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“Avatar” -- Down But By No Means Out
11 hours ago
With more than 100 million people gathered around their TV sets for the Super Bowl, the box office took a more severe tumble on Sunday than expected. Weekend box-office estimates issued by the studios on Sunday mornings are based on actual revenue for Friday and Saturday but only an educated guess of what it might be for Sunday. The wonder is that the two top movies did as well as they did. Dear John, aimed at capturing women who had little interest in football, succeeded -- in spades. It beat out Avatar for the top spot with $30.5 million, just shy of the $31.12 million set in 2008 by Disney's Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour. Avatar fell to second place in its eighth week with $22.9 million, but given the fact that its audience has been predominantly male, the fact that it performed as well as it did -- it was down just 27 percent from the previous weekend -- appeared to confirm it as a continuing box-office giant. After 52 days, it has now taken in $629.3 million. Overseas, where it faced little competition from the game, it hauled in $79.3 million, down just 17 percent from last weekend.
The top ten films over the weekend, according to final figures compiled by Box Office Mojo (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date):
1. Dear John, Sony/Screen Gems, $30,468,614 (New); 2. Avatar, Fox, $22,850,881, 8 Wks., $629,344,204; 3. From Paris with Love, Lionsgate, $8,158,860, (New); 4. Edge of Darkness, Warner Bros., $6,855,371, 2 Weeks, $28,947,851; 5. Tooth Fairy, Fox, $6,629,595, 3 Wks., $34,462,568; 6. When in Rome, Disney, $5,549,129, 4 Wks., $82,045,140; 7. The Book of Eli, Warner Bros., $4,717,335, 4 Wks., $82,045,140; 8. Crazy Heart, Fox Searchlight, $3,567,671, 8 Wks., $11,105,401; 9. Legion, Sony/Screen Gems, $3,453,651, 3 Wks., $34,731,934; 10. Sherlock Holmes, Warner Bros., $2,535,174, 7 Wks., $201,484,470. »
Weinsteins Confirm They’ll Bid For Miramax
11 hours ago
Bob and Harvey Weinstein would like to get the studio that they named after their parents, Miriam and Max, back again, Reuters reported on Monday. They will reportedly bid against Lionsgate and possibly Summit Entertainment for Disney's Miramax film division, the wire service said, citing sources familiar with the situation. Although some reports had indicated that the Weinsteins' own troubled finances would likely discourage them from bidding for the studio, David Glasser, operations executive at The Weinstein Co., confirmed the brothers' interest. "We are keen to look at the company and we will see what happens in coming weeks," Glasser told Reuters. The Weinsteins sold Miramax to Disney in 1993 for $70 million. Disney reportedly is now seeking at least 10 times that figure for the studio, which it has effectively shuttered. »
Astro-boy Studio Shutting Down
11 hours ago
Hong Kong-based Imagi International needs Astro Boy to rescue it. Problem is, it has just shut down the animation unit which created him. According to an Associated Press report, Imagi was forced to shutter the studio in order to "preserve its limited liquidity and shareholder value." In 2007, the company was flying high with Tmnt (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), A.P. observed. But its good fortune didn't carry over to its next production, Astro Boy, which flopped at the box office last year despite a voice cast that included Nicolas Cage, Nathan Lane, and Samuel L. Jackson. Its total worldwide gross was just $23 million. The Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily reported today (Tuesday) that Imagi currently owes some $4.6 million in back pay to 350 employees that it had been forced to lay off. »
New Book May Prove An Embarrassment To Spielberg
8 February 2010 11:23 AM, PST
An English translation of a 1996 biography of Hergé, the creator of the Tintin graphic novels, may prove to be an embarrassment to Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, who are making a two-part movie based on the Tintin character. (Part one is due to hit the screen next year.) Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin, written by Pierre Assouline and translated by Charles Ruas, paints Hergé, who died in 1983, as a racist, an anti-Semite, and a Nazi collaborator. Unlike previous writings about the Tintin creator, Assouline's book benefits from the fact that the author was given unrestricted access to Hergé's letters. "The facts are damning," wrote Toronto mental health researcher/writer Jessica Warner in Saturday's Toronto Globe and Mail. She notes that throughout World War II, according to the book, Hergé worked for a Belgian collaborationist newspaper, Le Soir -- and never looked back on that period with regret. "While everyone found it normal that a mechanic made trains run, they thought that people of the press were supposedly traitors," he wrote after the war. Towards the end of the war he wrote a story in which Tintin was kidnapped by militant Zionists. (After the war he changed the villains to Arabs.) That Spielberg chose to collaborate with a collaborationist -- he began direct negotiations with him in the late '70s -- may come as a shock to Jewish groups who have hailed his Schindler's List and his personal contributions to Israel. (Tour guides at Hebrew University point to his name on a wall listing million-dollar contributors.) However, one Hergé defender notes that when his early works are republished these days, they appear in black and white, "which help identify them as youthful follies." »
Lionsgate Sets Sights On Miramax
8 February 2010 11:08 AM, PST
Lionsgate, which has already shown interest in acquiring MGM, is about to switch its attention to smaller fry -- Miramax, which Disney has placed on the market for a reported price of $700 milliion, the New York Post reported today (Monday), citing sources inside or close to Lionsgate. The newspaper observed that while rival studios "pursue the bigger fish, [MGM]," Lionsgate might wind up being the only bidder for Miramax, and a direct deal with Disney would be far easier to negotiate than one with the five owners and more than 100 creditors who must approve any MGM deal, the Post noted. It said that Lionsgate is not likely to bid $700 million at first because it would risk upsetting its principal stakeholder, activist investor Carl Icahn, who has previous chastised the studio's principal executives for their tactics in previous negotiations. »
“Up” Rises Above The Rest At Annies
8 February 2010 11:06 AM, PST
Walt Disney's Up, the only animated film among the ten nominees for best film at next month's Oscar awards, received the top prize at the 37th annual Annie Awards Saturday night. It also won for best director, Pete Docter. Another Disney feature, the hand-drawn The Princess and the Frog, won in three categories, as did Laika Entertainment/Focus Features' Coraline. »
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