SPEARE'S TIPS: THE FILMS OF 9/9 & 9/11 - I Can Do Bad All By Myself, Sorority Row, 9, Whiteout, et al.

Scramble time. I might as well make this announcement first, as it has a direct impact (no pun intended) on the game. When I wrote last week’s column, I wasn’t sure whether No Impact Man was going to be released on 9/4 or 9/11, as different sources gave me conflicting data. But now, it seems that it will indeed be coming out THIS coming weekend, which means it is still available to be picked up or dropped. Additionally, it looks like The Red Canvas, which I removed from the list weeks ago, is back. Both Box Office Mojo and Comingsoon.net have it on their docket for this weekend. It’s not exactly gotten good reviews, but if anyone wants it, they are welcome to it. It is now the only $2 pick available in the July leagues. Final note: only two players, Girls_with_Glasses and TBB, never got around to replacing it (and only in the Ultimate HY R2).

On top of all that, I’ve got five MORE films to talk about, four wide-release and one limited, all coming out this week. One can only hope that the box office will rebound after the typically awful week it had this past weekend, but if it makes you feel more confident in picking any of the films that I’m about to talk about, remember that four wide movies debuted on this weekend last year, and three of them were able to break $15 million in their first three days: Burn After Reading ($19.1M), Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys ($17.4M) and Righteous Kill ($16.3M).

And speaking of Tyler Perry, who has consistently churned out films every six months for the last three years like clockwork, sure enough, he’s back, this time with a big-screen adaptation of his play, I Can Do Bad All By Myself. And for the second time this year, it includes Tyler Perry’s most famous character, the wisecracking granny Madea. But unlike this past February’s Madea Goes to Jail, she’s not the most prominent character this time.

She does get the ball rolling, however. When a sixteen-year-old girl and her two younger brothers break into Madea’s house, rather than call the police, she decides to deliver them to their only living relative, their aunt April (Taraji P. Henson), a heavy-drinking nightclub singer who lives off of her married boyfriend (Brian White). April scoffs at the job of child-raising, but a handsome Mexican immigrant (Adam Rodriguez) who moves into her basement encourages her to open her heart to them, and many valuable life-lessons ensue. Music legends Gladys Knight and Mary J. Blige also co-star.

First, the good news: Madea Goes to Jail was able to pull in over $90 million this spring, Perry’s highest grossing film to date. But history has shown that his spring outings tend to do better than his autumn ones: for instance, The Family That Preys was only able to pull in $37 million last year. But that film didn’t have Madea in it, and she has been featured heavily in the ads and trailers for I Can Do Bad, so you can bet that the Madea faithful will be showing up for this one.

This title will run you $14 in the September Ultimate leagues ($16 in Box Office). Despite BOM’s estimate that it will open in only 2,100 theaters or so (considerably fewer than Sorority Row and Whiteout), I believe it will still take #1 on its opening weekend with around $19 million, and perhaps pick up four or five PTA as well. You should know by now that User Ratings for heavily African-American films tend to be really bad (despite the number of positive reviews), but if that is a trade-off you can live with, then you should probably take this film. In all, I predict $48 million, nine Top 5, and six PTA. Which ain’t too bad, really.

The film being given the widest release this weekend is, ironically, the film that’s waited the longest to get one. Whiteout, for those of you who don’t know, actually wrapped filming more than two years ago. What took Warner Brothers so long to put it into theaters is anybody’s guess, but this title has been postponed at least twice before, which is never a good sign.

Based on the Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber’s 1998 comic book, Whiteout takes place in the frozen wastelands of Antarctica. After a brutal murder is committed less than a week before the start of the even-more-brutal winter season, U.S. deputy marshal Carrie Stetko (Underworld’s Kate Beckinsale) is assigned to investigate. There, she crosses paths with a U.N. operative (The Spirit's Gabriel Macht), who is also investigating. Tom Skerritt and Columbus Short also co-star.

One of the key ingredients to a good thriller is tension, and nothing ramps up the tension than when a rather small group of people are in a situation when they are totally isolated and cut off from civilization. When the malevolent climate is the least of your worries, that makes it even more tense. My favorite example of this is John Carpenter’s The Thing (from 1982), and 30 Days of Night did a fairly good job in 2007.

The problem is, I have seen next to nothing regarding this film in the media. A couple of commercials, that’s it. The fact that it is showing in 2,700 theaters is amazing to me…. Guess Warner Bros. spent all their money on distribution, and nothing on advertising? Well, that’ll cost ‘em.

Whiteout costs $8 in both Ultimate and Box Office leagues, despite the lack of stiff competition, I can’t imagine that it will pull much more than $8 million on its opening weekend, which might be good enough for #3, but it won’t stay in the Top 5 for much longer than that. The User Rating MIGHT be respectable, but it definitely won’t get you any PTA, and $25 million (tops) is not enough to spend that much on it, not when you can get Law Abiding Citizen or Precious for only $1 more.

And while the high theater count for Whiteout baffles me, it baffles me even more that 9, the latest film to have Tim Burton’s name attached to it, is only scheduled to bow on 1,638 screens. Given the fantastic voice cast (which includes Elijah Wood, Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau, Crispin Glover, John C. Reilly and Jennifer Connelly), and the fact that Burton and Wanted’s Timur Bekmambitov are listed as producers, I would have expected a much larger release platform. What gives?

Based on the Academy Award-nominated 2005 animated short from Shane Acker, who also directs the big-screen version (which I’ll post a link to below), 9 is being distributed by Focus Features, who, if you remember, brought us the surprise spring hit Coraline earlier this year. As a point of reference, that film debuted with nearly $17 million on roughly 2,300 screens, but it had tremendous legs, ending with just over $75 million overall.

The story is set in a post-apocalyptic world, somewhat reminiscent of the Terminator series: humans created machines that eventually rose up and exterminated all of mankind. However, in one last-ditch attempt to preserve life, a scientist succeeded in transferring his life-force (along with disparate parts of his own personality) into nine diminutive doll-like creatures – referred to in the film as “stitchpunks” – who are identified by the numerals displayed on their backs. The protagonist is, as you’ve guessed, “9” (Wood), who must find a way to band together what’s left of his “kind” and avoid extermination at the hands of the machines who still walk the Earth.

It was an interesting marketing decision to release 9 on a Wednesday (the date 9/9/09). And to tell you the truth, I have been looking forward to this film since the beginning of the year, being a big fan of the animated short. And it seems to have been well-received so far: it has a “75% fresh” score on RT and a very respectable 7.8 User Rating on IMDb (with 430 votes). But that miniscule number of screens scares me. It would take a Herculean effort to manage more than a handful of Top 5 points or PTA, and unless it can take off like Coraline did (which seems unlikely), I estimate 9 will end shy of $30 million total. $11 in Ultimate ($10 in Box Office) seems far to steep a price to pay.

Summit Entertainment is an interesting study. After a dreadful string of flops (P2, Penelope, Never Back Down, Sex Drive), this studio scored yooge with the release of Twilight last winter. That success continued in 2009 with the box-office hit Knowing and the critical hit The Hurt Locker. The Twilight Saga: New Moon is a good bet to be the top dollar-earner this winter. But in the interim, we have Sorority Row, a remake of the 1983 slasher film The House on Sorority Row.

From the trailer, the film starts innocently enough: when college student Megan (Audrina Partridge) discovers that her boyfriend is cheating on her, she and her five sorority sisters cook up a plan to get revenge on him – namely, to make him believe that he killed her. But when the plan goes horribly wrong and he ends up ACTUALLY killing her (…whoops), everyone involved agrees to dump Megan’s body in a well and never speak of the matter again. Yeah, fat chance…

Fast-forward to eight months later, when the remaining girls are about to graduate, and they all receive a mysterious picture on their phones: that of the murder weapon. Shortly thereafter, they find themselves being stalked and brutally murdered by a hooded figure, using the very same murder weapon. The cast includes Briana Evigan (Step Up 2 the Streets), Rumer Willis (The House Bunny) and… Carrie Fisher?!

This one is a tough call for me. September and October are rife with horror films, but this seems to be the only one in the horror/slasher niche; the others are either horror/comedies (Jennifer’s Body, Zombieland), or horror/thrillers (Pandorum, Saw VI). Will the 2,500 screens that Sorority Row is destined for be enough to make a splash? Well, even a soft opening might be good enough for #2 this weekend, so there’s that. For the $9 price tag (in both leagues), this film might give you six Top 5, one or two PTA, a so-so User Rating and $35 million in revenues. This is an iffy prospect at best.

My PTA pick for the week is actually a toss-up between I Can Do Bad All By Myself and No Impact Man. The only other film on the docket this weekend is Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, a remake of the 1956 noir film directed by Fritz Lang. This one is helmed by Peter Hyams, who has had a rather checkered career behind the camera. His best decade was definitely the 80’s (Outland, 2010, The Presidio); but since Timecop came out fifteen years ago, his work has gone steadily downhill (including End of Days, The Musketeer, and the absolutely horrible A Sound of Thunder).

The story: a high-profile lawyer, Martin Hunter (Michael Douglas) is suspected of tampering with evidence in order to win cases, so an investigative journalist (Jesse Metcalfe) frames himself as a murder suspect in order to catch Hunter in the act. And so begins a deadly cat-and-mouse game between the two of them. Amber Tamblyn and Orlando Jones also co-star.

I haven’t heard much about this remake, but what I’ve heard hasn’t been promising. In a nutshell, most who have seen it says it pales in comparison with the original. Honestly, it looks more like a late-night cable staple than a theater experience, and however many screens it’s being shown on, I don’t foresee enough interest to scare up even one PTA point. Spend your $3 elsewhere.


My predictions for the weekend of September 11-13, 2009:

1. Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself - $19 million
2. Sorority Row - $12 million
3. 9 - $10 million
4. Whiteout - $8 million
5. Final Destination - $6 million


Well, that will do it for me for another week. Next week, my dance card is going to be full, as I have no less than seven films to talk about, including: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, a Columbia Pictures animated film based on the best-selling children’s book; The Informant!, the latest film from the Ocean’s series director, Steven Soderbergh; Jennifer’s Body, a horror/comedy from the pen of Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody and starring Transformers’ Megan Fox; Love Happens, a romantic comedy starring Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart; not to mention limited-release features The Burning Plain, Paris and (unless I hear differently regarding its release date) Splice.

Later!

Here are this weekend's trailers:












And, as promised, here's the full-length animated short of 9:

It's strange that you list Splice even though it's not opening this month or at any point in 2009.

I too am baffled that Whiteout is opening that wide, I have not seen ANY promotion for it. I think this weekend will come down between Sorority Row and I Can Do Bad All By Myself. The latter will probably win it.

I think 9 is a non-factor, good for the IMDb score but won't register anywhere else.

BanksIsDaFuture wrote:I too am baffled that Whiteout is opening that wide, I have not seen ANY promotion for it. I think this weekend will come down between Sorority Row and I Can Do Bad All By Myself. The latter will probably win it.

I think 9 is a non-factor, good for the IMDb score but won't register anywhere else.

You're seriously thinking about if I Can Do Bad is going to win the weekend?

I have a co-worker (yes, he's African-American) who is seeing TP this weekend. And he says his entire family is going. For what that's worth...

Yeah, I'd say a fairly high percentage of living Black women in America will go see it, just like every other Tyler Perry movie with Madea in it.

W, when I think..... I KNOW

The plot of Sorority Row reminds me of a bargain basement mystery novel I read when I was like 14.

Banks doesn't think very often

Good start for "9"....3.1 million for Wednesday.

Really? That's almost encouraging. Assume a low Thursday ($1.3 million), and then a decent weekend. I am hoping it can pull around $20M for the five-day. And if it does well enough, maybe it can expand by a few hundred theaters the way Coraline did.

I'll probably see it Saturday.

I'll probably see 9 and Sorority Row on Friday followed by I Can Do Bad All By Myself on Saturday.

Since no one's created a "tracking" thread for this weekend's films, I'll ask it here: anyone know of any early predictions? If not, please post on Friday if any early numbers come in.

This weekend's predictions:

Lee's Movie Info:
1. Tyler Perry $23.1
2. 9 $14.1
3. Sorority Row $9.2
4. Whiteout $8.9
5. Basterds $6.3

Judging from how my theater did today, looks like Sorority Row and Whiteout will both be flopping wonderfully.

Knew that would happen. They were doomed from the start.

Did you think Sorority Row flopped this hard?

EXCLUSIVE STEVE MASON FRIDAY & 3-DAY ESTIMATES FOR SEPTEMBER 11-13
1. Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself (Lionsgate) - $8.6M Fri - $23.75M 3-day - $23.75M cume
2. 9 (Focus) - $3.3M Fri - $9.75M 3-day - $14.2M cume
3. Inglourious Basterds (Weinstein) - $2M Fri - $7M 3-day - $104.8M cume
4. All About Steve (Fox) - $1.9M Fri - $6.3M 3-day - $22.3M cume
5. White Out (Warner Bros) - $1.9M Fri - $5.5M 3-day - $5.5M cume
*Sorority Row (Summit) - $1.8M Fri - $4.6M 3-day - $4.6M cume
*GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra (Paramount) - $675K Fri - $2.5M 3-day - $144.25M cume

BOM's Friday numbers:

1. Tyler Perry - $8.6M
2. 9 - $3.325M
3. Sorority Row - $1.925M
4. Basterds - $1.9M (will hit $100M on Saturday)
5. Steve - $1.825M
6. Whiteout - $1.76M


Amazing that 9 nearly doubles Whiteout's numbers despite being in 1,100 fewer theaters.

Crap, I just posted this stuff in a new thread in the tracking forum.

9 was a great movie. I would recommend it purely on its aesthetics, but it's also a very intelligent, engaging story.