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The Wails of September
Movie going
continued to rebound with record September business led by Sony's
vampire thriller Underworld with an estimated $22.9 million.
Second and third ranked films also featured new entries in Paramount's
The Fighting Temptations and New Line's family film Secondhand
Lions. Even Focus Film's reissue of Scarface proved
potent in 13 situations.
Still, volume
largely trumped individual potency as the Sharon Stone
thriller Cold Creek Manor returned tepid results and the
latest Woody Allen offering, Anything Else wilted
in the heat of competition.
Overall business
expanded to slightly more than $107 million, compared to about
$81 million generated in 2002 when Barbershop led the field
with $12.8 million and the top newcomer was The Banger Sisters
at $10 million followed by Ballistic and The Four Feathers.
It's a 33% increase from last year and 25% better than last weekend's
business.
I believe
it was Hammer's Dracula A.D. 1972 that had the ad line
that "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down." However, even
if Underworld has a distaff vampire unrelated to the Count,
you get the picture. Horror movies are enjoying a current vitality
regardless of their pedigree and certainly irrespective of providing
more than a modest twist to venerable characters and situations.
Last weekend's
excellent bow of Cabin Fever - one of the more inventive
recent chillers - nonetheless experienced a sharp second weekend
drop. That's pretty much been standard, too, and has to be worrisome
for upcoming scare titles leading up to Halloween when attendance
tends to be soft and competition fierce.
It was a close
race for second spot (see How Can You Tell I'm Lion below) with
the musical The Fighting Temptations nosing out Secondhand
Lions by about $100,000 with $12.4 million. The spread widens
considerably when you toss in the fact that Lions played in close
to 1,000 more theaters and underscores the continuing problem
faced by all family fare that doesn't carry the Disney imprimatur.
The Mouse
House's Touchstone label was having its own problems with Cold
Creek Manor, a predictable thriller that generated no more
than an OK gross of $8.4 million.
And DreamWorks decision to give Woody Allen's Anything
Else a wider than usual launch proved to be just about a total
wash as evidenced by its $1.8 million return. Allen has moved
on to Fox Searchlight for his next film.
Activity in
niche and limited releases was generally soft although the U.S.
launch of Mambo Italiano had room for optimism and the
Scarface DVD promo proved quite effective.
Mambo, a hybrid
indie comedy with gay and ethnic appeal set in Montreal, grossed
$770,000 for the weekend. It previously rang up about $3 million
in Quebec via producer/distributor Equinox that added 130 theaters
in English Canada this weekend. IDP's 42 playdates on the west
coast accounted for about $180,000 of the weekend tally.
Scarface,
originally released in 1983 by Universal, was given a locked one-week
run to tub thumb its DVD release and based on the results some
exhibs will be pleading to keep it on screen longer. Certainly
if it's deemed a successful promotional tool, more such limited
theatrical revivals will be in the offing.
Among the
handful of exclusives, Videograph's offbeat comedy horror item
Bubba Ho-Tep was the surprise with about $36,000 from two
engagements. It should kick start the yarn involving Elvis (yes,
he's still alive) and a malevolent mummy. Also upbeat was the
$17,300 generated by the French documentary To Be and To Have
on two screens.
The rest of
the entries were no better than fair and included John Sayles'
social drama Casa de los Babys with $37,200 from 9 theaters
and the Berlin Golden Bear winner In This World - the
second Sundance Film Series offering - with $26,500 from 10 venues.
How
Can You Tell I'm Lion?
The race for
second spot (and not the lion's share) between The Fighting
Temptations and Secondhand Lions is a reminder how
weekend box office estimates rather than Monday's final figures
have become the news story and focus for studio reporting.
In the long
run it will make little difference how either film ranked on opening
weekend but judging from the vigorous inflation being applied
to each film by their distributor that argument falls on deaf
ears. According to the respective studios, Temptations grossed
$13.2 million and Lions did $12.88 million. MCN estimates fall
outside the typical +/- 5% statistical norm for margin of error.
For virtually
all media outlets, the studio reported estimates are not verified
or counter checked and, as they are estimates, it's difficult
to separate bad calculations from numbers being spun for a presumed
commercial advantage. The latter excess has bothered several distribution
execs and even prompted Phil Barlow at Disney to devise
a chart that would include estimates from all studios of the top
ranked pictures. However, before it could be taken the next step,
both Variety and the Hollywood Report rejected it
when it was proposed about seven years ago. When I I was reporting
weekend box office at Variety, my entreaty to print "our"
estimates was also deep sixed though I was able to question reported
numbers in the written analysis.
For those
who never spend time in the schoolyard in the Second Grade, the
answer to the riddle is: Because you paws too long.
- by Leonard
Klady
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