..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

Week 13:
The Premature Wrap-Up Column

There will be some shouting this weekend as Bad Boys II hits theaters.  And there are some loud, high grossing titles to come in this summer of 2003.  But it is all over but for that. 

Looking over the summer movies – and the handful still on the way – the most striking thing is the new look of the industry.  I count 12 companies that are deserving of stand-alone status in this analysis, meaning that they can bring the heat with any of the majors at any time they decide to turn it on.  As the numerous “Fox Searchlight Rocks!” articles of the last two weeks indicate, being daddy’s favorite child doesn’t hurt.  But I still make the distinction.  Searchlight is not Big Fox, Focus is not Universal and Miramax certainly is not Disney.  On the other hand, I have plopped Fine Line’s sole release in with New Line and delegated Sony Classics to the big ol’ indie chart.

20^TH CENTURY FOX
Got The Worm Early…
Got The Bird The Rest Of The Way
X2: X-Men United, Down With Love, Wrong Turn, From Justin to Kelly, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen

It’s been a long, hot summer for the folks who might have been expected to bring full guns to the season.  Master & Commander moved as the Crowe flies to November and took its big screen ocean with it.  That left The League to come piss in your popcorn like the bastard children of McG’s Angels, now on Ritalin.  Wrong Turn will turn a profit for the studio in home entertainment and I would bet that Justin & Kelly will end up being a surprise home viewing hit as well.  Those crazy kids!  If anything other than the success of the first weekend of May and X2 marked this summer, it was date mania.  There were release date issues with every movie they had this summer except for X2 and Wrong Turn, which was not screened for critics and barely advertised.  It’s hard to hit a moving target.

 

COLUMBIA
The Most Macho Studio Of Summer 2003,
But Can’t Quite Hit One Out
Daddy Day Care, Hollywood Homicide, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Bad Boys II, Gigli, S.W.A.T., The Medallion

The answer at Sony this summer was, if you have a set vision to sell, you can open anything.  After that, each picture’s on its own.  Daddy Day Care (Eddie Murphy being abused by 5-year-olds) had legs even though critics hated it.  Full Throttle may have made me gag, but $37 million on ass and hot air is not a failure to open.  Bad Boys II should do well tomorrow, relying heavily on Will Smith and Martin Lawrence and not so much on Michael Bay’s X-treme Violence.  On the other hand, is Hollywood Homicide a comedy or a thriller?  Revolution and Sony are going against current wisdom and making the Gigli campaign into a Ben/Jen love fest, avoiding any of the complexities of the Martin Brest flick.  It may well work

DISNEY
Kids Get The Summer, Near Perfection Ensues
Lizzie Maguire, Finding Nemo, Pirates of the Caribbean, Freaky Friday, Open Range

When I went to make this list, I was amazed to realize that Disney made no effort to court adults with adult films this summer… not that Nemo and Pirates didn’t make grown-ups feel like kids.  Everyone in town would be happy to know going in that they had two big summer films that worked this well.  The box office is the topper.  Plus Lizzie and Freaky look to be major cash cows in the pubescent girl market that is like a living version of Seventeen for the girls and like a living version of Cosmopolitan (“Mom… what’s a cli…to..”) for the boys, who secretly enjoy being dragged to them.  Costner is on the shooting range, but who cares after such a great summer?

 

DREAMWORKS
Summer Hibernation
Sinbad, Envy

Sleep in heavenly pe-eee-ce.  Slee-eep in heavenly peace.  Was that a movie in your theaters or were you just glad to promote Shrek 2?

 

 

FOCUS FEATURES
Gentle Summer, Hard Charging Fall
The Shape of Things, Swimming Pool  

The underdog of Oscar 2003 has a lot of eyeballs on it now.  The folks at Big Universal might wish that Focus co-topper James Schamus took The Hulk into his division about now.  But no.  If you took Neil Labute and Francios Ozon and mixed them together would you get a movie about a female Jeckyll & Hyde who has spectacular breasts and jars of testicles in every room of her house but turns out not to really exist except in the mind of Charlotte Rampling, who thinks she’s a man but turns out to be a woman stuck in a Brian DePalma loop?  Just asking.

 

FOX SEARCHLIGHT
The New Middleweight Champ
The Dancer Upstairs, L’Auberge Espagnole, 28 Days Later, Garage Days, Lucia Lucia, Le Divorce, Thirteen  

The Kids Down The Hall can’t stop getting praised.  But their best is yet to come.  The minor miracle of 28 Days Later makes up for the softball successes of the rest of the summer line-up.  But Thirteen may be the late summer wake-up call that gives journalists something ore to write about than zombies and the dapper Mr. Rice.

 

MGM
Home Of The Three Scariest Movies Of The Summer
Legally Blonde II, Uptown Girls, Jeepers Creepers II

What can I say?  If they take over Universal, I can only pray that they don’t try to tell them what to make.  And what are the odds that Bingham Ray and James Schamus can exist in the same indie house?  And does anyone want to slow the Neo-Indie Movement that way?

 

MIRAMAX
So Much Product Heading For The Scrap Heap
Blue Car, Only The Strong Survive, Pokemon Heroes, Jet Lag, Dirty Pretty Things, Buffalo Soldiers, Spy Kids 3-D, The Magdalene Sisters, The Battle Of Shaker Heights, Shaolin Soccer, Once Upon A Time In The Midlands

Welcome to the direct-to-video clearinghouse of some of the very best quality films of the summer that six of you will ever have a chance to see!!!  Spy Kids 3-D will get a big push, as will the Project Greenlight driven The Battle of Shaker Heights.  But you are going to have to work to see the two masterpieces – The Magdalene Sisters and Dirty Pretty Things.  When they come out on video next month, make sure to catch Blue Car and Only The Strong Survive.

 

NEW LINE
Retro-Shaye Does Everything
But Get Mandy Moore Topless Or Headless
Dumb & Dumberer, How To Deal, American Splendor, Freddy Vs. Jason

One Ring left to answer.  In the meanwhile, it’s the return of blood, sex & rock-n-roll.  I can’t wait for Detroit Rock City 2.

 

PARAMOUNT
Underdog, Under Radar, Underwear, Under Funny
The Italian Job, Rugrats Go Wild!, Tomb Raider 2, Marci X

The sleepy fishing village of Paramount had another nice boring season.  Let’s assume that Tomb Raider 2 does enough to make a little profit.  The Italian Job has been one of the three summer sleepers.  And for all the “Rugrats isn’t doing so great” stuff, the film, which could have made a profit going direct to video, has raked in over $37 million at the box office.  Marci X is the Serving Sara of this summer… but everyone will be too sleepy to notice.

 

UNIVERSAL
Every Movie Aiming At $100 Million-Plus
Bruce Almighty, 2 Fast 2 Furious, The Hulk, Seabiscuit, Johnny English, American Wedding

One of the two big (and major) winners of this summer, Universal has been loaded for bear and is still waiting for a movie that they can’t get to $100 million.  They may have found it in Seabiscuit.  But the true believers are truly believing.  Johnny English may be short of nine figures, but should be long on profit.  And American Wedding closes the window on one of the least appreciated, most profitable franchises of the last decade.

 

WARNER BROS.
So Much Success, So Much Accusatory Disappointment
The Matrix Reloaded, The In-Laws, Alex & Emma, T3, I’ll Be There, Grind

Kind of like an inverted version of Disney, Warner Bros. has delivered mondo gun-blazing loudness to big dollars and gotten slapped in the face for its efforts.  History is written by the winners and the history of both of these franchises is not yet finished.  (Imagine Jim Cameron’s T3 Redux, featuring Patrick Duffy in a shower.)  Elie Samaha and Castle Rock have brought ugliness to the WB once again, but keep in mind that WB is not far out of pocket on either film.  Grind might become this summer’s Bring It On.  Or maybe not.

 

25 INDEPENDENTS

It’s been a pretty happy summer for the indie indies this year.  The top five successes are all going to be over $2 million.  Every one of these movies is well worth leaving your house for and spending the ten bucks.

Whale Rider (Newmarket)
Winged Migration (Sony Classics)
Spellbound (IFC)
Man on the Train (ParClassics)
Capturing The Friedmans (Magnolia Pictures)

 

Another 20 titles from 11 different distributors are out pushing hard for your movie dollars.  Many of these titles have a limited number of prints and may just now be showing up where you live after playing in major markets for weeks or months.  Some are still on their way out.  But the range of product is pretty breathtaking. 

Owning Mahoney (Sony Classics)
The Cuckoo (Sony Classics)
The Sea (Palm Pictures)
Respiro (Sony Classics)
Together (UA)
The Eye (Palm Pictures)
Manito (Film Movement)
The Legend Of Suriyothai (Sony Classics)
Madame Sata (Wellspring)
I Capture The Castle (Samuel Goldwyn)  
Northfork (ParClassics)
The Sea Is Watching (TriStar)
Masked & Anonymous (Sony Classics)
Camp (IFC)
The Secret Lives of Dentists (Manhattan Pictures)
Step Into Liquid (Artisan)
Passsionata (Samuel Goldwyn)
Stoked (Palm Pictures)
Sweet Sixteen (Lion’s Gate)
The Hard Word (Lion’s Gate)

Take this week's Buzz Quiz ...
Match the Buzz To The Summer Movie

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