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

WEEK EIGHTEEN
THE 10 GREAT MOVES
OF SUMMER

The summer has worked out pretty well for most of the studios, but there weren't a lot of major tactical moves that really changed the game. Still, I sought 10 Great Moves to match last weeks 10 Dumb Moves and here is what I came up with…

THE TEN GREAT MOVES OF THE SUMMER (in alphabetical order)

An Inconvenient Truth. Putting this movie about global warming into the hottest summer in years was both smart and lucky. But the true genius move was pretending that the movie wasn't a movie of a slideshow of the powerfully uncharismatic former Vice President. The new team at Paramount Vantage turned it into the summer's one true must-see for the do-good class and it paid off with by far the biggest doc gross of the year.

Clerks II. The Kevin/Harvey/Bob went right after former Miramax mantelpiece Uma Thurman and the big budget My Super Ex-Girlfriend… and outgrossed it. And I don't mean outgross as in the donkey show and the mangina and the idea of Rosario Dawson not only having sex with Brian O'Halloran, but wanting to have it with him nightly. I mean the box office. Clerks II is up on Super-Ex by more than $2 million. And the film was made for less than the cost of either Uma or Luke or Ivan.

The Da Vinci Code. In a year of movies going without press screenings, Sony leveraged a Cannes Film Festival appearance into a reason not to show the critics their big summer film until three days before release… and by making it so late, when the evisceration began, the studio had completely neutered an already emasculated media corps. There were five other summer releases with lower "Tomato Ratings." But only four of thirty-nine "Cream of the Crop" (read: Traditional Media) critics went thumbs up (Ebert & Roeper were two of the four). And none of the other films rated as poorly will crack $100 million worldwide, much less $700 million. Genius! Clearly there were some out there who really thought roses really smell like poo poo (and vice versa), but mostly DVC handled the ticket buying world like it was a boiling pot of water and we were its lobster. Someone's eating well as a result.

The Devil Wears Prada. The great counterprogramming story of this summer, Fox put Meryl Streep directly in the path of Hurricane Superman and ended up with the summer's biggest underdog $100 million grosser. (I'd be pulling the movie from theaters now and preparing an October "The Bitch Is Back" re-release before going to DVD at Thanksgiving.) Four whole weeks between The Break-Up and Prada's release meant that women were hungry for a film that targeted their interests right about then.

The Omen. We all made fun of the press release touting the best Tuesday opening ever… but opening this quickly forgotten movie on 6/6/6 turned out to be an absolutely perfect call. By the time Sunday was over, the movie had grossed two-thirds of its final domestic total.

Nacho Libre. The film's sell… "Jack Black in tights and an accent = funny" worked great and gave the film strong kid appeal, but the really great choice was the hammock between Cars & Click, two films which were clearly on either side of Nacho, which was neither too young or too Sandler raunchy. True, it dropped like a stone and didn't get to three times its $28 million opening… but it had that $28 million opening and that was enough to get it where it needed to go.

Over The Hedge. Opening this one early, with three full weeks and Memorial Day weekend to play before Cars arrived turned out to be a great strategy for a questionable film. The film took in $120 million of its $154 million before June 9.

Superman Returns. It's not much of a victory, but Warner Bros' decision to move Superman Returns from a Friday release to a Wednesday release kept the film from being an even bigger financial disaster. By the end of the 4th of July holiday, the film had earned over 60% of its total domestic gross. Had the film opened two days later, there is a very real chance that the movie would have had $15 million or so less in its coffers by the end of that holiday. That may not seem like that big a deal, but it may well represent as much of 10% of the total that this film will lose… and that ain't chicken feed.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. How much is great decision making and how much is the good fortune of a name comedian after a summer of mostly crappy comedies? It's hard to tell, but let's give Sony credit for making the right call and waiting until late enough in the season to take full advantage of the most intense marketing cross-promotional effort since Mary agreed to promote myrrh.

World Trade Center. There were a lot of smart decisions on Paramount's part on this film. A lot of studios will have to rethink hiring right-wing promotion specialists because these days, every time they are hired, it becomes a major story. (Oddly, sending out Deuce Bigalow's press kit in a giant condom box… nothing.) Anyway, the best decision by Paramount was getting Oliver Stone to travel the country for a month before the movie opened, making himself available for discussions about the film with all kinds of journalists who got a unique amount of access for a major studio movie. I think, behind only the movie itself, this was the key to whatever success WTC is about to have.

This Week's Box Office Chart

THE COLUMN Week 17 - 8/03 Week 16 - 7/27 Week 15 - 7/20 Week 14 - 7/13 Week 14: Miami Vice Review Week 13 - 7/6 Week 12 - 6/29 Week 11 - 6/22 Week Ten - 6/15 Week Nine - 6/8 Week Eight - 6/1 Week Seven - 5/25 Week Six - 5/18 Week Five- 5/11 Week Four - 5/4 Week Three - 4/27 Week Two - 4/20 Week One - 4/13

THE BOX OFFICE CHARTS Week 17 - 8/03 Week 16 - 7/27 Week 14 - 7/13 Week 13 - 7/6 Week 12 - 6/29 Week 11 - 6/22 Week Ten - 6/15 Week Nine - 6/8 Week Seven - 5/25 Week Six- 5/18 Week Five - 5/11 Week Four - 5/4 Week Two - 4/20 Week One - 4/13

- Email David Poland