Box Office: "Into the Woods" Worth More Than Five Beans
Sunday, January 4, 2015 at 6:44PM Whenever I hear myself complaining loudly about the December glut I know I will have a comeuppance when I see the box office chart and notice once again that everything makes a ton of money during the Christmas and New Years.
Everything that opens wide that is. It's still an awfully tough time to open an indie on a few screens or a foreign film (though distributors always try) as evidence by A Most Violent Year, Two Days One Night and Leviathan which need far more publicity than they can reasonably manage when everyone is talking about the behemoths like all-star musical and Angelina Jolie's epic and so on. Those films are at $300,000, $109,000 and $79,000 respectively.
TOP SIXTEEN
01 HOBBIT 3 $21.9 NEW (cum. $220.7) Five Beautiful Armies
02 INTO THE WOODS $19 (cum. $91.2) Interview, Review
03 UNBROKEN $18.3 (cum. $87.8) Interview
04 WOMAN IN BLACK 2 NEW $15.1
05 NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM 3 $14.4 (cum. $89.7)
06 ANNIE $11.4 (cum. $72.6)
07 IMITATION GAME $8.1 (cum. $30.8) Review, second take
08 HUNGER GAMES 3 $7.7 (cum. $323.8) Review
09 THE GAMBLER $6.3 (cum. $27.5) Review
10 BIG HERO 6 $4.8 (cum. $211.2) Review / second take
11 WILD $4.5 (cum. $25.8) Review, interview, podcast
12 EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS $3.7 (cum. $61.2) Review
13 PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR $2.8 (cum. $78) Review
14 BIG EYES $2.6 (cum. $9.9) Brief note
15 INTERSTELLAR $2.4 (cum. $182.7) Review, Podcast
16 TOP FIVE $2.1 (cum. $23.7) Thoughts
17 THEORY OF EVERYTHING $1.1 (cum. $24.7) Review, podcast
18 THE INTERVIEW $1.1 (cum. $4.9)
19 HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 $0.9 (cum. $53)
20 FOXCATCHER $.09 (cum. $7.9) Review, second Take, podcast
It's worth noting that Into the Woods is already the 7th most successful musical of the 21st century and seems likely to vault over most of its competitors. Whether it can surplant Chicago (also by Rob Marshall) as #1 is the question.
Of the top 20 the Imitation Game had the most crowded theaters followed by Into the Woods. Meanwhile in platform release the big story is still two mainstream movies which go wide very soon. Selma and American Sniper are both already at $2 million and go wide next week and the week after respectively. Expect huge numbers for American Sniper which continues to pack houses whether or not it wins Oscar nominations the day before its release. Incidentally Still Alice opens the day after the nominations, finally showing its face to regular citizens.
Jennifer Aniston's Oscar strategy (campaign a movie that doesn't exist) is so inspired & smear-proof I can't believe no one's done it before
— Sam (@danceremix) January 3, 2015
Meanwhile everyone still thinks Cake doesn't exist. What did you see this weekend?
Reader Comments (23)
That Cake comment is so perfect.
Into the Woods... Of course. Seems not to be "dead on arrival" after all.
The Imitation Game. Got all sorts of non-passionate feelings about it.
Seen (so far) this weekend: Into the Woods, The Lego Movie, Gone Girl. That's an uncomfortable trio.
I thought Woods was a screenplay and pacing mess, but I feel the same way about the book and pacing of the stage musical. Beyond my enjoyment of the score and lyrics, my biggest takeaways were about Chris Pine: a) I've always liked his work, so this was no surprise, and b) his Shatnering in the scenes with Blunt was exquisite.
The Lego Movie was a sensory overload from which I'm still reeling. Loved all the voice work. But it's even more of a feature-length toy commercial than the Toy Story movies, and that's saying something.
Gone Girl, at long last. A two-penis movie without an NC-17 rating: for that alone Fincher deserves a Best Director nomination. But seriously, folks: this did for me what American Beauty probably did for a lot of other people. Definitely in my top 5 of 2014.
I have to revise my box office for Into the Woods. Originally I predicted $120million. So, like ten days in it's already over $90million. I could maybe see $200million, which would be Meryl's top grossing domestic yet. Holy beans!
I saw "Into the Woods" a loved most of it. Great cast, good direction, imaginative use of the special effects ( they had an old fashion sensibility someone must have looked at Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast" ) It really works as movie musical and screenplay was faithful to both the play and source material those stories were very dark indeed. It does cast a powerful spell of music, story and charm by the end I was surprisingly moved. One of the best movies of the year and one of the best musical adaptations ever made.
Saw Into the Woods and HATED it. Enjoyed Foxcatcher and loved The Imitation Game.
Cake seems like such a secret handshake of a movie among all the members of SAG, because according to IMDb, all the members of SAG is in the movie but I also do not believe it actually exists.
Saw Carnal Knowledge for the first time. Shocked by how short it is, but really interesting as an unofficial sequel to The Graduate if you imagine like me that Ben and Elaine were DOA as a couple.
Also watched the series of shorts for Over the Garden Wall. Very fun and strange as one expects from Cartoon Network. But I don't know, digressions that make me think of the horrifying Raggedy Ann animated film is pretty outré. That is a compliment btw. Hopefully it gets a proper home video release. Good voice work from Melanie Lynskey and Elijah Wood.
Loved Foxcatcher, which is probably among my top 5 of the year. With all the talk about how "chilly" it was, I did not expect it to be quite so darkly funny (especially in the first half). I was never impressed by Channing Tatum before, but he would easily make my Best Actor ballot this year. Also, it was probably the most beautifully shot movie I've seen this year, give or take Ida.
Into the Woods was mildly entertaining until the last half-hour or so, when I couldn't understand what was going on, and I could barely see anything that was occurring onscreen besides. Did they run out of money so that they couldn't light the movie? But Emily Blunt was really good!
I saw "Selma." It will win best picture, and I will be quite alright with that.
I don't think so, Raul.
Saw Into The Woods on New Year's Eve and quite enjoyed it. I had absolutely no problem at all with the changes made for the film (although I do agree with friends who pointed out to me afterwards that the change in Rapunzel's storyline does rob the Witch of a lot of motivation, especially as regards Last Midnight - but while I was watching I didn't particularly care). Most of the cast was aces. The only ones I didn't like were James Corden, who just did not impress me (shocking, because I really like him), the kid playing Jack (too much), and Depp - ALTHOUGH his performance made me wonder if there was any possible way to make the character of The Wolf work on film, and I'm not quite sure there is. But LORD did he butcher Hello Little Girl.
Also spent the time between Christmas and New Year's catching up on the older Woody Allen films on Netflix Instant before they ran out on Jan. 1. Faves were Manhattan, Love & Death, and The Purple Rose of Cairo.
I saw 'Into the Woods', and I liked it a lot. I don't know if it would make any sense if I wasn't already very familiar with the play. I especially thought Blunt was great singing 'Moments in the Woods', she really nailed the interjecting monologue aspect of it - I've seen it sung as written as if the lines are all one sentence, and it makes no sense.
I also saw 'The Imitation Game'. Mark Strong continues to look more and more like Sam the Eagle.
rebecca -- LOL. that is so true. Sam the Eagle should be very flattered
Correction: SOME films make a boatload of money. Others not so much. And i bet the crew here could have predicted which would not. The flawed release efforts deserve what they get. Just wish they would learn.
Also, the release strategy for leviathan is weird. Are they hoping for an out of left field screenplay nom? Why ny/la now, when a post-flf-nom general release would be more impactful? Similar for 2days/1night, except that I think Marion's chances at a nomination would have benefited from an audience response...in November.
Saw The Gambler and Annie. The first did well by Toback's original; the 70s angst translated well to today's wave of ennui. With one more big scene, Jessica Lange would deserve an Oscar bid. Brie Larson, however, was abused by the script.
Annie was not the abomination I was expecting. Lots of energy and clever self-referencing. But there really was no reason for all that musical tweaking--that original score is brilliant. But the cast was clearly having a ball.
Sad that this hatchet job of "Into the Woods" will be the definitive film version for decades to come. Maybe the "succe$$" of the film will spark a revival in the coming years (we're due for one soon) and I can go to see that instead of this crap.
"Unbroken" was godawful too. Sad weekend at the movies for this guy.
Save me, "Selma"! :-(((
Mr. Turner. It was entirely too long, but any movie where untreated psoriasis plays that big of a role is worthy of some praise.
Otherwise, I drooled over the costuming in Bedtime Story with Loretta Young and Frederic March. Irene clearly knew that Loretta was capital S star and should be dressed appropriately, even in such a farce.
Saw Into The Woods and Imitation Game back to back in one day. ITW was pretty good, the first 17 minutes truly are brilliant and the rest of it works (though the pacing was a bit off). Blunt and Kendrick were best in show, Pine was fine I guess (I think after all the glowing reviews for him I expected more), Meryl was in good form as per usual. Imitation Game was brilliant.
I saw The Imitation Game, about which I can only say... Sometimes it's the movies that most want to win Oscars that minimize real, appalling injustices so that audiences can feel good about themselves.
I also saw a couple old John Huston movies thanks to the exhaustive retrospective going on at Lincoln Center.
I subjected myself to Cool World because I wanted to see how bad an adult spin on Roger Rabbit could be; worse than I imagined.
I also watched Frequencies, an indie sci-fi from last year that imagines a dystopia where a blindfolded standardized test in elementary school defines your future. Very sharp writing.
I revisited a Hammer Horror classic, too: Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell and it remains my favorite Hammer Horror. Probably the best traditional Frankenstein adaptation (separate from referential work like May or American Mary that use the monster/creator concept and general structure to explore modern issues), even if the monster is technically never dead.
So glad INTO THE WOODS *and* ANNIE are doing well. Critical and audience reactions may be a bit all over the place, but the former getting to $160m (after the new year, the weekday grosses will decrease, lowering its chances at $200m) and the latter getting to $90m is something to breathe a sigh of relief about. Unlike other genres, too many high profile musical box office disappointments will see the genre boarded up and put away in storage again and we must not let that happen.