Bob Violence

TDW now formally announced for 11/8: There's a bit at the bottom of both posters saying "North America simultaneous release." Sad that this is now rare enough it can be used as a selling point.

Escape Plan is now an 11/4 (Monday) release, which means it will share its opening weekend with Thor, unless one of them moves. SARFT scheduling strikes again. If they want to go for the trifecta, they could put Rush in the same week and have a second Hemsworth movie in there too. I certainly wouldn't put it past them...

Escape Plan is on the buyout list.

So did Fly Me to the Moon lose its quota slot? Because otherwise that's 35 slots (26 through The Lone Ranger + The Last Stand, Fly Me to the Moon, Hotel Transylvania, Stalingrad, TDW, Gravity, Rush, Snowpiercer = 35). So one of those upcoming releases must be a buyout and Fly Me to the Moon seems more likely than the others. And if Snowpiercer's the Weinstein cut then they've lost my sale, at least. What the Weinsteins do shouldn't be carried over to territories where they don't own the rights. CJ shouldn't even be selling that version.

Gravity going up against CF is a surprise given that China Film Group bought the rights for CF. Of course they make money either way, but still... Questions, questions: That is excellent for TDW if true. That's the first day-and-date release of the year, isn't it? (I'm not counting IM3, since it opened ahead of the U.S. release but after the international debut.) CF will be the second but that's not surprising given CFG's role. Hotel Transylvania? There's a certain logic to it, I guess, but it's a Sony film. So does that mean Sony has two buyout releases this year (RE5 was the other, if I'm not mistaken)? What is the "international cut" of Snowpiercer? That's not the Weinstein cut, is it? They shouldn't have anything to do with the film outside English-speaking territories. Is this like a Grandmaster situation where there were three cuts (original, "international," Weinstein)?

Kretschmann seems more fitting given that he played the lead role in the German Stalingrad film. Though Schweiger would've sold more tickets in German-speaking countries. Huh? How do they connect this to Stalingrad?

I don't think it's possible to say because it's been so long since he's had a release. T3 came out in 2003 and only did 28m yuan, but 2003 was such a horrible year at the box office that 28m yuan was enough for #8. Anyway a lot of time has passed and the market (and the audience) is totally different now. Schwarzenegger is definitely one of the most famous stars, but that's true the world over and it didn't help The Last Stand in other countries. Lots of people have already seen TLS in China and the reactions mostly range from "this sucks" to "it was okay," same as everywhere else. A lot is riding on whether Escape Plan is actually, y'know, a good movie.

You can see some Chinese posters here.

Stalingrad has been dated for 10/31, with both 2D and 3D versions. It'll get IMAX screenings as well, though it'll lose those pretty quickly if Gravity actually comes out on 11/6.

You mean $60m for Gravity? I'm not convinced it would do $60m in even the best of circumstances, and if November is going to be that crowded with imports it's gonna have trouble just hanging on to screens. And it'll be screwed if TDW gets a day-and-date release (though I see no chance of that). The Last Stand getting a quota slot would be the final gag in a year full of bad jokes. That should've been a buyout release in Q2 at the latest. Hopefully Snowpiercer will be early December so I can see it before heading home for Christmas.

Can you link to some of those reviews?

I'm pretty sure it's going to do better this weekend than The Fox Lover and Amazing. Cross is on a bigger screen too, and from what I can tell it was dead on arrival. Edit: Just checked the schedule again and they've had second thoughts--they added an evening showing of TLR on one of the big screens.

I know nobody is really expecting The Lone Ranger to do well here, but my regular Wanda theater is dumping it on their second-smallest screen (the smallest is a "VIP" theater with only 17 seats). This isn't a Wanda thing, because another Wanda theater in my area has it on their largest screen. I can understand if my theater prefers to save their big screens for Young Detective Dee, but they have TLR on a screen with 95 seats and The Fox Lover and Amazing on a screen with 119. Uh?

NYSM came out in Taiwan all the way back on May 31st. Some brief googling shows it made 130 million NTD (about US$4.4m) after a month in theaters, which is pretty respectable for Taiwan. Also that GFTB poster is probably from Hong Kong, as Golden Scene is a Hong Kong distributor. It doesn't have a release date though.

The Mandarin version is the original though. Carina Lau is the only Cantonese actor with a major role and I think even she did her lines in Mandarin. Unless you prefer watching Chinese movies dubbed in Cantonese, which is fair enough. I liked it all right but thought it was a climbdown from the first film (and Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, which grew on me with the second viewing). Both the original and the prequel are more dependent on Crazy Ideas than a conventional, well-structured story, but the ideas this time feel more ordinary, and one key element of the mystery comes too close to one from the first film. Plus the sea dragon of the title is both a red herring and something we're supposed to be deeply concerned with, judging from the way it suddenly takes center stage at the finale (after being forgotten for most of the film). And Mark Chao is fine but he's no Andy Lau, which I imagine is why this one is more like an ensemble film than the first. And oh yeah, that 3D underwater footage they're hyping in the publicity? That's like two minutes of the movie, tops. Were they really that desperate for a marketing hook? It's a Detective Dee prequel, it didn't need anything more than that.

I live in Qingdao, so it's been a little crazy here for the last couple of days. I went to the theater today and there were a couple hundred fans (99% female, naturally) standing around because Wallace Chung was going to drop in. He's no DiCaprio, but it's something. But good luck with all those plans, fellas. I guess the Qingdao International Film Festival could become "one of the world’s top international film festivals within three to five years" if your standard of measurement is how much money is thrown at it. But then if that were the case then the Beijing festival would probably already be up there.

It was primarily a Village Roadshow production, "presented" (i.e. co-financed and distributed abroad) by WB. Here in China it was released as an Australian import and WB's name wasn't on the film at all (not even in the closing credits).

WWZ didn't come out in China. I think it would've done well here, but we'll never know. In fact, Pitt's been absent from Chinese screens for awhile—Troy and Mr. and Mrs. Smith were both in the top ten in their respective years, but the last live-action Pitt vehicle to come out here was Babel in 2007 (which flopped). Happy Feet 2 came out last year and didn't do well, but then it wasn't really a "Brad Pitt movie." In other words, it's been six years since a "real" Brad Pitt movie came out in China, and eight years since a successful one. So to put him in the top tier of bankable Hollywood stars in China is a bit presumptuous. Fury should get a Chinese release (it's already been picked up by Huayi Brothers, one of the most powerful local firms), so next year will give us a better idea of Pitt's drawing power here.

His name alone can't guarantee a hit (look at Django Unchained or Gatsby, though at least Gatsby is doing a lot better than it probably would've without DiCaprio), but he's certainly one of the most high-profile Hollywood stars and he has a very dedicated fanbase, who swoon over his every move and call him "Xiao Li" (which you can translate as "Little Leo," though the common joke is that Little Leo ain't looking so little these days).

Amazon UK says November 18th and other European Amazons (Italy, France, Germany) have it at different days in late November. Assuming it's not earlier than that, the Chinese release should still have a rip-free opening weekend and hopefully a second weekend as well. Amazon Italy has The Lone Ranger down for October 23rd, but that's so far ahead of the other European release dates (December 5th for Germany and December 11th for France) that I doubt it will actually be out that soon. Amazon UK doesn't even have it up for pre-order yet.

Looks like early December for The Wolverine, so if it's lucky, the movie will be near the end of its China run before rips begin to circulate. Of course it could always leak from somewhere else, like FF6 did. Wal-Mart says TLR comes out on December 17th. Some other less "official" sources say October 15th, but I doubt that. October 15th would guarantee HD rips would be out before the Chinese release, not that this will do much business in China either way.

Wolverine - 10/17 TLR - 10/5 (it got moved up one day, wheeee)

The 24th.

Can't imagine Peterson won't receive at least a co-director credit, if not equal billing. Chapman had equal billing on Brave despite being removed from the project with way more than eight months to go (her replacement was announced in October 2010), and Jan Pinkava had a co-director credit on Ratatouille even though he was apparently dropped during pre-production.

I think these are the top 25 animated films in China, excluding MU. I may have overlooked something, since I compiled this from firedeep's yearly lists. 1. Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) - ¥640,690,0002. Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) - ¥446,663,9003. The Croods (2013) - ¥394,000,0004. Madagascar 3 (2012) - ¥208,747,8005. Kung Fu Panda (2008) - ¥180,130,0006. Mission Incredible: Adventures on the Dragon's Trail (2012) - ¥165,950,0007. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) - ¥157,000,0008. Moon Castle: The Space Adventure (2011) - ¥145,000,0009. Rio (2011) - ¥142,000,00010. The Adventures of Tintin (2011) - ¥132,250,00011. The Mythical Ark: Adventures in Love & Happiness (2013) - ¥125,140,00012. Pleasant Goat and Big Bad Wolf 2 (2010) - ¥124,700,00013. Toy Story 3 (2010) - ¥110,900,00014. Pleasant Goat and Big Bad Wolf (2009) - ¥100,000,00015. Up (2009) - ¥95,300,00016. Shrek Forever After (2010) - ¥88,750,00017. How to Train Your Dragon (2010) - ¥84,900,00018. Cars 2 (2011) - ¥78,500,00019. McDull: Kung Fu Kindergarten (2009) - ¥75,200,00020. Seer III (2013) - ¥75,000,00021. I Love Wolffy (2012) - ¥72,640,00022. Roco Kingdom: Desire of Dragon (2013) - ¥68,050,00023. Wreck-It Ralph (2012) - ¥63,634,10024. Happy Little Submarine 3 (2013) - ¥54,700,00025. Happy Feet 2 (2012) - ¥53,545,100 Two animation/live-action hybrids would be in the list if you counted those: The Smurfs (2011) - ¥264,070,000 Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties (2006) - ¥56,400,000