Every time a big movie flops and a smaller one succeeds, people who cover Hollywood write articles predicting The End of the Movie Star Era! and blah blah blah. The same article comes out at least twice a year. But nothing ever changes that much, because movies with people we know in them are always going to get more attention than movies with people we don’t, and because these articles are usually based on a fallacy or on deliberate distortions. From a Reuters article “Hollywood rethinks use of A-list actors”:
Hollywood studios are now thinking twice about splurging on A-list movie stars and costly productions in reaction to the poor economy, but also because of the surprising success of recent films with unknown actors. After buddy comedy “The Hangover,” a movie with a little-known cast, made $459 million at the global box office this past summer, several films have shown that a great concept or story can trump star appeal when it comes to luring fans.
Ever since it came out I’ve been hearing how The Hangover was a cast of unknowns. Unknown to who, your grandma? Zach Galifianakis was a hugely popular comedian and Ed Helms had been on The Office for a year and The Daily Show since 2001. Bradley Cooper was sort of unknown, but how well do you need to know “the really good-looking guy?” As your mom will attest, not very.
Aside from Carrey and “Carol,” which cost at least $175 million, A-listers who suffered boxoffice flops recently have included Bruce Willis (”Surrogates”), Adam Sandler (”Funny People”), Will Ferrell (”Land of the Lost”), Eddie Murphy (”Imagine That”) and Julia Roberts (”Duplicity”).
Chances are, you’ve already seen three or four movies starring all those people, and a couple of them weren’t very good. So when one of their movies comes out, it’s not as big a deal as, say, a movie with that really funny comedian or dude from The Office you haven’t seen in a movie before. Really, all these articles are saying is that it’s better to cast a star on the way up than it is to cast one on the way down. Brilliant deduction. That’s so obvious there might as well be a Dr. Phil episode about it.
Variety first broke this story last Thursday, but to be honest, I reeeaaally didn’t want to accept what I had heard. So, in an attempt to completely erase all knowledge of this project from my memory, I spent the weekend doing what any virile, young man would have done: drinking moonshine and flicking wadded up dollar bills at underage strippers. Try as I might, I still couldn’t shake the nightmares:
Peter Chelsom (director of Hannah Montana: The Movie) has been chosen by CBS Films to direct Last Vegas, a movie concept so f–king lame that even as I sit here watching this VH1 dating show, it still sounds pretty asinine.
The comedy — which CBS originally acquired as a $1 million pitch — centers on four semi-retired baby boomers who head to Las Vegas when the last of the Coney Island buddies, a successful lawyer in his 60s, decides to tie the knot.
Man, this Chelsom guy really lucked out with his timing, what-with the success of The Hangover and all. Oh, you mean this wasn’t a coincidence after all?
Despite their epically sleazy the-soldiers-who-defend-your-freedom-want-you-to-see-it marketing campaign, Paramount made $56.2 million on their G.I. Joe movie. The sad thing about even the most blatantly phony, transparent pandering is that it usually works. Oh hey look, Toby Keith bought a new cowboy hat. Anyway, it’s not Transformers money, but it’s enough for execs to say “well look how well G.I. Joe and Transformers did!” as they try to defend their decision to greenlight the next movie based on a board game or parlor trick. Thing is, though G.I. Joe and Transformers are technically based on a toy, they also both had old cartoons and the accompanying nostalgia on which to draw. If the View-Master movie does anywhere near this kind of business, I promise I’ll chug a pint of hobo piss.
Elsewhere, Julie and Julia was number two with $20.1 million. Surprising that there were so many people that couldn’t just wait to see it on a plane. Hard to tell if it will hold or drop immediately, but critics are already calling it the plane-yest movie of the summer.
Most everything else made a not-particularly-noteworthy $7 or $8 million (though Funny People declined a sharp 65%). And pour a little beer out on a hooker for The Hangover, which dropped out of the top 10 for the first week since its release. Though at -35%, it had the smallest decline for wide releases for the fifth weekend in a row, and still managed the number 11 spot. It just goes to show, people really want to see Zach Galifianakis get blown by an old chick.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince topped the box office, earning $159.7 mil in five days, making it the best start of all the Potter movies and the sixth highest 5-day gross of all time. It also broke a foreign box office record with $237 mil in 54 countries. But this is America, we don’t care about that.
[Pictured: Some vandals dorks in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin have spread Harry Potter fever to the city's stop signs. I'd assume they had something better to do but it was either this or butter sculpting.]
Elsewhere, Brüno dropped almost 73% in its second weekend, which is a shame because I saw it and wasn’t disappointed in the least (a talking urethra, people!). It fell to number four and though it’ll earn out, it’s not going to pull Borat numbers. Meanwhile, The Hangover is a phenomenon at this point, staying at number five in its seventh week of release (Up is the only other movie in the top 10 that’s been out longer, at eight weeks) and grossing almost $236 million total. And lastly, I Love You Beth Cooper is almost out of the top ten with just $2.7 million, which is $2.7 million more than that flaming diarrhea deserves. Full top 10 after the jump.
Ever since The Hangover became the second highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever, speculation on what Todd Phillips and Zach Galifiniakis’ next project would be has run wild like an aborigine with a spear in the jungle. Now Variety reports that the pair will do Due Date, to be followed by The Hangover 2 a year later.
Galifianakis will play one of the two leads in “Due Date,” an Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland [King of the Hill - eek] script that was revised by Adam Sztykiel [Made of Honor. Oof]. In the comedy about fatherhood, an expectant dad and his unlikely travel companion (Galifianakis) race cross-country in hopes of making it home for the birth of his first child.
Phillips is on track to earn $35 million or more on “The Hangover” after he gave back his salary and gross position to become an equity investment partner in the pic. Move allowed him to make the film with Zach Galifianakis, Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms, who were not proven at the box office. Phillips never wagered as smartly as he did on “The Hangover.” Because he insisted on his cast, WB Pictures Group prexy Jeff Robinov gave him a budget ceiling of $34 million, and the only way Phillips could make that number was to work for scale and use salary and gross to buy his way into being an equity investor. [Variety]
F-ck yeah, Todd Phillips. Uh, he’s here for the gangbang? But seriously, it’s pretty awesome when someone in Hollywood lays his nuts on the table and ends up proving everyone wrong. Usually the only time you see nuts laid on the table is when squirrels gamble.
