Star Wars, Geek Culture, and Power Converters
I won’t go into detail or post any of the pictures in the interest of those of you who want to remain spoiler free, but the first two pictures from this Yahoo! Stars on Set gallery come from the set of Iron Man 3 and give us the first look at the film’s villain.
I think I’m already excited!
(Shane insisted we use that title)
Marvel’s The Avengers is still flying high at the box office, claiming the top spot for a third straight week and smashing all challengers into a fine pulp. This week, it seems, it didn’t have to work very hard.
Rotten buzz and superheroic competition sunk Universal’s “Battleship” over the weekend. Costing over $300 million to make and market, Peter Berg’s “Battleship” managed to sell about $25.4 million in tickets in its first weekend in North American theaters – a second-place finish behind “Marvel’s The Avengers” (Disney), which took in an estimated $55 million for a three-week domestic total of $457 million.
While it’s been a year of incredible blockbuster successes (Hunger Games, Avengers), it’s also been a year of embarrassing flops. Battleship joins John Carter as an expensive film that has not only stumbled, but faceplanted and rolled straight off a cliff in its domestic opening. At least John Carter can claim horrific marketing as part of its problem, though it was still a mediocre film. Battleship was marketed heavily to court the summer popcorn crowd. Unfortunately, moviegoers decided that they would rather see the eye-popping and well-written Avengers for a second or third time rather than another critically panned film based off of a Hasbro product.
And continuing our Avengers post-mortem, The Wall Street Journal dug up a pretty interesting little tidbit today in a piece examining why Marvel’s newest film is pretty much printing money.
3) Multi-Generational Appeal: Characters like Captain America have been around since the 1940s; Thor, The Hulk, and Iron Man have been around since the 1960s. “The Avengers” felt fresh to kids, and was comfort food to adults. Half the attendees were over twenty five years old. 40 percent of the audience was female, so the film didn’t just appeal to boys.
I should say so. As I was sitting in the theater on Thursday night waiting for the movie, I couldn’t help but notice just how evenly split the gender ratio was. Good on you, Marvel. You’ve got yourselves a franchise we all can enjoy.
I think we all expected Marvel’s The Avengers to do pretty well on its opening weekend. I don’t think we expected it to do quite this well.
Hulk, smash.
That’s what Captain America tells the Incredible Hulk to do in “The Avengers,” and that’s what the Marvel Comics superhero mash-up did at the box office, smashing the domestic revenue record with a $200.3 million debut.
It’s by far the biggest opening ever, shooting past the previous record of $169.2 million for the debut of last year’s “Harry Potter” finale.
If these numbers hold, it would be the first time in cinema history a film has opened north of $200 million domestically. That’s not even factoring what it made in overseas gross. It’s two-week run beyond the US brings the film to a staggering $641.8 million worldwide.
Kneel before Joss, The Avengers is a winner.
We’re less than a week away from one of the most hotly anticipated films of the year, Marvel’s The Avengers. Ahead of the release, CBS sat down with director and writer Joss Whedon to discuss the film, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Much Ado About Nothing, and his writing career. Oh, and his wife pokes fun at his sheer geek factor.
As superhero movies go, “The Avengers” is super-sized – Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Thor, Black Widow and Hawkeye brought together to save the world.
The cast is filled with big names: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson, to name but a few.
More stars than there are in the firmament, says writer-director Joss Whedon. “It’s the most stars I can remember seeing since, like, one of those ’70s disaster movies.”
So why on Earth did Disney and Marvel Comics put this rumored $220 million movie in the hands of Whedon? He does not, said Blackstone, have a reputation as a “big movie” director.
To watch the interview, head on over to CBS’ Sunday Morning site.
I hate horror movies.
Loathe them. I am easily the world’s biggest wuss when it comes to watching scary movies. The last one I saw was The Ring, and after that I had a hard time sleeping for a week. Heck, I wouldn’t touch our TV for a few days just because I didn’t want some stringy-haired ghost girl to reach out of the set and suck the life force out of me. So yes, horror and I do not get along well, which is why I surprised myself by even considering seeing The Cabin in the Woods, a horror film from Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon.
While I hate horror films, I love the works of Joss Whedon. His brand of wit, awareness, and genre savvy has always resonated with me, be it Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Firefly. If you’ve spent even five minutes listening to the podcast, you’ve probably heard me gush about how well Whedon develops his characters and crafts dialog. You can see my dillema.
My trust in Whedon eventually won out and I finally went to see the film last night. Thankfully for horrorphobes like myself, Cabin in the Woods is one of the few films in the genre I can heartily recommend.
Good news for Disney, John Carter managed to make back what was sunk into it thanks to overseas revenues.
BoxOffice Mojo reports that John Carter has grossed $254.5 million, a $4.5 million over its budget—currently not technically a profit, considering its advertising budget, but it’s far better than the epic loss that many had feared.
Unsurprisingly, most of this coin has come from overseas. While John Carter earned over $66 million here in the United States, international markets have pulled in over $188 million. Film Buff Online writes that John Carter was #1 in box office receipts for two weeks in a row in China. This profit will keep increasing, as John Carter has yet to be released in Japan, where it will surely put the movie several million dollars in the black.
While it’s good that the film didn’t wind up costing Disney their collective shirts, they’re likely never to escape the bad press it garnered for them. Make no mistake, a $66 million gross in the United States is an embarrassment. The media reviews seemed to get caught up in a revolving narrative of how poor the film was, perhaps overplaying the criticism and driving some theater patrons away. Ultimately, the reason it failed lies squarely at the feet of Disney and the film’s creative staff.
It was a poorly marketed movie. Just about all of my friends who saw it had no idea going in that it was a science fiction film*. Or that it was based on a book that was foundational for sci-fi as we know it. More than that, it just wasn’t that special of a film. The narrative was disjointed, the acting was wooden. It had some pretty visuals going for it, but that was easily the highlight of a very forgettable movie.
*Dropping the ‘Mars’ part of ‘John Carter of Mars.’ Not the most savvy marketing you’ve ever done, Disney.
If you’re looking for a good book-to-film adaptation, you might want to give this a shot instead.
Forbes via Aaron Allston
After a weekend of confusion over whether or not The Hunger Games director Gary Ross would return to for Catching Fire, news dropped late Tuesday that he was officially leaving the franchise.
Despite recent speculation in the media, and after difficult but sincere consideration, I have decided not to direct Catching Fire. As a writer and a director, I simply don’t have the time I need to write and prep the movie I would have wanted to make because of the fixed and tight production schedule.
I loved making The Hunger Games – it was the happiest experience of my professional life. Lionsgate was supportive of me in a manner that few directors ever experience in a franchise: they empowered me to make the film I wanted to make and backed the movie in a way that requires no explanation beyond the remarkable results. And contrary to what has been reported, negotiations with Lionsgate have not been problematic. They have also been very understanding of me through this difficult decision.
Lionsgate Studio also issued a statement.
We’re very sorry that Gary Ross has chosen not to direct Catching Fire. We were really looking forward to making the movie with him. He did an incredible job on the first film and we are grateful for his work. This will not be the end of our relationship, as we consider Ross to be part of the Lionsgate family and look forward to working with him in the future.
As I mentioned over the weekend when dueling reports from the press hit the Internet, I was going to be surprised to if Ross left. Color me surprised, but I do understand his reasoning. With the mammoth success of The Hunger Games, expectations and deadlines were going to mount for the sequel. I did hope Ross would stick around for no other reason than his ability to work with Suzanne Collins to adapt the book to the screenplay. Hopefully whoever Lionsgate brings in next will be able to pick up right where Ross left off.
What this means for the future of Catching Fire is unclear and the rest of the planned four-film series is unclear. Most fans will want to know if this means the production schedule has been set back. When a film loses its director, there’s always the risk that the timetable can slide while studios scramble to find a replacement. For now, fans and the Internet will begin speculating over who will step up to direct in Ross’ place.
For the rest of Ross’ statement, head over to the Wall Street Journal blog.
Yesterday, it was reported that Hunger Games director Gary Ross would not be directing its sequel, Catching Fire. Speculation ran rampant as to why Ross would back away from the already-blockbuster franchise with some showbiz sites stating that a money dispute was part of the issue. Others theorized that he simply didn’t have the desire to attach himself to a single story for the next several years.
Now there are reports that the previous reports were erronious and Ross has not told Lionsgate that he’s leaving. Stepping away from an almost guaranteed hit sequel didn’t make a whole lot of sense and for the sake of the next three films, I’d hope he sticks around. He seemed to have worked well with author Suzanne Collins in creating the adapted screenplay and that chemistry could be invaluable moving forward.
As so many of these stories go, no one really has a clue as to what’s going on. Yesterday’s news sounded rather definitive and today’s followups are backpedaling quickly, leaving fans rather confused about the future of the franchise. Personally, I would be surprised if Ross and Lionsgate parted ways at this point.
H/T to Club Jade for the followup news