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Monday June 2, 2008

BOX OFFICE

Weekend Estimate
May 30, 2008 – June 1, 2008 (*millions)
FILM GROSS
1 Sex And The City $55,740,000
2 Indiana Jones Kingdom Crystal Skull $46,000,000
3 Strangers, The $20,707,249
4 Iron Man $14,000,000
5 Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian $13,016,000
6 What Happens In Vegas $6,850,000
7 Baby Mama $2,221,080
8 Speed Racer $2,140,000
9 Made Of Honor $2,000,000
10 Forgetting Sarah Marshall $1,044,480

PROJECTS ANNOUNCED

• Platinum Studios has teamed with Valhalla Motion Pictures to turn the thriller comicbook “Final Orbit” into a feature film. Russell Gewirtz (“Inside Man”) will write the script. Valhalla chair Gale Anne Hurd and Platinum Studios chairman-CEO Scott Mitchell Rosenberg will produce. “Final Orbit,” which will be published by Platinum Studios Comics early next year, tells the story of a lottery that gives thrill-seekers a chance to vacation aboard a newly completed International Space Station. But the trips turns nightmarish after the station is damaged, trapping tourists in a crippled module with no trained astronauts to help them. Randy Greenberg will exec produce and Valhalla’s Gary Ventimiglia will co-produce.

• Holding Pictures has acquired rights to Steve Niles’ graphic novel “Wake the Dead” and set James V. Hart to write the script and Jay Russell to direct. Niles wrote the graphic novel “30 Days of Night.” Holding Pictures principal Charlie Lyons will produce, fully finance development and likely fund the film through principal photography.

INDUSTRY MOVES

• Rob Marshall has signed with CAA. Marshall, who built his career at ICM, leaves as he is preparing to direct “Nine” for the Weinstein Co. Daniel Day-Lewis will star with Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Sophia Loren, Nicole Kidman and Judi Dench in the musical, inspired by the Fellini film “81⁄2,” which is scheduled to shoot this fall. The director and choreographer’s last musical, “Chicago,” won six Oscars including picture and earned Marshall a director nomination. He also helmed “Memoirs of a Geisha” and directed and choreographed “Annie” for ABC. Marshall becomes the latest name to change agency addresses in the last few months, but his exit is a big blow to ICM, which has maintained a strong list of writers and directors.

BUSINESS NEWS

• In an unprecedented takeover of the box office by women, Warner Bros. and New Line’s “Sex and the City” grossed an estimated $55.7 million — racking up the best opening ever for an R-rated comedy and beating holdover “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” for the weekend crown. The film’s unexpected boffo performance mystified Hollywood and shattered the decades-old thinking that females — particularly older ones –can’t fuel the sort of big opening often enjoyed by a male-driven event pic or family movie. No romantic comedy, of whatever rating, has opened to such numbers, prompting immediate talk of a sequel. Nor was it a matter of Paramount’s “Crystal Skull” underperforming in its second sesh. The Steven Spielberg-directed tentpole, jumping the $200 million mark over the weekend, is tapping into the lucrative family market. “Crystal Skull” declined a respectable 54% in its second frame to an estimated $46 million from 4,264 runs; cume is $216.9 million. While “Sex and the City” had an enormous Friday — $26.9 million — “Crystal Skull” beat out the romantic comedy on Saturday and is expected to have done the same on Sunday. “Sex and the City” wasn’t the only title that did better than expected. Rogue Pictures and Universal’s horror title “The Strangers” grossed an estimated $20.7 million from 2,467 runs in its debut, far exceeding expectations. Film, costing roughly $9 million to produce, was No. 3 for the weekend. The frame was up as much as 31% over the same weekend last year, when “Knocked Up” opened.

• Adding to ThinkFilm’s legal woes, Mammoth Advertising, a Brooklyn-based company handling promotion and ads, has filed a lawsuit against the beleaguered distrib and its parent, David Bergstein’s Capitol Films, for failing to pay $428,295 in fees. Filed in New York’s Supreme Court, Mammoth’s suit alleges that the company was negligent in paying bills dating back to September. Think had previously posted a check for $80,000 that bounced. Some of the fees owed are related to a media plan purchased for Think’s “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” the Sidney Lumet-helmed film that was released in October and has grossed upward of $19 million. Mammoth contends it has not been paid a cent of the $257,000 it claims it’s owed despite repeated payment requests. Mammoth’s attorney Edward W. Hayes served Think with papers on May 2. Reached Friday, Hayes said a representative from Capitol/Think called to say the company intends to respond and wants to create a payment schedule. Referring to Think and Capitol, Hayes said, “They don’t want to sue and have to spend all that money on lawyers’ fees.” Calls to Think were referred to Bergstein’s praisery Insignia PR, which had no comment.

TECHNOLOGY/ MULT-PLATFORM CONTENT

• It seems appropriate to announce this one just as S#x and The City opens in theaters. Fast-growing lifestyle and fashion vertical Glam Media has launched its first online video platform. Glam TV will distribute appropriately themed content such as E! Online’s E! News Now and Sony BMG’s Myplay.com to its network of 500+ premium sites and blogs that reach an aggregate 35 million uniques, per ComScore. Interesting sidelights of the launch include offering publishers curated videos from video platform Ooyala as well as linking the Glam network to Brightcove’s video content providers, offering a ready made distribution pipeline targeting the female demo.

• Comcast Interactive Media (including sites such as Comcast.net, Fancast, Fandango, Ziddio and now Plaxo) is on target to turn a profit later this year, according to an interview in Reuters. Apparently ad revenue sharing partnerships with Google and Yahoo are bringing in more cash than expected.

WEBSITES TO WATCH

www.spiketv.com

The guy-targeted site is easily the most crowded entertainment category on the net. It probably has something to do with the fact that the early days of online video was driven by, well, you know what I’m referring to. MTV Networks’ SpikeTV.com figures to have a leg up (no pun intended) on the competition, given the 96-million-home cable network behind it. A new redesign launching today follows web 2.0 standards, featuring a souped-up full episode video player, blog-style formatting, social networking tools and plenty of semi-crude attitude. The look is better, but not great – the organization needs a little work. Spike.com hopes to differentiate itself with compelling originals its sister network can contribute to and feed off of, according to Jon Slusser, SVP/Spike Digital & Video Games (former CEO of MTVN-acquired GameTrailers.com.) Spike is putting the finishing touches on an original content deal with Playboy that will yield web-only series exclusives for Spike.com and Playboy. (Spike should be a much better setting for the brand than YouTube, where a recent Playboy promotion fell mostly on deaf ears.) A new movie review show from YouTube’s Angry Video Game Nerd is coming. And the Spike network’s first original comedy The Factory will debut on the site 3 weeks before the on air premiere. Absorbing some 300,000 videos from the iFilm.com merger also helps add depth to the offering.

SOURCES:

www.variety.com
www.cynopsis.com