TServo2049

It was with estimates, both studios thought their film won, and I believe Smurfs was called as the winner by BOM or someone else? C&A only pulled ahead with actuals.

Hey, I liked Cowboys and Aliens.

Is this weekend going to be the biggest nail-biter since Cowboys and Aliens vs. Smurfs?

This reminds me - in the trailer, wasn't there a line (VO over a different scene) of someone saying they didn't have enough boats to get everyone off the island? Was that thread just dropped from the final cut? Was the line just recorded for the trailer?

Stuff like this is why I don't read Twitter. I don't care if it's a movie I liked or didn't like, these 160-character snark-o-grams are indeed the text equivalent of that CinemaSins crap.

Strangely enough, when I finally sat down and watched it last Christmas, it didn't make me laugh nearly as much as Vacation did. The original Vacation trilogy seems to be like the original Indy trilogy, as far as my personal views on them. IMO, the first is undisputedly the best, the second gets too much shit, and while I do enjoy the third, I think it may be held in a bit too high of a regard among some (especially in relation to the second film - i.e., "Temple of Doom/European Vacation sucks, Last Crusade/Christmas Vacation is so much better")

Yes, JP1's original run is $700 adjusted. With the 2013 3D re-release, it's almost $750.

My opinion on both Animal House and Caddyshack is just like yours on Animal House, Tony. Neither was laugh-out-loud for me. I'd recommend National Lampoon's Vacation (the original). That one is definitely laugh-out-loud to me.

I think JP1 is still safe, JW doesn't seem to have the chances at $700m that people thought it had coming off the first 10 days.

HTTYD2 is still perplexing, yes, but at the same time has plenty of logical possible explanations in retrospect: - Marketing that didn't get people thinking " I gotta see this" - Comedy sells better than action with animated family films, and there weren't enough comedy or Hiccup/Toothless "buddy" moments in the movie to make that the focus of the marketing (contrast with the campaign for Big Hero 6) - TV series decreased the "must-see" factor - Competition from 22 Jump Street took away crossover demographics - OW possibly further hit by the USA still being in the World Cup at the time (though not to anywhere the degree that MayPac hurt AoU's first Saturday) - Didn't develop very good legs after OW due to WOM among GA parents that the film was too dark/scary/sad Ted 2 will probably follow a similar trajectory of mixed GA WOM off of a lower-than-expected OW, but it's not the same kind of shock - HTTYD2 also had amazing reviews, Ted 2 didn't.

Oh, and I can't believe nobody has brought up Star Trek V yet. That is the one original-cast Trek movie I always skip (I've even watched The Motion Picture more times than V). Even the special effects in V are terrible (and I mean Superman IV terrible), and the Trek movies have otherwise always looked good no matter what their other flaws.

I've heard that The Santa Clause 3 was terrible, though I've never seen it. (I've seen The Santa Clause 2 on TV once or twice when I had nothing to do and there was nothing else on, it's pretty meh but it's not actually that BAD.)

You mean actually "beloved", or "beloved" as used by BO prognosticators? In terms of the latter: Anchorman was "beloved", Anchorman 2 barely outsold its admissions. How to Train Your Dragon was "beloved", and we all know how the sequel performed domestically. Kung Fu Panda was "beloved", its sequel also underperformed domestically. Happy Feet was "beloved", and its sequel absolutely tanked. And The Avengers being "beloved" didn't really help Age of Ultron. The only recent films I can think of that were talked up as "beloved" and actually had their first sequel break out (or at least have a monster opening) were The Hangover and Pitch Perfect. Pitch Perfect absolutely fits the "original was beloved, sequel breaks out" template everyone always says is going to happen to other sequels that end up not actually taking off. And in the case of TH2, I think it might have actually had the potential to outgross TH1 off of that huge OW, if the film had actually been good and hadn't gotten bad WOM from the people who did see it over the first weekend. (And just as TH2 opened huge off of the goodwill of TH1, TH3 dropped like a rock coming off of the buyer's remorse of TH2.) Most of the big sequel breakouts in recent years have not been sequels to originals that people on BO forums have talked up as being "beloved". Despicable Me wasn't hailed as "beloved." Transformers wasn't hailed as "beloved."

I've said this either here on on KJ about other sequels that either underperformed or were overpredicted, but since people are throwing around "beloved" in reference to Ted 1...

I remember that in 2007, Ratatouille felt to me like an unintentional parable for John Lasseter saving Disney. If you imagine Remy as Lasseter, Gusteau as Walt, and Skinner as Michael Eisner, it sort of fits. Maybe not as much now, but it really did feel that way to me back then, when Lasseter had just taken over animation, killed the direct-to-video sequels, and promised a triumphant return of 2D. Did anybody else get that feeling then? (Too bad all of those things didn't actually turn out the way we hoped. Oh well...halfway still ain't bad. And at least IO proved Pixar is very much alive artistically.)

You win the thread.

^This. Nintendo is clearly making strategic partnerships, I'm sure they are not interested in selling to anyone. Also, Disney would be saddled with a hardware manufacturer, not just a software company, and with a different, distinctly Japanese corporate culture. Japan is very insular, they may buy non-Japanese entities (Sony buying Columbia) but they never seem to sell to non-Japanese companies. The chances of Nintendo getting acquired by an American company are, oh, zero to never? That said, Disney having Nintendo as a strategic software partner could potentially be amazing. If Nintendo is given the keys to develop Disney animated stuff, it could possibly see a return to the Capcom/Sega/Virgin glory days of Disney games. Other than Kingdom Hearts and Epic Mickey, we really haven't seen any Disney games come close to stuff like DuckTales, Castle/World of Illusion, Mickey's Magical Quest, the Aladdin games, The Lion King, etc. If anybody knows how to do the kind of old-school fun that was in those 90s games, it's Nintendo.

Isn't this just what Lucas and Spielberg said last year?

From what I've heard in the trailer, the new dialogue appears to be atrocious. Why is it that every time Harvey Weinstein acquires an animated film and has it recut and rewritten, the dialogue is always worse?

Yes. That is exactly what happened. One of the most hilarious product placement screwups was Grease. Allan Carr, the producer, made a promotional deal with Pepsi, but the set designers for the cafe scene were not told of this (or the scene had already been shot), and there were several Coke products and logos in the scene. Most of them had to be removed from the finished scene, in a time before CGI. For example, you can clearly see a gray box matted onto a rectangular area on the menu board where there was clearly a Coca-Cola logo. Also, in The Goonies, Mouth's reference to Chunk claiming to have eaten his weight in Godfather's Pizza was ADR. It is difficult to tell what the original on-set line was - Domino's? Pizza Hut? Either way, just a funny tidbit.

Then someone at Universal must have accidentally typed a 9 instead of a 0. I am not trying to defend Avengers or anything, I legitimately believe this is what happened, because 9 is right next to 0.

Are you sure it was dubbing/digital replacement? I read a version of the story saying they actually filmed two different versions of the scenes. (Taco Bell and Pizza Hut were and still are under common ownership.)

Just looking at the two numbers, it seems that some OS reporting source's finger slipped and they typed in $1,169,... instead of $1,160,... BOM wasn't the only site to get the number.

No, it appears that some OS reporting source sent both BOM and Numbers a figure that was incorrect, presumably due to a single keystroke error of hitting the 9 key that is directly to the left of the 0 key...

This one is not BOM's fault - The-Numbers also has $1.169b. I swear I remember another incident last year where one source reported one number and another source reported a number, and the difference came down a difference in one digit where the two numbers are right next to each other on the keyboard. But I forget what it was...