Time for another round-up of newsy items.
1. Yesterday, the Hollywood Reporter wrote:
It’s the dreaded weekend after Labor Day, when school is back in session and end-of-summer blues permeate the pop culture. If that didn’t already augur poorly for the box office, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina compounds the situation, creating the possibility that the weekend will be the weakest moviegoing frame of the year.
“The Exorcism of Emily Rose” is expected to scare up the most business in its first weekend, generating sales in the mid- to high-teen millions, with a possible go at $20 million if the well-crafted trailer can lure horror fans.
Possible go, eh? That now seems like a rather short-sighted underestimate given that, as BoxOfficeMojo.com is reporting, the film made $11.3 million on Friday alone, and thus — depending on the drop-off that is common to genre-type films of this sort — could even crack $30 million before the weekend is over.
To put this in perspective, only two films have ever made over $30 million — heck, over $25 million — on their opening weekends in September, namely 1998’s Rush Hour and 2002’s Sweet Home Alabama. And come to that, I can presently think of only ten horror films that opened with over $30 million, almost all of which were sequels or remakes (see here, here, and here). And the ones that weren’t had big-name directors or actors, which this film does not. In fact, this may be the biggest opening ever for any of the film’s four lead actors, except for Laura Linney‘s The Truman Show (1998; $31.5 million) and Tom Wilkinson‘s Rush Hour (1998; $33 million) and Batman Begins (2005; $48.7 million). And Linney and Wilkinson, talented as they are, were not exactly the stars of those three films. (FWIW, none of Campbell Scott’s or Jennifer Carpenter’s films come anywhere close.)
Expect there to be stories soon, asking if this film owes its success to the mobilization of Christian audiences, etc., etc.
SEP 11 UPDATE: I just thought of two more horror movies (both of them sequels) that had bigger opening weekends; see here.
2. In anticipation of the new expanded version of The Outsiders (1983) coming out on DVD next week, the Associated Press has stories on director Francis Ford Coppola and the film’s then up-and-coming cast (which includes everyone from present-day big stars like Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe and Diane Lane to 1980s has-beens like Ralph Macchio and C. Thomas Howell).
I have never seen this film, but I remember reading about it when I was in junior high, and I wonder if I should watch this longer version or the now out-of-print original version first. Now I know what all those people who have never seen either version of Apocalypse Now (1979), re-issued a few years ago as Apocalypse Now Redux (2001; my review), have to go through …
3. Reuters reports that Abel Ferrara’s Mary won the Jury Grand Prix at the Venice film festival:
Ferrara told reporters this week that his film was possible thanks to the interest in religion generated by Mel Gibson, who struck gold with the ultra-realist “The Passion of the Christ.”
4. The Associated Press reports that Robert Altman will direct a stage version of Arthur Miller’s Resurrection Blues:
Set in a troubled South American country, “Resurrection Blues” is the story of a messianic rebel leader who is captured and sentenced to death by crucifixion. An American production company decides to film the execution for television.
5. Theo Hobson writes in The Guardian that The Sound of Music (1965) is “a fairytale version of modern Christian history.”
The film performs what Europe has always been pining for: the integration of its conflicting religious impulses. It is the fantasy unity of Catholicism, Protestantism and Romanticism. It is Hegel with songs. And what songs!
6. The New York Times has an item on the 10th birthday of Books & Culture, a bi-monthly magazine that I have been contributing to, off-and-on, for almost eight years. Congratulations, guys!
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