0

Will Smith’s Superpowers Still Work

Posted by Vogt
at July 7, 2008

Hancock

Will Smith did Hancock a solid.

Smith has star-powered the poorly reviewed superhero hybrid to a $66 million opening weekend, and a No. 1 finish, according to Exhibitor Relations estimates today.

WALL-E, last weekend’s champ, stayed strong, grossing another $33.4 million, but finished a distant second.

Hancock goes down as Smith’s seventh straight movie to open No. 1. If you count Shark Tale, the 2004 animated comedy, as a Smith movie, his streak stands at eight straight.

Overall, Hancock has grossed $107.3 million since “previewing” on Tuesday night and “opening” on Wednesday.

Looking strictly at the movie’s first five days, Wednesday-Sunday, Hancock took in $100.4 million, per Box Office Mojo stats, far behind the pace of this summer’s two leading movies, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($152 million) and Iron Man ($112.1 million).

Among Smith movies, Hancock becomes his top Fourth of July opener, a testament to the star’s drawing power, yes, but also inflation.

Run the movie math (divide the opening weekend gross by the average ticket price), and the numbers show Independence Day, Smith’s signature Fourth of July hit, sold nearly two million more tickets in its opening weekend in 1996 than Hancock did this weekend.

It’s actually better not to run the movie math. Not if you want to enjoy the holiday weekend to the fullest.

Other box office notes:

Here’s a recap of the top-grossing weekend films based on Friday-Sunday estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations:

  1. Hancock, $66 million
  2. WALL-E, $33.4 million
  3. Wanted, $20.6 million
  4. Get Smart, $11.1 million
  5. Kung Fu Panda, $7.5 million
  6. The Incredible Hulk, $5 million
  7. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, $3.9 million
  8. Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, $3.6 million
  9. Sex and the City, $2.3 million
  10. You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, $2 million

Celebrity Stories
0

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of $300 Million

Posted by Vogt
at June 30, 2008

Indiana Jones: Harrison Ford

The $300 million club has a new member.

The final box-office numbers from the weekend show Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull moved into that exclusive, nine-figure territory yesterday.

The movie is the second 2008 release to crack $300 million after Iron Man, which beat Indiana Jones to the neighborhood by about a week.

Iron Man, which currently sits at $309 million, remains the year’s No. 1 movie.

The ever-resourceful Dr. Jones, however, holds the overall advantage.

An even bigger hit internationally, the adventure franchise’s fourth installment has topped $400 million overseas, bringing its worldwide total to $713 million, Paramount said today. Iron Man, by comparison, has done the majority of its big business stateside. Overseas grosses bring its worldwide haul to “only” about $560 million.

Among George Lucas movies, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is its producer’s biggest non-Star Wars hit as a producer, per Box Office Mojo stats. Among Steven Spielberg movies, Crystal Skull is his third-biggest hit, behind E.T. and Jurassic Park, as a director.

Among Indiana Jones movies, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the top grosserso long as you don’t adjust for inflation.

Raiders of the Lost Ark, the series starter bumped down to No. 2 by Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, arguably had the more impressive run of the two installments, grossing a gaudy $209.6 million domestically back in 1981.

Still, a win is a win. And Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the first new Indiana Jones movie in 19 years, overcame minor qualms that the film would suffer from young moviegoers unable to relate to the veteran franchise and its veteran star, Harrison Ford, who, at 65, is seven years older than Sean Connery was when that actor played Indiana’s father in The Last Crusade.

And the movie isn’t done yet. Last weekend, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull made more than double the money of the finally tiring Iron Man. A couple more showings like that, and Indiana Jones may be the $300 million club’s No. 1 member.

Celebrity Stories
0

Teens Choose Justin, Miley, Gossip

Posted by Vogt
at June 17, 2008

Gossip Girl Cast

OMFG. Consider the Gossip Girl word sufficiently spread.

The CW hit received a leadingand whopping14 nominations this morning for the Teen Choice 2008 Awards.

Chris Brown checked in with nine nods, Miley Cyrus (who will host the ceremony) scored four nods, and perpetual nominee Justin Timberlake racked up three.

Timberlake is the awards’ winningest artist, having aggregated 21 surfboardsthe event’s laid-back hardware of choicesince 1999.

This is the 10th annual incarnation of the adolescent-friendly kudos, which spreads the wealth among film, TV, music, comedy, sports and fashion. Fox will broadcast the two-hour bonanza Aug. 4.

Musical guests and presenters will be added in the coming months. Here’s the complete list of nominees:

MOVIES

Choice Movie: Action Adventure

Choice Movie: Drama

Choice Movie: Chick Flick

Choice Movie: Bromantic Comedy

Choice Movie: Comedy

Choice Movie: Horror/Thriller

Choice Movie Actor: Drama

Choice Movie Actress: Drama

Choice Movie Actor: Action Adventure

Choice Movie Actress: Action Adventure

Choice Movie Actor: Comedy

Choice Movie Actress: Comedy

Choice Movie Actor: Horror/Thriller

Choice Movie Actress: Horror/Thriller

Choice Movie: Villain

Choice Movie: Breakout Female

Choice Movie: Breakout Male

TELEVISION

Choice TV Show: Drama

Choice TV Show: Action Adventure

Choice TV Show: Comedy

Choice TV: Animated Show

Choice TV: Reality Dance

Choice TV: Reality Music Competition

Choice TV: Reality Beauty & Makeover

Choice TV: Celebrity Reality

Choice TV: Looking For Love

Choice TV: Reality Competition

Choice TV: Game Show

Choice TV Actor: Drama

Choice TV Actress: Drama

Choice TV Actor: Action Adventure

Choice TV Actress: Action Adventure

Choice TV Actor: Comedy

Choice TV Actress: Comedy

Choice TV: Personality

Choice TV: Breakout Show

Choice TV: Breakout Star Female

Choice TV: Breakout Star Male

Choice TV: Male Reality/Variety Star

Choice TV: Female Reality/Variety Star

Choice TV: Villain

MUSIC

Choice Music: Single

Choice Hook-Up:

Choice Music: Male Artist

Choice Music: Female Artist

Choice Music: Rap Artist

Choice Music: R&B Artist

Choice Music: Rock Group

Choice Music: Breakout Artist

Breakout Group

Choice Music: Love Song

Choice Music: R&B Track

Choice Music: Rap/Hip-Hop Track

Choice Music: Rock Track

FASHION

Choice Male Hottie

Choice Female Hottie

Choice Red Carpet Fashion Icon Female

Choice Red Carpet Fashion Icon Male

COMEDY

Choice Comedian

SPORTS

Choice Male Athlete

Choice Female Athlete

Choice Action Sports Female

Choice Action Sports Male

Celebrity Stories
0

Hollywood Wizard Stan Winston Dies

Posted by Vogt
at June 16, 2008

Iron Man

From The Terminator movies to Iron Man, Stan Winston made the magic that make movies magic.

The Oscar-winning visual-effects and makeup guru died Sunday of multiple myeloma at his Malibu home. He was 62, and had been battling the plasma cancer for seven years.

“The entertainment industry has lost a genius, and I lost one of my bestfriends,” said California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom Winston helped make an iconic killing machine of  in The Terminator and its two sequels.

Long Hollywood’s go-to creator of creatures great and occasionally frightning, Winston won four Oscars for his wizardry on Jurassic Park, Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which earned him two statuettes, one for makeup and one for visual effects. He was nominated a total of 10 times.

His handiwork can be seen in the current summer hits Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan and Iron Man, for which Winston’s namesake studio built the hero’s high-tech armored suits.

Stan Winston Studio is also set to work on the upcoming Terminator 4, the big-screen, live-action G.I. Joe and James Cameron’s Avatar.

Although Winston tended to work on films that were heavy on special effects, he maintained his life’s work was about building characters, not gadgets.

Stan Winston

“I don’t do special effects. I create characters, and I use the tools of special effects necessary to do it,” Winston told the BBC in 2003.

Winston’s career began in 1969 when, according to his company’s website, the aspiring actor took a would-be day job as an apprentice to a Disney makeup artist. Just a few years later, he scored his first major awardan Emmy for his makeup work on the 1972 TV movie Gargoyles.

Throughout the 1970s, Winston created makeup looks for everything from low-budget horror films to a Diana Ross TV special. In the 1981, he earned his first Oscar nomination for using makeup to make a robot of Andy Kaufman in the 1981 comedy, Heartbeeps.

In 1984, he began a storied association with Cameron and the T-series cyborgs of The Terminator movies.

Moving beyond makeup, Winston was responsible for creating the futuristic effects for the relatively low-budget sci-fi thriller. While he didn’t rate an Oscar nomination for the film, he established himself as a special-effects specialist. He and Cameron would later go on to help found Digital Domain, the special-effects house.

After Terminator, Winston seemingly had a creative hand in every popcorn movie to pop out of Hollywood, including: Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park movies, for which he created the large-as-life dinosaurs; Cameron’s Aliens; Spielberg’s Artificial Intelligence: A.I.; Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands; Predator; Interview With a Vampire, even Tank Girl.

In 2001, Winston received an honor usually reserved for faces in front of the camera: A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In 2003, Winston told the Los Angeles Times that he’d become so associated with creating creatures that the calendar date Oct. 31 drove him underground.

“There’s no way I could do anything on Halloween that would live up to what anyone would expect of me. If I were going to a costume party, what would I do? It would just be disappointing,” Winston said with apparent humor. “Halloween has become the tragic day of the year for Stan.”

Celebrity Stories
Next Page