TServo2049

To expand on my previous top 10 "completely original" OWs, here is the top 10 non-adjusted and adjusted totals for "completely original" films. Same criteria: No sequels, no adaptations of existing works or IP, nothing specifically based on or about historical figures or events. (I will make an exception for original screenplays loosely inspired by real people/events without being explicitly about or "based on" them. I will note those as they come in the list.) Unadjusted: 1.) Avatar - $760.5m 2.) Star Wars - $461m 3.) E.T. - $435.1m 4.) The Lion King - $422.8m 5.) Finding Nemo - $380.8m 6.) Independence Day - $360.2m 7.) The Sixth Sense - $293.5m 8.) Up - $293m 9.) Inception - $292.6m 10.) Monsters, Inc. - $289.9m Adjusted: 1.) Star Wars - $1.45b 2.) E.T. - $1.15b 3.) Avatar - $789.7m 4.) The Lion King - $723.9m 5.) The Sting - $723.8m (Wikipedia says it was inspired by real-life cons perpetrated by specific people and documented in a specific book, but the studio did not buy the rights to the work and had to settle with the publisher after the fact. It was not an official adaptation, and it was nominated for and won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, so I am letting it slide.) 6.) Raiders of the Lost Ark - $718.8m 7.) Ghostbusters - $577.8m 8.) Independence Day - $562.5m 9.) Home Alone - $550m 10.) Beverly Hills Cop - $545.3m If The Sting is disqualified for even being unofficially based on something, then 10th place would be taken by American Graffiti ($533.6m).

At JW opening night, I got TWO trailers for movies with Ben Kingsley. (The other was The Walk.) I wonder of there will ever be a movie with Samuel L. Jackson, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley and Paul Giamatti all in the cast. Because it seems like one of them is a supporting character in half of the live-action trailers I see...

Veering off the subject of food, I have decided to put together the top 10 and top 10 adjusted OWs for "completely original" films not based off of any existing intellectual property, literature, or historical events. Non-adjusted 1.) Inside Out - $91m 2.) Avatar - $77m 3.) The Incredibles - $70.5m 4.) Finding Nemo - $70.25m 5.) The Day After Tomorrow - $68.7m 6.) Up - $68.1m 7.) Bruce Almighty - $68m 8.) Brave - $66.3m 9.) 2012 - $65.2m 10.) WALL-E - $63.1m Adjusted: 1.) Finding Nemo - $94.6m 2.) Independence Day - $92.3m (Fri-Sun, opened Wed) 3.) The Incredibles - $92.1m 4.) Bruce Almighty - $91.5m 5.) Inside Out - $91m 6.) The Day After Tomorrow - $89.9m 7.) Monsters Inc. - $89.8m 8.) Signs - $84m 9.) Avatar - $82.2m 10.) The Lion King - $79.4m While Nemo has the highest 3-day attendance for a complete original, I think ID4 is and always will be the zenith of what something completely original could open to in terms of admissions - it adjusts to $176.5m from Tue-Sun; even if you leave out the $20m adjusted (!!!) in Tuesday previews, its pure Wed-Sun 5-day was $156m. Still amazing today, the absolute peak (opening-wise) of the high-concept blockbuster with no source material for anybody to be familiar with beforehand. I was only 7 when ID4 came out, but I was still well aware of how fucking HUGE it was. (I'm pretty sure I saw it in DTS in a THX theatre, and yes, the action scenes blew me away at the time - and they still do.)

You know, for all people rag on the Taco Bell meat, I like it. I liken it to Hormel chili or sloppy joe meat. Not gourmet cuisine, but I've always liked it for some reason, since I was a kid.

With ticket prices today, I forgo concessions. I time my movie showings to be before or after a meal. I ended up getting popcorn yesterday because my showtime overlapped with when I have dinner and I got really hungry. (And for the record, I don't get butter on my popcorn when so get it, because it is already "buttered" to begin with, and I don't like the "motor oil.")

E.T. actually took six years to come to video, not until 1988. It was one of the last major releases to be held back from home video for that long because it still had theatrical potential. (Star Wars came out on video in 1982 - 5 years; Raiders in 1984 - 3 years; Empire in 1985 - 5 years; Jedi in 1986 - 3 years. E.T. was theatrically reissued in 1985, same year as Jedi, but was still held off video for two years longer.)

I saw TA1 six times in theaters, over the span of just about the entire summer. (My first time was in May, my last time was in August.) I was unemployed at the time, but could afford it due to living with my parents and not having any bills. Half of those 6 showings were ones I piggybacked with another movie (once with Brave, once with TASM1, once with TDKR). Besides enjoying it enough to want to see it that many times, and having free time to spend, I was also determined to finally see something in the theaters more times than I saw The Phantom Menace. I think TA1 is more worthy of being the film I saw the most times in the theater (and now that I have a real full-time job, it will probably hold that record for all time).

Snoopy is huge in Japan, that much I know.

Hacienda has a legit 70mm screen. The problem is that the current digital version of IMAX looks like shit on a screen that big. Gravity had jagged edges galore. I saw Interstellar there in 70mm, it looked amazing, but until they get the laser projectors I am never going to another non-film IMAX screening there. (And even then it will only be for native-2D films, unless they ever offer 2D screenings of 3D films, preferrably ones that don't involve just turning off one projector like the one 2D screening of Man of Steel I saw. I hope I get the chance to see the Infinity War movies in full 8K 2D laser IMAX using the maximum projectable resolution, but I know it's probably a fool's hope...)

I know RPX, I don't do it anymore (at least not at Hacienda Crossings) after a horrendous experience at opening night of Pacific Rim where the sound was cranked so high it made me nauseous. And I have very good hearing, but I just cannot tell the fine differences between Atmos and normal 7.1, that sounds fine to me. I always try to go for the 400-seat auditorium (the one that was not converted into an RPX).

Is a regular 2D adult evening in Texas $13.50? Because that's what I paid for JW in Dublin, California (near San Francisco). My state could well have the most expensive movie tickets in the country... EDIT: I see other people brought up CA as well. (And inflation may be outpacing the rest of the country, exactly two years ago a similar 2D adult evening ticket to Monsters University, at the same location, was "only" $11.50 or $12.50.)

I was at Hacienda Crossings 20 (#16!) on Friday night, my line to see it in the 400-seat auditorium (of which I was near the front) was one of the biggest lines I've seen there (along with AOU and TDKR, where the IMAX line went out the back door - I wish I had been there on TA1 OW, I still have no idea why I didn't see that on the first weekend...) ...but anyway, at Hacienda I somehow have the amazing luck never to run into the problems people complain about at theaters. No sticky floors, no screaming kids, nobody talking through the movie, almost no unsilenced phones (maybe once). There are some relatively loud conversations by people in line sometimes, but everyone shuts up as soon as the movie starts. Why the hell am I so lucky, is the theater's clientele really that clean and well-behaved, and the janitorial staff really that diligent? Do I just pick the best showtimes and see the right movies?

That's enough for more wieners than an episode of GOT.[/southpark]

Actually, M*A*S*H the TV series came after the movie. But yes, that movie did crazy business at the time. However, M*A*S*H doing $500 million adjusted and Exorcist doing over $900m adjusted may not be accurate; they did amazing business of course, but there is little to no documentation of first run vs. re-release grosses of pre-1982 films, so adjusted figures for anything prior to '82 should be taken with a grain of salt (especially because the 1970s was a decade where inflation was out of control in the U.S.) The Exorcist was released in 1973, then re-released in 1976 and again in 1979, so dividing the entire lifetime gross up to 1982 by the average ticket price of 1973 makes it look like it sold more tickets than it did. (How much it's overinflated will probably never be known, due to the aforementioned lack of separate gross totals for each release of the film.) Still doesn't change the fact that these films were absolutely massive.

Actually, Universal's official actuals always end in either a 0, or occasionally a 5. I think Universal's internal calculations are either rounded up or down to the nearest $5 or $10...

Yes, I think movies generally only played on one screen per venue. Some may have given Jedi two auditoriums. But on the flip side, a lot of huge venues still existed - the old single-screen movie palaces, the newer 70mm domes, etc. I got to see Episode II on OW at the (late, lamented) Century domes in San Jose, CA, a place I never went to before or since, but which we drove almost an hour to get to because it was one of only a couple venues in the Bay Area with digital projection. This line snaked through the parking lot, and we stood in it for what felt like two hours. That is the closest I have ever come to experience the madness of one of the original-trilogy showings at one of its premier 70mm venues. Though I believe we may have bought our tickets a couple days in advance, and this was just the line to get IN? (I also remember a massive line to get into Batman Forever on opening night, but again I can't remember if we bought the tickets earlier in the day and this was the line for ticket holders to get into the showing.) That picture Filmscholar posted is similar to what I experienced, only even more nuts. This is why most megaplexes nowadays put the box office inside, make space for lines indoors, and build those huge cavernous spaces for the ticket-holders to stand in after getting their ticket ripped. It's better than waiting out in the sun, but still sad that you can't see lines around the block anymore.

Yes, from what I understand (not born until '87) Jedi was insane. The Fri-Sun portion of its Wed-Mon extended opening is still the highest per-theater admissions for a wide 3-day. It only opened in 1,000 theaters, but there were fewer theaters overall in the country, movies didn't generally open in 1,000 locations, and legs actually existed, so even though many, many people didn't see the movie that weekend, that was a huge opening for the time. I bet that every location in North America that was playing it on OW was playing practically to capacity all weekend.

I think the biggest applause moments I have seen at a Hollywood blockbuster in the past few years (I am not counting any revival screenings), besides that JW moment, were the "puny god" scene in TA1, and at the end of "Let It Go" in Frozen. (That is the only time I can recall an audience applauding a musical number as if it were a live performance.)

News to me; over the past 2 years a regular 2D adult evening ticket at Regal Hacienda Crossings has gone up from $11.50 to $13.50. Must just be the Bay Area/Silicon Valley - maybe due to the resurgent tech industry? Everything seems to be more expensive here. The ticket prices I pay for normal 2D evenings are well above the national average, and seem to have increased at a faster rate.

I've been reading DisneyWar, and when they talk about Michael Ovitz and CAA, it seems that a lot of "original" ideas came out of the 80s-90s way of doing things, the packaging of scripts and talent (especially name actors and directors), the films being shopped to the studios at the development stage. Studios didn't always come up with these "original ideas", they often bought them. I got the same impression from reading Tales from Development Hell. Things just don't work that way anymore, there's no studio bidding wars for potential blockbusters, there's few competing attempts at the same high concept. It's just that instead of one film being the trendsetter and setting off "X on a Y" copycats (some of which we treat like they were originals, when they were literally pitched as "X on a Y"), we get attempts to build and sustain and revive franchises that worked before.

BTTF4, NO!

But Thomas Tull still seems to want that Universal Monsters Cinematic Universe franchise...

So was I. I was skeptical about the rumors, thought "Chris Pratt can't top Harrison Ford as Indy, no matter how charismatic he is. He just doesn't have that rugged machismo Ford had." And while I still believe all of that, I am now at least convinced Pratt would at least be a worthy pretender to Ford's throne.

With all the 90s nostalgia these days, it's fun to see when a BO run is itself a 90s throwback. The big June OW was a staple of my childhood - Batman Returns in '92, JP in '93, Lion King in '94, Batman Forever in '95. It's like how I enjoyed seeing Frozen play like those 90s Thanksgiving family blockbusters that remained the top draw all the way to Christmas and into the new year.

Also in JW,