Author: widge

Welcome back. I know you’re wondering why I’ve called you all here and I can’t tell you because I don’t know myself. But I do know it’s a big thing.

[CONTENT WARNING] This podcast contains foul language and has caused laboratory rats to both explode and implode simultaneously.

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That’s right, kids, that means it’s time for another session of Monday Morning Box Office Quarterbacking. Make sure you follow along at Box Office Mojo.

Pirates continues to destroy the box office. We’re going to talk about that and Superman in the podcast. I think Little Man and Dupree did damn well, all things considered. The Wayans had their best opening weekend since the Scary Movie franchise. Dupree was basically Owen Wilson’s film, although Kate Hudson is starting to get a track record for carrying films between this and How to Lose a Guy. Why it’s been an issue before, I have no idea. It’s Kate freaking Hudson, for God’s sake.

Devil Wears Prada has decent legs, although at this stage of the game it’s just waiting for DVD so it can get some serious profit going.

Cars is about to break $300 million worldwide, so nobody there has any complaints. Between enjoying this film and looking forward to Ricky Bobby, I’m scaring the crap out of myself, I don’t mind telling you.

Click is untouchable and what’s interesting is how consistently Sandler can open a comedy. He’s generally hit above $40M as an opener. Looks like the last time he didn’t was Little Nicky back in 2000.

The Lake House…yeah, I’m getting hooked on the Box Office Mojo feature that lets you look at track records for stars. God, I love this site. If you check out Keanu, this is exactly what you might expect for films of this genre. He’s like the Harrison Ford of his generation–he does great in action and sci-fi stuff, but when he tries to break out of his particular mold–he can’t do it. At least not and pull the crowds.

Nacho Libre is actually a career best for Jack Black carrying a film as far as adjusted openings go. And no, we don’t count animated films or even King Kong–because you know what we all went to see on that one. Not that we got what we came for, but c’est la guerre.

Scanner Darkly hits the Top 10 and I’m not sure what the thought is with this. Good P.K. Dick adaptations do well at the box office, unless Paycheck scared the shit out of people. Keanu normally does well with genre, like I’ve said before. Maybe they think that the Linklater animation has it so artsy that they’re opening slow to build word of mouth. Best of luck on that.

Join us next time for when we’ll have a helluva weekend to talk about: Pirates 2 still in the running plus the new M. Night flick, a fantasy romantic comedy with a spandex twist, a family flick, and the latest from our landlord and savior. Should make for an interesting weekend.

Special thanks to Exit Mindbomb for letting me use “Godzilla Will Rule You” from their album Happy Accident for my new WGO music. Check them out on MySpace here and I tried to link up as many songs as I could here.

Widgett Walls is the chief cook and bottle washer for Needcoffee.com. He’s also the author of Mystics on the Road to Vanishing Point and Magnificent Desolation. His personal blog is at OneTusk.com, which he updates when he feels like it. He lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. He hardly ever sleeps.

 

Welcome back. We have assembled here for fnord purposes that we cannot speak, lest the tin foil hats we wear malfunction and cause our words to be overheard. Therefore, I shall point you to the Podcast.

[CONTENT WARNING] This podcast contains foul language and has been known to cause disorientation as well as disoccidentation.

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That’s right, kids, that means it’s time for another session of Monday Morning Box Office Quarterbacking. Make sure you follow along at Box Office Mojo.

As for Pirates and Superman, we cover that in the podcast, really. But I’ll just say this here: LMAO. Now, if you want some other commentary on Hollywood and their hit-and-miss love affair with blockbusters, check out Chris Anderson’s Long Tail.

Devil Wears Prada dropped less than fifty percent and was making more per screen than Superman, and will break even by next weekend. Good on Fox for smart planning.

Click has a ways to go before it breaks even, though it broke $100 million. Again, it’s an Adam Sandler film. When he can no longer afford to keep Rob Schneider employed, then you should worry.

Cars will break even over the next two weeks. Has anyone been to EPCOT and seen if they’ve changed the NASCAR ride at all to tie in with this?

Nacho Libre is making profit now, as I said last week. I’m still wondering how it will play south of here, honestly. And I’m terrified at how many Halloween costume ideas it’s spawned.

Lake House and Fast and the Furious 3 are still on the top ten because sometimes the movies above them sell out.

Waist Deep is no doubt turning a profit because it was done on the cheap as mentioned before. It’s also still doing decent per screen takes for the bottom five.

The Break-Up–finally with #10 we come to something that’s turning a good profit. With everything else we’re still waiting for it to build up money in the black or the stuff has a long way to go. So take that for whatever it’s worth.

Join us next time for when we’ll discuss Pirates 2 again, since I doubt anything will rise up to challenge it.

Special thanks to Exit Mindbomb for letting me use “Godzilla Will Rule You” from their album Happy Accident for my new WGO music. Check them out on MySpace here and I tried to link up as many songs as I could here.

Widgett Walls is the chief cook and bottle washer for Needcoffee.com. He’s also the author of Mystics on the Road to Vanishing Point and Magnificent Desolation. His personal blog is at OneTusk.com, which he updates when he feels like it. He lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. He hardly ever sleeps.

Welcome back. Here we are, gathered together once more. First things first, there’s a Podcast, you know.

[CONTENT WARNING] This podcast contains foul language and has been known to cause dementia in ordinary office supplies.

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That’s right, kids, that means it’s time for another session of Monday Morning Box Office Quarterbacking. Make sure you follow along at Box Office Mojo.

Superman Returns took the top spot, and no surprise there. Still, they were hoping for more. The podcast goes into more detail, but suffice to say it underperformed. They were hoping for Spider-Man 2 numbers, or at least something close, and–since I’ve renewed my Box Office Mojo subscription, I can do this by creating a custom chart–comparing it to Batman Begins, Hulk and Fantastic Four it outperforms them thus far, but not by a healthy enough margin. Not for a flick that cost as much as two of those three put together, anyway. The true test will be next weekend, when we see what sort of legs it has: Batman legs or Hulk legs.

Devil Wears Prada came in second because Fox was smart and counter-programmed against Superman, and it paid off. I’m sure Fox is delighted at the take.

Click dropped a tad over fifty percent, which, you should know is pretty much standard for second weekend take. If you’re in wide release and drop less than fifty percent second weekend out, you’ve got a hit on your hands. Again, Sandler movies have excellent shelf life, so anything this thing doesn’t make back in the box office it’ll do well for you folks at home.

Cars stays strong in its fourth weekend, bringing its worldwide take to more than $200 million. It’ll at least break even and then kick ass on DVD. Of course, the real question is how do you bring the characters to the theme parks? Can you imagine walking around in a Lightning McQueen suit? And now that we have Star Wars Transformers, how long until we get some Cars Transformers?

With Nacho Libre we finally come across a film that’s now turning a profit. It’s still got a few weeks left in it and then it will hit DVD and it’s all gravy. I actually ran into somebody today in Second Life wearing a Nacho Libre avatar. That was kinda freaky.

As for The Lake House, Fast and the Furious 3, and Waist Deep, we have no idea how much they cost so we can’t say how well they’re doing. Sandra Bullock feels good about using all that collateral cred from Crash I’m sure. Fast and the Furious might give us a decent soundtrack, but my favorite commentary on this film came from the guy sitting behind me the other night in the cinema, “Great; how long you think before some damn kids start doing that here?” Yes, my thoughts exactly: Ford trucks are exactly the right kind of vehicle to dry drifting in. Good call! Waist Deep is actually probably already in the green, though, seeing as how it was no doubt made on the cheap.

The Break-Up is a money-making machine at this point and DaVinci Code is worldwide monster. It’s coming up on a quarter of a billion dollars. So yeah, you can bet everyone’s leaning on Brown to crap out another blockbuster novel. It’ll be the biggest thing to hit book sequels since The Lost World or…dare I say it…Hannibal!

Join us next time for when we’ll discuss Pirates 2 and some other stuff.

Special thanks to Exit Mindbomb for letting me use “Godzilla Will Rule You” from their album Happy Accident for my new WGO music. Check them out on MySpace here and I tried to link up as many songs as I could here.

Widgett Walls is the chief cook and bottle washer for Needcoffee.com. He’s also the author of Mystics on the Road to Vanishing Point and Magnificent Desolation. His personal blog is at OneTusk.com, which he updates when he feels like it. He lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. He hardly ever sleeps.

Hiya, folks. That’s right, I’m back. If you’re here for the Podcast, look for the thing that says DOWNLOAD.

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Ah, there it was. Predicatability.

Now, because I’m a glutton for punishment, here’s a little something called Monday Morning Box Office Quarterback, where we can look back at the weekend that was and marvel at the shenanigans that go on. Follow along at Box Office Mojo, which you should be looking at anyway.

Click takes the #1 spot, which should surprise no one at all. Sandler can still deliver butts in seats. $40M worth of butts in seats is a bit of a surprise, however, and he should be happy as hell about that. Sony should be pleased as hell about that, since they’ve already scored half the production budget and regardless, Sandler movies have long shelf life on DVD.

Cars still comes in at #2, and I’m still baffled why people are surprised this isn’t performing to Nemo standards. It’s about racing, for God’s sake. I know that’s huge in some parts of the country, but it’s probably easier to compare to Incredibles, which was also based on a niche idea: namely, the knights of the spandex. Cars should continue to perform reasonably well and will do well in DVD. Case closed.

Nacho Libre drops a given 57% (standard is 50% to 60%) and has maybe one or two weeks left in lots of cinemas before it fades away to a quick DVD release. If Paramount was smart, they knew this, but that’s a big If. Jack Blacks also has huge DVD shelf life, so they’ll be fine. What will be interesting to see is how this plays outside the States.

Waist Deep, the Tyrese Gibson-starring, Vondie Curtis-Hall helmed crime thriller, comes in at #4 and actually performed really damn well. Whereas Click was doing $10K a screen, this did $9K. And opened in a third of Sandler’s cinemas. So rock on with their bad selves.

Tokyo Drift astounded people not by coming in at #5 but by simply being made in the first place. Expect the fourth installment of the franchise to go direct to video. Somebody call Casper Van Dien. He’s a hella nice guy and we should keep him working.

The Lake House continues to underperform, teaching Keanu the lesson he should have learned with Sweet November, but here it’s facing up to the fact that Somewhere in Time has already been made and is readily available for rental.

Speaking of rental, The Break-Up‘s DVD sales will be nothing but gravy, as they’ve topped their production budget and showing that sometimes people just want a romantic comedy. I’m personally very happy that Jennifer Aniston will be known as having a career and not just “That chick Brad Pitt dumped.” You might think that’s harsh, but that’s the only reason GQ named her Woman of the Year which is pretty freaking sad. But, the pics were hot. So on the other hand, I’m not too torn up about it. Garfield 2 gives Bill Murray a paycheck. And because of that, we can’t be too terribly hard on it.

Last but least we get X3 and DaVinci Code. Code has gotten its ass kicked in the final round by X3, which is kinda sad considering the whole lead-up. People probably heard the reviews that said, “It’s just like the book!” Knowing that the book was dog crap, they figured they’d wait for DVD. Now, they’re happy it’ll probably end up with 3/4 of a billion worldwide, but that’s about it. X3 is still an underperformer, but it’s done enough to guarantee a fourth movie. They’d be smarter sending Magneto direct to video, and maybe doing Wolverine as a lead-in to X4, which, despite all the hemming and hawing, will happen. God knows what the team will look like but whatever it is, it’s got to be better than anything Marvel’s printing right now, and that makes all the difference.

So that’s your box office report. Check out Box Office Mojo for all your box office comparisons and bitch session ammo needs. Join us next time where we can talk about how badly Superman Returns underperformed at the box office. That’s one prognostication I will stick my hat on.

Special thanks to Exit Mindbomb for letting me use “Godzilla Will Rule You” from their album Happy Accident for my new WGO music. Check them out on MySpace here and I tried to link up as many songs as I could here.

Widgett Walls is the chief cook and bottle washer for Needcoffee.com. He’s also the author of Mystics on the Road to Vanishing Point and Magnificent Desolation. His personal blog is at OneTusk.com. He lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. He hardly ever sleeps.

-By Widgett Walls

Westbeth Entertainment is doing a great service to those of us on this side of the pond.  Where America’s brightest comic talents are making tired family friendly atrocities, asking for so much per film that the films collapse into the salary gravity well or inexplicably fleeing the country just when things actually seem to be working out for them, we’re dying for an infusion of really, really funny shit.

Westbeth’s strategy is so terrifyingly simple, it beggars explanation as to why it hasn’t been done  before.  It’s this: Britain has plenty of comedy–let’s import some of theirs.

And as I said, it’s about damn time.  Fans of the likes of Connolly, Eddie Izzard, and Bill Bailey have been having to make do with snagging Region 2 DVD releases and seeing whatever BBC America feels like showing on any given day of the week.  There’s no reason why these folks can’t come over here and do well for themselves.

Speaking of Connolly, that’s who were in New York to see.  And the 37 Arts Theatre is an incredible venue to see someone like Connolly.  The only trouble with such an intimate setting is that the comic has enough energy to power a medium-sized Asian nation, so the audience is in danger of flashburn at all times.

And Connolly did not disappoint: from talking about taking his grandson to see a parade on Malta (Holy Week Parade–whups: “They killed Baby Jesus?”) to ragging on Braveheart some more (bravo!) to the bliss of being married (“I didn’t get married, I was taken hostage!”), he was there and he was on for two solid hours.  And I would really appreciate the opportunity to diagram the train of thought that he must go through: he really does tangent all to hell and somehow manage (sometimes with the help of the audience) to get back to where he left off.

Honestly, after seeing this–in a standing room only venue–I don’t see why he doesn’t do a tour of the U.S.  Hell, if you absolutely must, as amusing as I think the Blue Collar Comedy Tour can be at times, Connolly with some others would make a tour that would blow their collective tractor out of the corn field.

…..Yeah, that metaphor works.  Moving on.  Congrats to Westbeth for what looked like a solid and successful run.  Now…Dylan Moran?  Please?