News & Notes Inside the Week in Film

The Impossible’s Impossibly Impossible Yet Apparently Possible Foreign Box Office

The Impossible had one of the most unusual box office draws in history.  It did $20 million in the US… and was outdone by both the United Kingdom and Spain.  Just plain weird.

by Chris Neumer

I spend a lot of time pouring over and investigating box office numbers.  Believe it or not, there aren’t that many anomoles in the market.  Even in cases where unusual things happen—The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s second weekend suffered a more than 75% drop in box office from its opening weekend—they are usually explainable.  3D horror movies tend to skew very heavily towards opening weekend and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre did just that.  This made what The Impossible accomplished all the more impressive.  J.A. Bayona’s film did something that I can’t recall another film ever doing before: it took in nearly $20 million in the United States and had this total surpassed in multiple foreign markets.

Foreign box office numbers are effectively the wild, wild west of film statistics.  No one is quite sure how they work, how the accounting works (looks for a list of the highest grossing films in France and you’ll return numerous results listing this in ticket sales), how the corporate structure of the companies works* or if/how much American studios make any money from these overseas territories.

* Django Unchained was released by Disney in Finland, Sony in Germany, Warner Brothers in Italy and was produced and distributed by the Weinstein Company here in the States,  Les Miserables earned $6,400 in Nigeria without having a specific releasing company and Buena Vista produced both Oz Great and Powerful and Lincoln but only released Oz in the Netherlands, letting Warner Brothers handle Lincoln’s dutch release.  I have no idea how any of this works.

With this in mind, foreign totals are basically pushed aside by most mainstream outlets unless/until a movie hits a billion dollars worldwide; then that story is written.  Though confirmable information about the foreign box office is scarce, there are patterns that the overseas grosses take that are known.  Big releases tend to open overseas in roughly double the number of domestic theaters; John Carter opened in 3,800 odd screens in the United States and 8,300 in foreign territories.  More germane to the point at hand, films always gross the most money in the United States; finding a film that earned multiple tens of millions of dollars in its theatrical release in the United States that earned more in multiple overseas markets is akin to finding a seven leaf clover.  And naturally, the film that just accomplished this was The Impossible.

The Impossible pulled in approximately $20 million at the domestic box office and it did more than that in both the United Kingdom and Spain.  All totaled, The Impossible earned almost $154 million overseas; almost eight times its domestic number.

Sure there have been films that have done well overseas that have floundered in the States—anything starring Rowan Atkinson would fit this billing—but those are not major motion pictures featuring actors or actresses who would go on to nab a Best Actor/Actress nomination at the Academy Awards.  In the case of Atkinson’s films, distributors know that his antics play better to European audiences and tend to release the films there well in advance of the United States.  Mr. Bean’s Holiday was released worldwide March 24, 2007 and wasn’t released (read: dumped) into theaters in America for another five months.  Contrary to this pattern, The Impossible was released the theaters in the United States on December 21, 2012 and to theaters overseas January 4, 2013.

In short, someone screwed up somewhere.  If a movie grosses $54 million in Spain, $21 million in the United Kingdom and $11 million in Mexico, it damn well should pull in more than $20 million in the United States.  I mean, The Impossible never even cracked the top ten for a given weekend in America.  The best it could ever muster was number 14.

Just plain weird…

 

Crikey, Mate!

Australian Actor Paul Hogan Recently made headlines for losing $33.5 million.  Would you have guessed that he earned well over $100 million in his career?  Life is good down under.

by Chris Neumer

It was a run of the mill Wednesday spent online looking for more stories about Amanda Bynes that I could debunk, more information on the Bulls’ near biblical level of team injuries and minutia surrounding Star Wars dialogue that I could delve into far too deeply for any sane individual when I stumbled onto the following story: Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee) was missing $33.5 million that he had put into a Swiss bank that was known as a tax shelter.

$33,5 million!

Paul Hogan, a man who I feel certain that most people identify only as Crocodile Dundee, hadn’t just earned $33.5 million, he had misplaced $33.5 million!

Insomuch as Hogan hasn’t exactly been tearing it up on the silver screen (or small screen), he has three credits in the millennium, one of which was in a Crocodile Dundee movie, I eagerly kept reading to see if there was any explanation as to how a seeming one-hit wonder from the eighties had this much money.  What I found out was even more startling: not only did Hogan misplace $33.5 million, but he has been embroiled in a heated dispute with the Australian government over $152 million and change in back taxes that he didn’t pay.

It’s an easy enough logic to assume that Hogan’s apparent refusal to pay his back taxes is how he got the $33.5 million to misplace, but this is short-sighted.  Because what owing $152.31 million in back taxes really means is that Hogan had to earn a lot more than that which would then be taxed.  Yes, penalties and interest add up, but even if you assume that two thirds of that amount was penalties and interest, that still means that Hogan had to pay $50 million in taxes, suggesting that the man, at minimum, earned more than $100 million.  That is a lot of money for saying ‘Crikey’.

So if you’re ever curious why people do everything in their power to make it in Hollywood, think of Hogan, the world’s least likely $100 million man.

Just Pointing Out…

Gwyneth Paltrow Shaved Her Head and Reese Witherspoon Got Arrested for Disorderly Conduct And Neither Were Signs of Erratic Behavior

by Chris Neumer

In the last week, Amanda Bynes made headlines for posting a video of herself sucking on a sour patch kid (that’s very sour piece of candy for those not in the know). Doing so caused writers to label her even more insane than usual.  Gossip sites deemed the act part of Bynes’ “continued bizarre behavior”.

Also during the last week…

Actress Gwyneth Paltrow recalled the time she shaved the back of her head and stated that, “It was really not a good look.”  The writer of the article begged to differ, writing, “We doubt that.  If anyone could pull off a daring haircut, it would probably be the actress with the gorgeous, never-out-of-place locks.”

And during a traffic stop, Reese Witherspoon disobeyed several direct orders from the arresting officer to stay in the car and was arrested for drunken and disorderly conduct.  In a weird twist, this caused gossip sites to respect Witherspoon more.  Oh, yes, you read that correctly.  Wrote Perez Hilton: “We definitely respect a person that can admit when they are wrong AND refuses to bow their head in shame DESPITE the backlash.  Classy moves, Reese! … Hey, we’re all allowed to have our bad days, right?!”

So, recapping: Bynes posts a video of herself eating candy and is called crazy, Paltrow talks about shaving her head and Witherspoon gets arrested while super drunk… but those things are cute and good.

I’m not sure I understand America anymore.

 

The Photo of the Week

The Impossible

Ah, the glamorous world of acting!  Here’s Naomi Watts on set of The Impossible, neck deep in dirty rapids trying to stay in character while not worrying about getting swept away.  Her hair is wet and matted down, she’s not wearing any makeup and probably cold.  Yup, *this* is acting.  Funny how no one ever mentions situations like these as reasons to get into the field.  It’s always red carpet this and premiere that.  Of course, for her troubles, Watts was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award so there’s is that.

 

The 5 Things I Learned This Week

Fascinatingly true things to broaden your mind

 

1) Mariah Carey fans are nicknamed ‘lambs’.  Carey calls this her ‘lambily’.

2) In order to accept their Academy Award statue, winners have to sign a contract stating that should they ever want to sell the prized man of gold that they have to first offer the Academy the right to buy the statue back for the price of one dollar.  If the Academy refuses (which they never will), only then can the statue be sold out right.

3) When auction houses do sell Academy Awards, they are always from before 1950.  That was when the Academy put into place the new wording in the winners’ contracts.  Pre-1950 Oscars have been bought and sold numerous times at ever increasing prices.

4) Illusionist David Copperfield bought Michael Curtiz’s Best Director Oscar for his work on Casablanca in 2003 for $232,00.

5) Copperfield then sold the Oscar in 2012 for $2 million.

 

 

This Week’s Stories

New Releases

Gangster Squad

THE PLAYERS: Starring Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn and Emma Stone; written by Will Beall and Paul Lieberman; directed by Ruben Fleischer. Released by Warner Bros. Rated R.

THE PLOT: A group of Los Angeles police officers  struggle to keep their city safe from the notorious Jewish Mafia kngpin Mickey Cohen (Penn).

THE SKINNY:
+ Ryan Gosling is so good looking and dreamy, it hurts my teeth.
+ However, Gosling is absolutely nothing when compared to Emma Stone.  Playing the girlfriend of gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), Stone absolutely smolders on screen.  Years in the future, we will reflect upon 2013 and wonder why more wasn’t made of Stone’s near iconic look in Gangster Squad.
– Actor Michael Pena plays the part of a Los Angeles police officer yet again.  Pena is a very talented actor… who seems to be cast as New York or Los Angeles police officers an inordinate amount of times.  As a matter of fact, Pena’s last role was in End of Watch as an LAPD officer who gets killed.  My new theory is that he wasn’t killed, but rather sent back in time to the late forties to pursue Cohen here in Gangster Squad.
+ If there’s one genre of films that the studios know how to make, it’s the 1940s era Los Angeles mystery.  From Hollywoodland to LA Confidential to Bugsy to, now, Gangster Squad, this is a glossy, sexy group of movies.

YES, IT’S TRUE: Before Mickey Cohen was part of the L.A. mafia scene, he was enforcer for the Chicago Outfit, where he briefly met Al Capone.

A Haunted House

THE PLAYERS: Starring Marlon Wayans, Marlene Forte, and Essence Adkins; written by Rick Alvarez and Marlon Wayans; directed by Michael Tiddes. Released by Open Road Films. Rated R.

THE PLOT: A horror parody of found footage where a young couple begins to notice paranormal activity in their home.

THE SKINNY:
+ I don’t know why, but there is something that I absolutely love about the idea of putting inner-city gangbangers into, well, just about every genre of movie there is.  It’s seemingly always a fish-out-of-water story.  Watching the conflicting ethos between the aforementioned gang members and the conventions of a horror movie is high comedy to me.
– Here is the problem with the Wayans’ style of comedy: while it is occasionally funny, more often than not the jokes are about farting and smoking weed.  There is absolutely  nothing wrong with a good fart joke or two or three, but the Wayans’ have seemingly built a career around characters farting at inopportune moments.  It’s easy and it sells, but sometimes you just need more….
– …unfortunately, that ‘more’ is not kicking ghosts in their balls.
– Marlon Wayans is slowly turning into Damon Wayans.  It’s very disconcerting.  The second half of the last generation of Wayans is now offically old.  I think this means that Marlon Wayans’ version of The Glimmer Man is going to be coming out soon.
– Since movies like A Haunted House cost nothing to make—according to boxofficemojo.com, its budget is a paltry $2.5 million—these will continue to be produced until they stop delivering a 1,500% return on investment with their domestic box office takes.  Sigh.

YES, IT’S TRUE: Though Marlon Wayans is known for his comedic roles, he also appeared in Requiem for a Dream as a drug addict.

The Impossible

THE PLAYERS: Starring Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, and Tom Holland; written by Sergio G. Sánchez and María Belón; directed by Juan Antonio Bayona. Released by Summit Entertainment. Rated PG-13.

THE PLOT: Based on the true story, a massive tsunami hits Thailand, pulling a vacationing family apart.

THE SKINNY:
+ This is an incredibly well-made, scintillating and heart-pounding investigation into the 2004 tsunami that hit Thailand.
+ Naomi Watts is unbelievably good in the lead role, earning a well deserved Best Actress nomination for her work here.
– It is really weird to hear Watts and Ewan McGregor talking with accents.  Yes, both actors have accents in real life, but have made careers of suppressing them.  If Christian Bale ever talks with his normal brogue on screen, I won’t know what to make of it.
+ Director J.A. Bayona’s camera work is sensational.  The reason that the tsunami scenes work to the degree that they do—and they do work—is the exceptional use of cameras at the core of the project.
+ The shots of the actual tsunami hitting land are equally impressive.  The movement away from all CG effects to miniatures is in full effect and I, for one, couldn’t be happier.

YES, IT’S TRUE: Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California are the U.S. states at greatest risk for tsunamis.

Promised Land

THE PLAYERS: Starring Matt Damon, John Krasinski, and Frances McDormand; written by John Krasinski, Matt Damon, and Dave Eggers; directed by Gus Van Sant. Released by Focus Features. Rated R.

THE PLOT: Two salesmen (Matt Damon and Frances McDormand) are sent to a small town to buy up land rights in order to gain access to the natural gas that lies beneath.  In the process of doing so, they meet up with a man (Krasinski) who was burned by their company previously and is out to shut them down.

THE SKINNY:
– This is a movie where someone not only learns something, but that person then turns around and tries to help the environment.  I hate movies where people learn things.
– I think there’s a message here.  I think it’s about fracking.  I think it’s about how fracking is bad.  Yes, this is the fictional movie equivalent of An Inconvenient Truth… you know, minus the entertaining power point presentation.  I feel certain that this project came about one day when Matt Damon had finally heard enough about how bad fracking was and decided to make a movie showcasing the evils thereof.  Message projects rarely entertain me.
+/- Damon and co-star/co-writer John Krasinski are an unusal pairing.  Both are insanely good looking and charming, but Krasinski seems slightly out of place because of said looks and charm.  No one who has been burned by the fracking industry should be that charismatic and have that many good quips always at the ready.  I think people tend to forget how pretty Krasinski is thanks to his many years of bad haircuts on The Office.  He is a good counterpoint to Damon—Krasinski plays the dependable good looking guy here to Damon’s mover-and-shaker good looking guy—but I can’t help but wonder whether this movie would have been better received if Steve Buscemi or Ron Perlman stepped into Krasinski’s role.  C’est la vie.
+ Promised Land does not star Michael Pena as an LA police officer.

YES, IT’S TRUE: At 6’3″, John Krasinski is incredibly tall by Hollywood standards.  He is, however, incredibly short by Krasinski standards; he has two brothers who are 6’6″ and 6’10”.

The New Releases were written by Chris Neumer and Kayla Kinney