Does disappointing summer box office have studios considering (GASP) original material?

In answer to the question posed in the headline, all I can manage is “maybe, but I wouldn’t bet anything important that the system will change.”

Box office returns are off this summer. Attendance is down 13% from last year, and even with 3D inflation pumping up a few films, overall revenue is off 7.5%. (And those numbers will probably get worse for June, thanks to the World Cup.)

So studio execs, who would like to keep their jobs, are starting to get uneasy. According to a couple reports, they’re actually uneasy enough to consider abandoning the recent reliance on sequels, proven properties and bullshit board game adaptations. Without material like that to provide movie stories, what will studios mine as raw material? Supposedly, they might actually go for original material. Should you believe it?

Vulture and Deadline are both running pieces reporting the execs from Paramount, Universal, Fox and Warner Bros. have been making frantic calls to agencies like CAA and WME, hoping to meet with agents in order to, in the words of one agency source that talked to Vulture, “Get us the original material. We need some original shit, because now our bosses are on us.”

Deadline runs a quote from one ‘major producer,’ who says,

…this sluggish summer might be a blessing in disguise for talent and producers who want to take risks but have been hamstrung for the past two years by studios that have been operating in retreat mode, and looking for the safest bets possible. The lack of originality this summer might get off this safe track and in the mindset to take some risks again, and that would be a good thing.

One of Vulture’s sources, JC Spink of the management and production company Benderspink, says more concisely,

People are feeling marketed to, as opposed to catered to…I think we’ve all gone a little bit overboard as an industry. There hasn’t been room for original material for a little while now. It’s a shame, because I don’t think it’s what anyone [who works in the business] came out here for.

(Spink was an executive producer on The Hangover. This comes, appropriately, just as CNN reports that The Hangover, a film that isn’t a license, a sequel, or a TV update, has become the most-ordered title On Demand. Actually, of the top five On Demand films only one, Twilight, sitting at #2, is an adaptation or part of a franchise.)

So that all sounds promising and ducky, and I don’t buy it for a second. Why? Because I have faith only that agents will make what seems like the best business decision and execs will make the easiest decision. This is promising on the front end, but don’t for a moment be fooled that, even if some miraculous agency/studio ‘creative confab’ bears any fruit, it means we’ll get good original movies.

Who do you think packages many of the dull, derivative big-ticket movies that have bored us all this year? Agencies and management companies. And there is no shortage of high-concept crap scripts out there just waiting for a convincing agent to foist upon a studio exec desperate to keep his job.

Beyond the talent packages that lead to big studio films, there’s another big problem that has to be addressed. The conservative and often ego-confused creative mindset at studios creates bad movies.

Could Clash of the Titans or Prince of Persia or Robin Hood have been good movies? Sure. If the first Pirates of the Caribbean can still stand as a fun, respectable summer adventure, those movies could also have turned into something worth your two hours and ten bucks. CAA could send a lost ark of original scripts printed on solid gold pages to Fox, but if the studio makes them the same way they make so many other movies, the results are still likely to stink.

And, just to leaven the pessimism a little bit, consider that this is just talking about big studio movies. There are quite a few wonderful small and indie films playing this summer — if you’re not exploring your indie and arthouse theaters you’re missing out on some great stuff. - Russ Fischer (/Film)

Kicking Ass? (Part 2)

This past weekend, Kick-Ass barely won the box office crown in a photo finish with How to Train Your Dragon. Since then, people have been throwing a lot of numbers around about how profitable the film will actually end up being. In the past, Millar has been quoted as saying that Vaughn raised around $70 million to make Kick-Ass. In my recent interview with him, the number he used was $40 million. On the flip side, when Lionsgate acquired Kick-Ass last summer, Variety cited speculation that the deal was worth around $45 million. A recent LATimes article stated that Lionsgate “paid $15 million for distribution rights to the independently financed film,” and “spent a little less than $30 million on advertising and prints.” Lionsgate will end up keeping half the gross, while the rest stays with movie exhibitors.

According to MTV, Millar thinks the film is doing just fine. The film costs “$28 million after the U.K. tax breaks, and our U.K. and U.S. gross alone is already at $38 million as of last night.” Millar noted, “We were top Friday, Saturday and Sunday — which is amazing, considering we’re in the middle of a holiday season and up against 3-D competition with an R-rated superhero movie.”

He continued:

We’re looking at a very nice profit here and word of mouth is spectacular — the reviews being among the best I’ve ever seen — and so we’re all very proud to find ourselves in this position. Positive advance reviews had some people hoping for a $25 million domestic opening. I wanted ‘Avatar’ numbers myself, but as Matthew sensibly pointed out, we were made on a Tarantino budget and should be more than happy with Tarantino numbers.

There’s a lot of insight in the Tarantino comparison. The budgets of Kick-Ass and Tarantino films are similar, and they both cater to pretty specific geek niches. While Inglorious Basterds had the benefit of Brad Pitt’s face to plaster all over its marketing materials, Kill Bill Vol. 1 only grossed $22 million on its opening weekend, a number very comparable to Kick-Ass.

I’m still not sure how this shakes out for Lionsgate, but it seems like Matthew Vaughn and Millar will do just fine. The film will be profitable, just not a monster hit as some in the online community had hoped. Unfortunately, with the box office juggernaut of Iron Man 2 rapidly approaching, it’s not looking good for a Kick-Ass sequel.

Read more: Mark Millar on Kick-Ass’ Box Office Performance | /Film http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/04/20/mark-millar-on-kick-ass-box-office-performance/#ixzz0lkQrAdIP

Quentin Tarantino keeps a classic movie theater open; who’ll save the rest of the country’s Indie Theaters?

The New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles is a great place to see a movie. Not because it is the most comfortable theater or the most state of the art, but because it is operated and attended by people who really love movies. I’ve only been there a few times, but the experiences have been great: seeing Wet Hot American Summer with David Wain in attendance, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 with Frank Darabont and Chuck Russell, and catching a marathon of three Friday the 13th flicks.

Quentin Tarantino bought the New Beverly when it fell on hard times, but his involvement with the theater has been known in detail only to some of the most dedicated friends and patrons of the business. Now Tarantino and the family that runs the theater are talking about the process of keeping it alive.

THR has a long report on the process that began when Quentin Tarantino offered financial help to Sherman Torgan, once the New Bev’s operator. He started giving the theater $5000 per month to keep it open. But when Sherman Torgan passed away in 2007, the theater faced closure, prompting Tarantino to buy the space outright. “I always considered the New Beverly my charity,” he says, “an investment I never wanted back.”

Tarantino said one thing of his ownership of the New Bev that really sums it up how grand his patronage of the long-running movie house really is:

As long as I’m alive, and as long as I’m rich, the New Beverly will be there, showing double features in 35mm.

Now this is the place where I have to lecture. Did you read this story and think, “wow, that’s awesome”? If so, and you have a local indie house that you don’t visit on a regular basis, what’s wrong with you?

I understand that a great many people don’t have a local theater like the New Beverly to visit, because most have closed. Many others are on the verge of closing. The Plaza in Atlanta has long been threatened with death. The Brattle in Cambridge, MA has had trouble over the years. These are great places. I finally saw Street Trash on the screen thanks to The Plaza, and met David Lynch thanks to The Brattle. Many other similar places provide great film experiences for their audiences, but still have troubles of their own.

I’m not really here to chastise people, but there isn’t a Quentin Tarantino to go around for all these theaters. And not all of them are the Alamo Drafthouse. Some are better than others about promoting their schedules, and some are more inviting than others. But if you knew the sheer amount of work that goes into operating a truly independent theater, you’d know that all are run by people with a deep love for movies. It’s impossible to do the job otherwise. It’s just too much work.

So, please, if you’ve got an indie theater nearby spend some time in the seats. Go once or twice a month, even to a matinee. DVD is great. Netflix and Hulu and On Demand are all wonderful. But movies still belong in theaters, where you can see them in the dark with a crowd. OK, lecture over. - Russ Fischer

Analyst calls Sundance's YouTube streaming inititative a FLOP

Last week Devindra told us about a new initiative to democratise the Sundance experience just a little.  In a pioneering move to undercut the elite access of Utah-bound schmoozers and carousers, 2009 and 2010 selections The Cove, One Too Many Mornings, Homewrecker, Children of Invention, and Bass Ackwards were each made available on YouTube for rental.

Of course, getting a YouTube stream to play on your TV is pretty hard, even impossible for many consumers, so it would be foolish to expect similar rental numbers to those generated by iTunes or X-Box 360 rentals when viewing would be mainly monitor-bound. All the same, were the scores even in the same ballpark? Sadly not.

Some hard (and I mean hard) numbers and the despairing words of one analyst coming up after the break. Here’s the damage. The best performing film was The Cove with a shocking count of just 303 rentals. Check out the full chart for a catalogue of hurt:

• The Cove - 303 rentals
• Children of Invention - 301 rentals
• Bass Ackwards - 299 rentals
• Homewrecker - 279 rentals
• One Too Many Mornings - 241 rentals

That means more people read reviews of these films online this weekend - positive reviews too, in most cases - than actually clicked over to YouTube and watched the films themselves.

Here is The Motley Fool’s Rick Munarriz:

Ouch! We’re talking about 1,422 total views, or $5,673.78 for all of the rentals at $3.99 apiece. If Google is giving the filmmakers roughly two-thirds of the take - and I’m going by other digital-media standards, since the site isn’t publicly spelling out the royalty payouts - each of the five productions will walk away with just hundreds of dollars for their role as video-sharing pioneers over the weekend.

Part of the problem may have been how difficult it was to carry out the purchase, which was, to be honest, not too difficult at all; or more likely it was down to incredibly bad promotion of the scheme.
I’m confident that had these films been made available via iTunes the figures would have been unrecognizably different.

Perhaps Google will see the lesson in this and address their YouTube rental system to make it more streamlined, not to mention more well publicised and easy to find and navigate. They’ll need to try something fairly drastic to even stay on the chart of legal movie streaming options, I think, because tomorrow, Apple will unveil their “latest creation” and, I expect, give the iTunes movie rental store yet another nitro boost.

I hope that the Sundance folk aren’t put off by these stats and continue helping to facilitate easier access or smaller, more alternative or less accessible films by the countless viewers worldwide who would enjoy them. - Brendon Connelly

The Weather Channel = Movie Channel?

I opened up my inbox and saw and saw an e-mail subject line that read “Weather Channel Adds Feature Films to Network Schedule”. I immediately clicked on the headline thinking iI would find a link to another brilliant parody from The Onion, or maybe a video from FunnyOrDie or College Humor. I was surprised to discover that the e-mail was not a joke, but an actual press release.

That’s right, The Weather Channel is going to start airing feature films, movies which are in some way weather themed, beginning with The Perfect Storm. Remember the days when you could turn on MTV and see music videos? Well it appears the days where you could tune into the Weather Channel for weather forcasts might be soon behind us as well. Not that I care that much. If I need a weather forcast, I’ll go online, or turn on my iPhone and open the Weather app (yes, there is an app for that too…). I think it’s more of the principal that bothers me, the idea of it all. And who is really going to tune to the Weather Channel to watch Misery? Really… - Peter Sciretta

A Movie adaptation of "Cages"... we're okay with that.

There’s only one Dave McKean feature film out there in the world so far, and that’s Mirrormask. Doesn’t seem right that such an auspicious debut wouldn’t have been followed up more rapidly, or even very regularly. I feel hard done by.

I reported earlier in the year on McKean’s continuing attempts to get ass-kicking kitty picture Varjak Paw off of the ground. Now it seems he’s also taking meetings about an eventual big screen rendering of his epic, ambitious Cages comic book.

Here’s what the man himself tweeted on the matter:

Great first meeting about Cages film; a long term possibility, but good to know all interested parties are on the same page.

Cages is rather widely considered to be McKean’s masterwork. Like Varjak Paw it hinges on the comings and goings of a cat, but the similarities pretty much dry up right there. Originally serialised through the first half of the ’90s, it really came into focus for me when collected as a single volume in ‘98. I guess it didn’t help that the early pages, while looking astonishing, read rather badly.

At least those awkward opening scenes gives McKean something to fix in the mix when bringing the story over to the cinema, amidst the more major travails of something so perfectly attuned to one medium work as well in another.

The book’s narrative, or more properly narratives, resist easy summary because each episode concludes rather swiftly, making it hard to describe them without spoiling too much. We have angels and housewives, painters and writers, all in their own stories taking place in the same building and linked together pretty much only by a wandering black cat.

I can’t see a Cages film being big box office, and neither can I see it being big budget. I’m sure, however, that it would be rather high quality.

Besides being a source of news about the man and his work, McKean’s Twitter feed is also a rather fun source of film criticism. I think he pretty much nailed The Invention of Lying, and I was not surprised to see him giving some love to The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. - Brendon Connelly

Disney Tech Project ‘Keychest’ Would Let Buyers Play All Media on All Digital Devices

Disney is looking into new technology that could help DVD take a few more steps toward obsolescence. Currently dubbed Keychest, the system would allow users to purchase a piece of media one time, then access it instantly on (ideally) any of their devices, whether that be phone, iPod, computer or On Demand cable system.

The Wall Street Journal carried the first story about the tech yesterday, and dubbed it ‘Ditch the DVD’. The theory behind Keychest is simple: use ‘cloud computing” — essentially a technique to stream media — to allow movies and TV shows to be stored on remote servers and then accessed from any device. Users buy a single access pass to that piece of media, then in the example given, could end up watching part of it on their phone, part at home and the rest at someone else’s house, all using the same access pass.

Cloud computing is a great thing, so long as the cloud remains intact. T-Mobile’s Sidekick devices rely upon a cloud to retain user data such as photos and address books. Recently the cloud went down, and a great deal of customer data was lost. In the case of Keychest, one would expect that purchased access codes would not be easily lost, and at most there might be periods where movies and shows were inaccessible. But even that is a problem; if I’ve paid for any-time access to something, I want any-time access.

That’s not the only problem facing the tech. Getting content rights holders on board is one issue. Getting devices to be compatible is another. In this case, given that Steve Jobs is a primary Disney shareholder, Apple could likely be on board. And, as is so often the case, there is already a competing standard. Sony is part of a project called DECE that similarly aims to change the ways in which consumers purchase and store media.

But Disney’s goal is admirable: “Our vision for the future is that consumers won’t have to think about where they bought [a movie], how they bought it, or when they bought it.” Having just gone through the process of moving, I’ve realized that I am 100% done with owning DVDs, so I’d add one more thing to that pile of intentions: I don’t want to think about where my movies are kept, or how to store and move them.

What do you think? Are we close enough to an all-digital media future that a project like this has a chance of success? - Russ Fischer