Will Smith Save The Last Action Hancock?
The reviews aren’t great. The genre’s iffy. Will Smith’s the star.
As far as box-office business goes, everything should be fine.
Big things were expected, per usual, of Smith, and his less-than-usual latest, Hancock, opening Wednesday.
“I think it’s going to be another Will Smith gigantic opening weekend,” says box-office expert Paul Dergarabedian of Media by Numbers.
Dergarabedian predicted Hancock could make $75-$80 million from Friday-Sunday, and expected the film to clear $100 million, easy, over its first five days, from Wednesday-Sunday. An opening of that size would lift Hancock, the tale of an unconventional superhero, right into the airpspace of Iron Man.
Box Office Guru’s Gitesh Pandya sees a slightly more modest opening weekendmaybe $65 million from Friday-Sunday. But he also sees an overall huge five-day grossmaybe as much as $110 million.
Like Dergarabedian, Pandya’s betting on Smith, and not necessarily the movie, a superhero, action, comedy, drama hybrid that recently was compared tooh, cruelest of putdowns!The Last Action Hero by Variety.
“It’s going to be a very big Will Smith opener because of star power and the action,” Pandya wrote in an email.
As for the second weekend…
Suggested Pandya: “It should play out more like Men in Black II or Wild Wild West.”
MiB II and Wild Wild West are two of the lesser-loved entries on Smith’s Internet Movie Database page. But they’re also two of the 11 films that Smith has helped push past the $100 million markMiB II grossed $190.4 million in 2002, per Box Office Mojo; Wild Wild West, mechanical spiders and all, came away with $113.8 million in 1999.
“Will Smith can open any movie,” Dergarabedian says.
Smith’s reputation says he’s especially good at opening movies over the Fourth of July, which just so happens to be Friday.
Hancock will be Smith’s fifth Independence Day-timed release. Of his others, each, with the exception of Wild Wild West, grossed at least $190 millionthe heftiest, Independence Day, appropriately, weighed in at $306.2 million.
This Fourth of July, however, could be Smith’s trickiest yet.
For one thing, the holiday falls on a Friday. Dergarabedian wonders if firework shows and other activities will keep audiences away from theaters on one of Hollywood’s favorite date nights. (The original Men in Black, which costarred Smith and which also ran into a Friday Fourth of July back in 1997, made out okayit ended up grossing $250.7 million.)
For another thing, Hancock is Smith’s worst-reviewed Fourth of July movie on record at Rotten Tomatoes since, well, Wild Wild West. At one point today, the movie’s Tomatometer reading stood at a chilly 32 percent, with 23 positive reviews outflanked by 50 “rotten” ones.
The Chicago Tribune called Hancock a “D-list project.” The Los Angeles Times found it “bizarre and unsatisfying.” The word “mishmash” was broken out by more than one critic. Roger Ebert (”a lot of fun”) and the New Yorker (”by far the most enjoyable big movie of the summer”) helped represent the minority opinion.
In the end, none of it may matter. At least not for the next several days.
Says Dergarabedian: “A Will Smith movie on the Fourth of July is about as sure a bet as you can get…I think it’s bulletproof this weekend.”
Update: Rotten Tomatoes Officially Declares WALL-E Best Reviewed Movie of 2008 So Far
It’s official, Rotten Tomatoes has declared WALL-E to be the best-reviewed movie of the year so far. It beats out Iron Man (93%, 209 reviews), the previous best film of 2008. WALL-E currently has a 96% fresh rating with 149 reviews. To update our previous story, the film also added another 4,000 votes on Internet Movie Database, bringing the film’s average user rating to 9.2 (8,972 votes). While many expected the film to drop from its #9 placement on the top 250 movies of all time, the latest Pixar movie actually moved up to #6!
Sarah Michelle Gellar Is Breathing Easy
Sarah Michelle Gellar Is Breathing Easy
Taking a break from scaring the crap out of audiences in the Grudge franchise, Sarah Michelle Gellar attended the premiere of her new flick The Air I Breathe last night.
The Scooby Doo actress was most definitely the belle of the ball, dressed in an atypical light blue sleeveless dress with gold accents and a prom-style updo.
And it sounds like Gellar has surrounded herself with a who’s who of costars in her new movie. Everyone from Forest Whitaker to Brendan Fraser to the iconic Kevin Bacon make up the ensemble cast of The Air I Breathe.
The Internet Movie Database describes the film as, “A drama based on an ancient Chinese proverb that breaks life down into four emotional cornerstones: happiness, pleasure, sorrow and love. A businessman (Whitaker) bets his life on a horse race; a gangster (Fraser) sees the future; a pop star (Gellar) falls prey to a crime boss (Garcia); a doctor (Bacon) must save the love of his life.”
The Air I Breathe opens in limited release on January 25th.
A Director’s Unfinished Legacy
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency was supposed to be beginning.
But when the TV movie starring soul singer Jill Scott debuts on the BBC Sunday night, it'll mark the end of Anthony Minghella's Oscar-winning directing career.
Minghella died Tuesday of a brain hemorrhage following surgery for what reports said was either throat or tonsil cancer. He was 54, and, among many things, a very busy man.
According to the Internet Movie Database, Minghella had two projects in the works as a writer-director, and even more on his plate as a producer at the time of his death. And all that doesn't count The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, which, after its telepic debut in Britain and the United States (where it'll air later this year on HBO), was to become a series.
The state of the series is now, per the Hollywood Reporter, "up in the air." Minghella, who cowrote and directed the pilot from the Alexander McCall Smith best seller, was to call the shots on the storylines, according to London's Sunday Times. Shooting on its 13 ordered episodes was to start this summer.
In the Sunday Times report, which ran just days prior to Minghella's death, the filmmaker was quoted as saying how key Scott was to the project. "She's magnificent," he said. "We all fell in love with her."
In a statement, the Grammy-winning Scott said her heart "aches with grief" over the director's death. "Much more than a true artist who thrilled in offering his divine gift with the world," she said, "Anthony Minghella was a dear, dear trusted friend."
The upcoming big-screen anthology New York, I Love You will be dedicated to Minghella, the Reporter said. The filmmaker was due to contribute a segment, with his shoot scheduled for April. Producers have asked Minghella's family for guidance on how to proceed, the trade paper reported.
Also unclear is the future of The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, on which Minghella was to make his first big-screen writing and directing effort since 2006's Breaking and Entering. The project, like Ladies Detective Agency, was based on a novel. There was not yet an announced cast.
As a producer, four Minghella projects, including Ladies Detective Agency, are due out this year. The others, per IMDb, are The Reader, starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes; the British drama Love You More; and Margaret, a Kenneth Lonergan film starring Matt Damon and Anna Paquin, on which Minghella served as an executive producer.
Minghella was also an executive producer on Michael Clayton, which was nominated for Best Picture at last month's Academy Awards. Filmmaker Sydney Pollack, his production company partner, was one of its producers.
Speaking to the New York Times, Pollack said Minghella and he knew the difference between good and bad and junk.
"There were a lot of movies that we planned together, and we are now not going to be able to do," Pollack said. "It's sad for me, but it's also too bad that people won't see those movies."