the past and present. There was no post-theatrical market but the big studios released many more films per year, back then. If audiences rejected a movie, it was very easily replaced by the next thing. For GWTW to sell 20m tickets at 3-4x the average price for its day is beyond impressive. There was no TV, sure, but people still could have stayed away at those prices. It's not like life wasn't in color, even if most movies weren't.

Yep, here in the US, the ads/trailers were pretty muddled and if anything, for a long time they seemed to be hiding the mop aspect, even though everyone knew it was about JLaw playing the Miracle Mop lady, yet they'd rather show her with a rifle or De Niro wisecracking. What? The best trailer I saw for it was from the UK, it seemed a lot more focused about a woman making a success for herself despite the odds. The US ads eventually got around to selling that angle but the advertising could have been a lot more focused. I would put its domestic OD down to JLaw/Home Shopping fans turning out (Joy Mangano did a lot of appearances/press for the film as well) than the fact that it was such an easy sell here. Star power can only do so much for the overall box office; ultimately people have to like what they see. The budget is high for the sort of movie it is, but without JLaw, maybe the studio doesn't want to make Joy at all and it never gets made. I definitely remember a sermon about Avatar trying to sway the unknowing masses away from Christianity. My mom (who pretty much only goes to the theaters for stuff like Courageous and War Room or "uplifting" racial moves) knew I'd seen Avatar and wanted to grill me about its religious content. She seemed somewhat placated to know it was set on another planet, presumably where they didn't have Bibles and wouldn't automatically be condemned to hell for not being Christian. I don't think the religious backlash will be as big of a problem for Avatar 2 as much of the world simply moving on from the story after so many years.

Titanic became massively popular in Afghanistan, but the Taliban had shut down all the theaters so it gained most of its popularity there via pirated copies. The Jack Dawson cut was very fashionable to Afghani boys/men and the Taliban jailed people for even giving the haircut: So it's fun to follow box office and mark the impressive achievements, but foolish to think that it means everything to a movie's enduring popularity. RIP, it felt like "This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)" was used in a lot of rom-com trailers/movies through the years:

It's an interesting debate...does the huge increase in population since TV (and other technologies) came along make up for the decrease in moviegoing in the years since, when comparing admissions for the all-time most popular films? There were probably always people who didn't care to go out or could do without the latest technology ("Why do you need to see the news? Aren't the newspaper and radio good enough?"). There were many more theatrical releases from studios in the pre-TV era, and there weren't multiplexes or even places with two screens a lot of the time. The movies with the long shelf lives, that got the re-releases, are the huge exception to the rule. So, there are a lot of factors to consider.

I think the real "villain" in Titanic was the iceberg. Incredible for SW7, but it goes without saying...

Sorry, it's official...or was, more than a year ago, when he got the title (the crown has been passed to David Beckham):

I'd read screening reports and this is something that would've been the first thing everyone mentioned, had it happened. Like when Gone Girl started screening and there was a flurry of news about a certain flash of anatomy. In a weird way, I think it would get people talking about the movie even more, with anticipation/dread for "the scene". But imagine the jokes about Leo's Oscar thirst, were the rumors true. Plus, I would love to see how the MPAA would describe such a thing, it would be sure to join the ranks with "creature violence" or "teen partying" or "a smoking caterpillar".

Just saw an ad during Steelers/Seahawks! Surprised the NFL is letting them advertise during games.