PGA Shocks With a Best Picture Tie

My head is spinning as fast as Sandra Bullock's  tiny white spacesuit body during Gravity's terrifying opening calamity. The Producers Guild of America, which could have ended the Oscar race with a win for American Hustle, which had been gaining strength via high profile Globe and SAG wins, opted out. They looked elsewhere, two elsewheres to be specific: Gravity and 12 Years a Slave tied for their top prize. [more...]

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Box Office: America Goes For a Ride Along

Amir here, with the weekend’s box office report. Initially I had decided to mirror last week’s column and predict Oscar winners based on their current financial gains – hey! It worked for the Globes! – but Ride Along’s performance has been so stellar that it warrants a mention.  The buddy cop comedy starring Ice Cube and Kevin Hart has been described in some quarters as a comedy version of Training Day with a romantic subplot. That’s probably enticing enough; add to it the fact that Kevin Hart’s hot off the incredible box office performance of his standup show, Let Me Explain, it’s really no wonder Ride Along did so well. Still, snatching the best ever January opening, beating a six year old record set by Cloverfield in the process, is beyond the studio’s best expectations. January is always dominated by the previous year’s holdovers though, and remains a box office hell for new films. To put things in perspective, Ride Along would not have had the biggest opening of all time in any other month, coming only close to the September record (Hotel Transylvania).

Ice Cube and Kevin Hart in Ride Along

Lone Survivor occupied second place with a respectable drop. I have yet to see it for myself and my level of interest in ever seeing it can probably be found with a very powerful microscope somewhere, but the film’s been creating “controversies” because of its – depending on who you ask – realistic depiction, endorsement or sanctification of soldiers. You can count on it to continue to do good business based on the on-going conversation. Another film that’s still going strong is Frozen, which continues to sing and dance its way into American hearts in its eighth week. This week’s 18 percent drop is better than most had expected because direct competition has finally arrived in the shape of The Nut Job, which is surprisingly not a porn parody. Given the latter film’s modest budget, we can expect a profit despite its limited appeal to adult audiences.

BOX OFFICE
RIDE ALONG $41.2m new
LONE SURVIVOR $23.2m (cum. 74m)
THE NUT JOB $20.5m new
JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT $17.2m new
FROZEN $11.9m (cum. 332.6m)
AMERICAN HUSTLE $10.6m (cum. 116.4m)
DEVIL’S DUE $8.5m new
AUGUST: OSAGE $7.6m (cum. 18.1m)
THE WOLF OF WALL STREET $7.5m (cum. 90.2m)
SAVING MR. BANKS $4.1m (cum. 75.3m)

Among the Oscar nominees, the biggest winners were American Hustle and 12 Years a Slave. The former lost more than 400 screens but had a nearly 30% improvement in sales; the latter regained 650 screens and sold five times as much as last week. Captain Phillips also added more than 700 theatres and saw a dramatic surge in ticket sales, but the nominations didn’t come to the rescue of two films: Inside Llewyn Davis and Her. Last week I mentioned that the Oscars would need to help them out if they want to turn their small fortunes around. I was proven right in the case of Llewyn Davis, as it failed to gain any momentum from Thursday’s announcement and sadly saw its numbers crash. Her experienced a more modest drop but still didn’t benefit at all from its Best Picture nomination. I have several theories, but none of them seem plausible. My best guess is that, the demographic to whom Her appeals, was always going to watch it irrespective of its awards success. Oscar nominations can’t convince everybody to watch a mustachioed, bespectacled man dressed in high pants fall in love with a computer.

Anyway, I didn’t hit the theatres this weekend, and looking ahead, nothing appeals to me before Rhymes for the Young Ghouls, which opens on January 31st in my corner of the world. What did you watch this weekend? Any theories on the Her drop?

Four Links To Go

Vulgar Cinema "You're nothing to me until you're everything" strong piece on American Hustle
E! Why Emma Thompson won at (if not won the) SAG Awards
BDC Wire A satirical Bro ode to The Wolf of Wall Street. So much choice lingo.

Best. Picture. Of. The. Year, playa! This is a motion picture that is exploring new terrain, broseph"

Den of Geek "Why Jennifer Lawrence is Good for America"

Finally... I would like you to know that I can't stop staring at this picture. Since I didn't see the SAG Awards this year I can only imagine that Emma was quipping about Ewan McGregor backwards aging (seriously what is happening there?!)

Does Box Office Affect The Golden Globe Wins?

Amir here, with something vaguely resembling the weekend’s box office report. You're surely more interested in the Golden Globes this weekend than how many tickets Lone Survivor sold (it's winning the weekend - did you see it?) or whether Frozen is now on course for two gajillion dollars (why, yes, it is), so let’s have a look at how the Globe nominees have fared at the box office and whether or not that matters to HFPA voters historically. All that plus my Globe predictions after the jump...

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Golden Globe Predix? This Post Will Disintegrate In Five Hours

Wanna know something funny? I had totally forgotten who won the Golden Globes last year. I mean, I thought "I'll illustrate this prediction post with a win from last year!" and then I thought. But who? Now I know mainstream media likes to joke that people forget who won the Oscar in which year almost instantaneously but I don't find this to be true of Oscar geeks. I never forget ... though an occassional nomination will surprise me by vanishing from my memory banks only to serve as humble pie later when a quiz or trivia situation crops up (Nick Nolte in Warrior? I curse you!)

So here is a photographic reminder of last year's winners in case you also forgot...

Last Year's Champs most of whom went on to Oscar & Emmy wins

Now back to the present tense.

Disclaimer: I am completely terrible at predicting the Golden Globes -- if you challenge me you will undoubtedly trounce me! -- but I absolutely love The Hollywood Foreign Press Association for this willful refusal to tow the line. Oh sure they sometimes will gladly use their televised moments to predict the Oscars or influence the Emmys but you never know when they might just go their own way for the helluva it ... which is why they're better than many of the more "serious" voting bodies (i.e., and quite sadly, most critics groups who seem hellbent on predicting Oscar 100% of the time though their mission statements should tell you'd they do otherwise)

100% accurate predictions after the jump...

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