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tomatometer:

30% Chappie

55% Focus (2015)

64% The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

74% Kingsman: The Secret Service

75% The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water
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13% Unfinished Business

metacritic:

*click pic(s) for source*

‘Chappie’ Stumbles, ‘Unfinished Business’ Bombs

Neill Blomkamp’s “Chappie” and “Unfinished Business” with Vince Vaughn added up to a weekend to forget at the U.S. box office.

Overall ticket sales plunged as “Chappie,” a science-fiction adventure about a sentient robot, topped charts with a weak $13.3 million. Going into the weekend, Sony Pictures was aiming for a debut of roughly $15 million and some analysts expected the film could hit $20 million. Reviews were tepid and the picture is the latest in a long line of R-rated new releases such as “Fifty Shades of Grey” and “Focus,” which may have hurt it with moviegoers looking for something that appeals to kids as well as adults.

“There’s been a glut of R-rated movies starting from the first of the year,” said Rory Bruer, Sony’s worldwide distribution chief. “I think there’s some R-rated fatigue.”

Original science-fiction films have been had a rocky go of it at the box office of late, with “Seven Son,” “Jupiter Ascending” and “Project Almanac” all crashing on the shoals of audience indifference.

“Chappie” was produced for $49 million and Sony isn’t ready to concede defeat on the picture just yet, predicting it could make a profit when foreign markets are taken into account. Bruer notes that Blomkamp’s previous films, “District 9″ and “Elysium,” were able to stick around for a long time after their debuts.

“The movie plays well and the uniqueness of the characters is going to drive a conversation that I do believe will help the film in the coming weeks,” he said.

It was a dispiriting weekend overall for the business, with ticket sales down roughly 35% from the year-ago period — a weekend that saw the debuts of “300: Rise of an Empire” and “Mr. Peabody and Sherman.” That also took a chunk out of the substantial lead that the exhibition industry had maintained over 2014’s first quarter numbers. Ticket sales are now up roughly 5% over the previous year’s, but two weeks ago they topped them by roughly 10%.

“The market has been so strong lately, I’m not surprised to see such a big down weekend,” said Phil Contrino, vice president and chief analyst at BoxOffice.com. “Things have to slow down at some point.”

“Chappie” fared better than “Unfinished Business,” another R-rated whiff. The business trip comedy eked out a gloomy $4.8 million across 2,777 locations. It ranks as the lowest debut of Vaughn’s career, raising serious questions about his appeal. The “Wedding Crashers” star has headlined an array of flops over the past four years, including “The Dilemma,” “Delivery Man,” “The Internship” and “The Watch.” A lot is riding on the second season of “True Detective” in order to return Vaughn to audiences’ good graces. Twentieth Century Fox distributed the $35 million film, which New Regency financed.

“Sometimes this happens where a film doesn’t connect with an audience,” said Spencer Klein, executive vice president of theatrical distribution at Fox. “Fortunately this hasn’t happened too often to us.”

There was one diamond in the crop of dinged up new releases — “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.” The comic tale of retirees making new lives for themselves in India bowed to a sterling $8.6 million across 1,573 locations. Fox Searchlight is distributing the comedy which was co-produced by Participant Media and cost a mere $10 million to produce.

Last week’s champ, the Will Smith heist film “Focus,” had to settle for runner-up status, taking second place on the charts with $10 million. That brings the film’s take to $34.6 million.

Among holdovers, “Kingsman: The Secret Service” took in $8.3 million, pushing its take to $98 million, while “Fifty Shades of Grey” added $5.6 million to its $156.4 million haul. “The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water” continued to benefit from being one of the only family-friendly releases, picking up $7 million and driving the picture to $149 million at the stateside box office.

At the art house, Sony Pictures premiered the spin-doctor documentary “Merchants of Doubt” on four screens where it earned $20,327, while “The Hunting Ground,” a look at sexual violence on college campuses, added $8,936 from two screens to its $$45,822 gross.

Roadside Attractions and Black Label Media’s critically adored thriller “71” capitalized on good reviews, earning $70,590 after expanding from four to 16 screens in NY and LA.

*click pic for full list/source*


*click pic for full list/source*

 

[Slayven]

Dat Jupiter Ascending, is worldwide saving it?

 

[The Outsider]

Unfinished Bomba

 

[Aquamarine]

sponge comps:

Great news for Viacom / Paramount.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

Cue conspiracy to sideline conservatives

 

[jett]

I see you resisted the "Chappie does crappy" line.

 

[Raw64life]

American Sniper just passed Hunger Games to be the highest grossing movie of 2014 in USA.

 

[harSon]

So is it safe to assume that Will Smith's career is in a steep decline for the moment until he gets a comic book movie out of the way?

His career probably goes back to where it was 2016 and onward

 

[Slayven]

So is it safe to assume that Will Smith's career is in a steep decline for the moment until he gets a comic book movie out of the way?

I wouldn't say that, just that people and Hollywood are over big name stars.

that and he should have done Bad Boys 3 lone time ago. But that is just me.

 

[Mortimer Brewster]

American Sniper just passed Hunger Games to be the highest grossing movie of 2014 in USA.

That's pretty huge news especially since it came out in a year with two highly succesful and well received Marvel films and Mockinjay.

 

[Aquamarine]

Also notable this week:


Tangled

Domestic: $200,821,936 33.9%
+ Foreign: $390,973,000 66.1%
= Worldwide: $591,794,936


Big Hero 6

Domestic: $221,312,000 36.6%
+ Foreign: $383,500,000 63.4%
= Worldwide: $604,812,000



BH6 is now the third most profitable WDAS title unadjusted for inflation (Frozen #1, Lion King #2, BH6 #3), and the 2nd most profitable since the restructuring (Frozen #1, BH6 #2).

 

[alfredofroylan]

Dat Jupiter Ascending, is worldwide saving it?

No,still no numbers from China and they didn't even chart Mexico despite the movie being released a month ago there.

Jupiter Ascending
Production Budget: $176 million
Total Lifetime Grosses
Domestic: $45,054,000 35.7%
+ Foreign: $81,100,000 64.3%
= Worldwide: $126,154,000

But be happy guys, the slow month is almost over and next week is Cinderella and after that Furious 7.

 

[duckroll]

Chappie kinda tanked. Pretty unfortunate. I really enjoyed it. While it's true that the budget is much lower compared to Elysium, I think that realistically Sony is probably expecting a director they've stuck by for 3 films to be doing much better than this. I guess Blomkamp is lucky that he struck a deal with Fox for an Aliens film before this opened. Lol.

 

[Abounder]

So is it safe to assume that Will Smith's career is in a steep decline for the moment until he gets a comic book movie out of the way?

Americans need more than just Will Smith to see a movie in February/March but I think Smith's name is still strong as a global superstar; the infamous After Earth still made ~$183 million overseas

 

[harSon]

Chappie kinda tanked. Pretty unfortunate. I really enjoyed it. While it's true that the budget is much lower compared to Elysium, I think that realistically Sony is probably expecting a director they've stuck by for 3 films to be doing much better than this. I guess Blomkamp is lucky that he struck a deal with Fox for an Aliens film before this opened. Lol.

This is definitely going to have repercussions. Not necessarily removing him from the movie, but I wouldn't be surprised if his level of involvement across all elements of the film are tapered back some. Or at least it'd be in Fox's best interest to make that the case, especially anything that's remotely related to narrative.

 

[duckroll]

This is definitely going to have repercussions. Not necessarily removing him from the movie, but I wouldn't be surprised if his level of involvement across all elements of the film are tapered back some. Or at least it'd be in Fox's best interest to make that the case, especially anything that's remotely related to narrative.

I can definitely see that. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Fox started getting cold feet and shelves the whole deal. They didn't actually officially announce a film did they? They just confirmed that the reports saying they signed a development deal with him are true. He's still lucky he got something signed before this opened though! Lol.

 

[LFMartins86]

So is it safe to assume that Will Smith's career is in a steep decline for the moment until he gets a comic book movie out of the way?

He´s doing one next year.

 

[vinnygambini]

Kingsman: The Secret Service keeps on doing good business. It's final gross ww should be equivalent to the Maze Runner. Another great success story for Fox.

I can definitely see that. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Fox started getting cold feet and shelves the whole deal. They didn't actually officially announce a film did they? They just confirmed that the reports saying they signed a development deal with him are true. He's still lucky he got something signed before this opened though! Lol.

Duno Ridley Scott keeps on directing regardless of box-office disappointments such as Robin Hood, Kingdom of Heaven and Exodus.

Plus all three of his films debuted at number one (Neil), successful PR spin!

 

[cartoon_soldier]

First Marigold hotel was great, gotta watch this one.

 

[Nappuccino]

I can definitely see that. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Fox started getting cold feet and shelves the whole deal. They didn't actually officially announce a film did they? They just confirmed that the reports saying they signed a development deal with him are true. He's still lucky he got something signed before this opened though! Lol.

I guess he's lucky that Chappie still opened number one. He can put that on his CV.

 

[Aquamarine]

Dat Jupiter Ascending, is worldwide saving it?

No,still no numbers from China and they didn't even chart Mexico despite the movie being released a month ago there.

I can't believe Jupiter Ascending is STILL below the Wachowski Brothers' Cloud Atlas failure.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

I can't imagine they're going to do anything about trying to "safeguard" the movie from him. The whole reason they gave him the movie is because of his pitch, and the fact he brought along Weaver with him. They signed off on his fanfiction idea, apparently due to the Weaver factor and the response his pre-production art got from people on the internet.

The fact Chappie isn't doing well isn't going to cause them to go "well, maybe the guy who sold us his fanfiction and some paintings isn't going to be great at the story now - we should get some guys to beef this up for us."

It's going to be his from start to finish, provided the budget comes in low enough, and he's good at bringing in movies at a reasonable price.

If Fox actually cared about the strength of the story they wouldn't have greenlit this in the first place. But they don't - they care about return on investment, and a 80-100 mil Alien movie with Weaver back will get them return on investment no matter what the story is.

I strongly doubt anyone's going to come in and "fix" or "save" the movie from Blomkamp in production.

 

[mreddie]

Cinderella and Liam Neeson, save us.

Also, Sony blaming the rated R films override? And watch, Up All Night make more money next week.

 

[Currygan]

woah, didn't know about second Marigold Hotel. Loved the first one, will sure watch this


glad about Kingsman still doing good in America

 

[Miles Quaritch]

Damn, that's a shockingly poor weekend for all movies.

Surprised Chappie couldn't even get above $20m. Seems like almost everyone in the cinema yesterday was going to watch it here in the UK.

 

[Sectorseven]

I can definitely see that. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Fox started getting cold feet and shelves the whole deal. They didn't actually officially announce a film did they? They just confirmed that the reports saying they signed a development deal with him are true. He's still lucky he got something signed before this opened though! Lol.

It puts Fox in a tough spot for the marketing. They'll almost certainly want to scale back Blomkamp's name in the ads. If Sigourney Weaver is supposed to be the lead...she's not really a name you can build a campaign around either. They'd have to focus all efforts on the Alien brand itself, and even that might have lost a lot of goodwill because of "Prometheus."

 

[Phoenician_Viking]

Very slow week.

Now why doesn´t other studios make a Cinderella/Alice/Little mermaid etc movies? Seems pretty stupid to me not using these IP. They seem very profitable. Universal was stupid by making a gritty Snow White, which alienated the core audiences of these movies, children. Alice and Maleficent made a killing at the BO.

 

[vinnygambini]

I can't believe Jupiter Ascending is STILL below the Wachowski Brothers' Cloud Atlas failure.

China not accounted for yet; the Wachowski's best-performing market!

I have to say, regardless of their box-office failures, I for one really enjoyed Speed Racer.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

It puts Fox in a tough spot for the marketing. They'll almost certainly want to scale back Blomkamp's name in the ads. If Sigourney Weaver is supposed to be the lead...she's not really a name you can build a campaign around either. They'd have to focus all efforts on the Alien brand itself, and even that might have lost a lot of goodwill because of "Prometheus."

I don't think any of that will turn out to be the case. They'll just use "District 9" in the copy, and they'll put Weaver up front since Weaver being back is a large part of the reason they agreed to this in the first place. They're not going to scale either of those things back in the marketing. The entire hook of the story is that Ripley's Back! The Bitch is Back! Again! For the Third Time!

 

[PeskyToaster]

Saw Kingsman this weekend. Absolutely loved it. I'm glad it's doing well.

 

[alfredofroylan]

Very slow week.

Now why doesn´t other studios make a Cinderella/Alice/Little mermaid etc movies? Seems pretty stupid to me not using these IP. They seem very profitable. Universal was stupid by making a gritty Snow White, which alienated the core audiences of these movies, children. Alice and Maleficent made a killing at the BO.

Because of this:

Jack the Giant Slayer
Production Budget: $195 million

Total Lifetime Grosses
Domestic: $65,187,603 33.0%
+ Foreign: $132,500,000 67.0%
= Worldwide: $197,687,603

 

[Decado]

Also, Sony blaming the rated R films override? And watch, Up All Night make more money next week.

I don't understand this or where it is coming from...

 

[duckroll]

I can't imagine they're going to do anything about trying to "safeguard" the movie from him. The whole reason they gave him the movie is because of his pitch, and the fact he brought along Weaver with him. They signed off on his fanfiction idea, apparently due to the Weaver factor and the response his pre-production art got from people on the internet.

Yeah I don't believe Fox will try to "fix" Blomkamp's involvement either. If they have second thoughts about it, they'll just can the whole thing. It makes little sense to proceed with the project if they have no confidence in the commercial viability of it. Putting someone else on the script isn't going to change the commercial value at all.

Also, let's not forget that Simon Kinberg was a producer on Chappie too, and he's one of Fox's go-to men for shepherding scifi/comic films like these. so I can see him doing the same thing with this film, but it's not going to mean much direct interfering oversight at all.

I do think Fox could decide to just not make the movie, but if they do, they're not going to be worried about "controlling" Blomkamp.

 

[Phoenician_Viking]

Because of this:

Jack was not targeted towards children. These princess movies are mostly geared towards kids. Making them gritty and have a lot of killing in them, alienate the children, which is by far the biggest target audience for these movies.

 

[illmatic22]

Oym Chippy

 

[Bobby Roberts]

Also, let's not forget that Simon Kinberg was a producer on Chappie too, and he's one of Fox's go-to men for shepherding scifi/comic films like these. so I can see him doing the same thing with this film, but it's not going to mean much direct interfering oversight at all.

I do think Fox could decide to just not make the movie, but if they do, they're not going to be worried about "controlling" Blomkamp.

Good point about Kinberg, but I'm wondering if Chappie might not be one of the last "outside" projects he gets to pay any serious attention to now that he's basically in charge of running X-Men and Fantastic Four while also being waist-deep in Star Wars over at Lucasfilm. Trying to get him to shore up Blomkamp's fan-fiction is a goodish idea, I'm just not sure he'd be able to fit that level of oversight into his schedule.

 

[Dali]

Lol "looking for something that appeals to kids." Yeah couldn't be that those movies looked like they would suuuuck. Kingman is rated R and that did and is still doing pretty well.

 

[mreddie]

I don't understand this or where it is coming from...

Read the summary.

“There’s been a glut of R-rated movies starting from the first of the year,” said Rory Bruer, Sony’s worldwide distribution chief. “I think there’s some R-rated fatigue.”

Sounds like blaming to me.

 

[Sectorseven]

I don't think any of that will turn out to be the case. They'll just use "District 9" in the copy, and they'll put Weaver up front since Weaver being back is a large part of the reason they agreed to this in the first place. They're not going to scale either of those things back in the marketing. The entire hook of the story is that Ripley's Back! The Bitch is Back! Again! For the Third Time!

They've been riding on the coattails of "District 9" for two films now, and with diminishing returns.There isn't enough momentum left in that film. We've also seen pretty lackluster success in return campaigns from other older stars like Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Willis. I'm not sure why Sigourney Weaver would fare any better.

Complete speculation here, but maybe the script will feature a grown up Newt so they can focus on a Jennifer Lawrence type star.

 

[duckroll]

Good point about Kinberg, but I'm wondering if Chappie might not be one of the last "outside" projects he gets to pay any serious attention to now that he's basically in charge of running X-Men and Fantastic Four while also being waist-deep in Star Wars over at Lucasfilm. Trying to get him to shore up Blomkamp's fan-fiction is a goodish idea, I'm just not sure he'd be able to fit that level of oversight into his schedule.

I think if Fox pays Kinberg for a producer/story supervisor role, he'll happily take it, tell Blomkamp to do whatever he wants anyway, and just cash the check. There's no indication they don't have a good working relationship anyway, and Kinberg's plate is fucking full.

 

[Oersted]

Very slow week.

Now why doesn´t other studios make a Cinderella/Alice/Little mermaid etc movies? Seems pretty stupid to me not using these IP. They seem very profitable. Universal was stupid by making a gritty Snow White, which alienated the core audiences of these movies, children. Alice and Maleficent made a killing at the BO.

Sofia Coppola will make a Little Mermaid adaption. Snow White will get a sequel, since the first one was a success.

 

[Escape Goat]

The Duff? Is that the new Hilary Duff biopic?

 

[Phoenician_Viking]

I think if Fox pays Kinberg for a producer/story supervisor role, he'll happily take it, tell Blomkamp to do whatever he wants anyway, and just cash the check. There's no indication they don't have a good working relationship anyway, and Kinberg's plate is fucking full.

Blomkamp´s movies are cheaply made which is always positive for studios.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

They've been riding on the coattails of "District 9" for two films now, and with diminishing returns.There isn't enough momentum left in that film

I get you, it's just that if any of those concerns you listed were real-enough concerns - they wouldn't have greenlit the film in the first place.

 

[alfredofroylan]

The Duff? Is that the new Hilary Duff biopic?

DUFF stand for "Designated Ugly Fat Friend", it's a about a girl in high School that's label as "The DUFF" so she has to overcome that label and save her last year on High School, BTW she looks like this

 

[bigosc2k]

Hopefully studios will stop having films with Vince Vaughn as it's lead.

 

[megamerican]

I love how they're blaming Chappie's failure on the R rating in the year in which American Sniper became the biggest hit of 2014, 50 Shades of Grey is over $500 million, and The Kingsman is a surprise hit.

Blame it on the reviews or the marketing, or shit even the name of the movie, but the rating had nothing to do with this.

 

[Escape Goat]

DUFF stand for "Designated Ugly Fat Friend", it's a about a girl in high School that's label as "The DUFF" so she has to overcome that label and save her last year on High School, BTW she looks like this

Cancelling my ticket

 

[Delta Assault]

The Duff? Is that the new Hilary Duff biopic?

I think it's a movie about Homer's love for Duff Beer.

 

[duckroll]

Blomkamp´s movies are cheaply made which is always positive for studios.

District 9 and Chappie are, but Elysium cost over 100 million. So I guess that depends on what sort of blockbuster Fox has in mind.