Box Office: The Battle of the Holiday Releases Part 1

Manuel here reporting for box office duty. While news about the Sony hack dominated headlines, the domestic box office was slowly showing signs of life after a rather muted start to december (Exodus: Gods and Kings anyone?). Thankfully (for studios, critics would clearly disagree) the crop of new films offered some needed entertainment and seem poised to offer some successes as the holidays approach this coming week.

Peter Jackson’s sixth (sixth!!) entry in the Tolkien saga easily won the weekend (having opened on Wednesday), proving that, yes, audiences will visit Middle Earth #OneLastTime. New family-friendly films Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb and Annie came in second and third respectively while in the lower-rung of the Top 10 (and hovering right below it), specialty releases and Oscar-bound films performed rather well. I for one, am happy to see Reese Witherspoon (who we just Posterized) and Cheryl Strayed’s Wild at #6. It’s a great film which has, for reasons that feel both expected and frustrating, not been making enough of a dent in the “Best of”/Oscar conversations (after the McConnaissance and the Reesurgence, might Jean-Marc Vallée ratify the Gyllenhaalism we’re all experiencing with Demolition, out next year? Who should he take on next?)

TOP SIXTEEN
01 BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES $56.2 NEW (cum. $90.6) Five Beautiful Armies
02 NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM 3  $17.3 NEW
03 ANNIE $16.3 NEW
04 EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS $8 (cum. $38.9) Michael's Review
05 MOCKINGJAY PT 1 $7.7 (cum. $289.2) Michael's Review
06 WILD $4.1 (cum. $7.2) Nathaniel's Review, Laura Dern Interview
07 TOP FIVE $3.5 (cum. $12.4) Nathaniel's Thoughts
08 BIG HERO 6 $3.5 (cum. $190.4) Tim's Review / Nathaniel's Take
09 THE PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR $3.5 (cum. $64.1)  Tim's Review
10 P.K. $3.5 NEW

11 INTERSTELLAR $2.6 (cum. $171.4) Michael's Review, Podcast
12 HORRIBLE BOSSES $2.1 (cum. $47.7)
13 THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING $1.59 (cum. $19.8) Review, podcast
14 FOXCATCHER $0.95 (cum. $4.4) Review, Michael's Take, podcast
15 BIRDMAN $0.91 (cum. $22.2) Review, podcast, interview

That #10 entry is for the Bollywood film P.K. which made headlines a couple of weeks back with its NSFW-ish poster of leading man Aamir Khan. Needless to say, it’s doing great business in India where it was also released this weekend. You’ll also note that the male-skewing Oscar favorites continue to expand (or hold on, in the case of Birdman) as they rack up critical and industry citations. Indeed, The Imitation Game’s #16 placement is impressive considering it is only in 79 screens, by far amassing the greatest haul for a film in under 100 screens.

PLATFORM (Under 100 screens)
01 IMITATION GAME$0.89 79 locations (cum. $3.19) Review, Glenn's take, Podcast
02 INHERENT VICE $0.147 5 locations (cum. $0.6) Conversation
03 MR TURNER$0.109 5 locations NEW Review, Press conference
04 THE BABADOOK $0.089 79 locations (cum. $0.466) Interview
05 CITIZENFOUR $0.058 52 locations (cum. $2.04) Podcast

Both at five locations, PTA's Inherent Vice and Mike Leigh's Mr Turner posted strong numbers. This gives them both a needed boost (and Vice the distinction of posting the biggest per screen average two weeks in a row, though losing half of its audience. Guess them PTA fans rushed to see it last week?)

What did you see this weekend?

Best American Films & Television This Year?

Does production money really equal nationality? The American Film Institute does many wonderful things in the world including the highly enjoyable AFI film festival in Los Angeles each year (free for movie-lovers! and not many things are) but each year I feel the side-eye urge when they announce their top Ten American films and TV programs.

They use a shifting jury each year but I always wonder how they choose those jury members because the lists often betray an obvious desire to be "relevant" when it comes to TV usually including a defining popular hit even if the quality is shit (Look, I think "trash" has a place in "best of" lists but it needs to be good trash and How to Get Away with Murder is, frankly, bad trash. Poorly written, unevenly acted. Etcetera. I watched it and wrote about it, so I know) whereas with movies they seem quite beholden to Oscar buzz each year, often opting for films that don't fit their criteria as a result (The Imitation Game is a movie about Engand, starring British actors and directed by a Norwegian) or which haven't opened; this year's top ten list, which includes 11 films so AFI is even worse at math than I am, is 36% movies that haven't opened yet. 

AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE MOVIES OF THE YEAR

• American Sniper
• Birdman (Or, the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
• Boyhood
• Foxcatcher
• The Imitation Game
• Interstellar
• Into the Woods
• Nightcrawler
• Selma
• Unbroken
• Whiplash 

Aside from Nightcrawler you could have lifted that list from virtually any 15 wide Oscar Best Picture prediction chart (like uh my own) and simply extracted the other British film (Theory of Everything), the film that opened the longest ago because "old" things are gross (Grand Budapest Hotel), Gone Girl (even though the AFI usually does try and throw one zeitgeist blockbuster into the list so its absence is surprising and at the very wrong time when we're trying to get people to notice Carrie Coon! ) and there it is, no thought processes required beyond Oscar-watching expertise!

Here is my favorite tweet about the list from A24 Films which missed...

How A24 feels about the #AFIAwards honoree list... pic.twitter.com/QrrJPQhNFE

— A24 (@A24Films) December 8, 2014

And my own because, you know, i WOULD waste the question this way...

When I die and can ask God any question I’ll be like “can you please explain the worship of Eastwood films to me? I don’t get it”

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) December 9, 2014

AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE TELEVISION PROGRAMS OF THE YEAR

• The Americans
• Fargo
• Game of Thrones
• How to Get Away With Murder
• Jane the Virgin -keep hearing this is great. guess I should watch
• The Knick
• Mad Men - here's to consistent pleasure even if the half season is a cheat
• Orange is the New Black
• Silicon Valley
• Transparent - brilliant. addictive

this is what i'll be remembered for ??? *shudder*

WHERE IS BOB'S BURGERS!?!?!? My heart just pooped its pants. 

Box Office: Thanksgiving games

Tim here with your box office report for the holiday weekend. And a soft weekend it was, with the two new wide releases - Penguins of Madagascar and Horrible Bosses 2 - both face-planting (the former marking yet another underperformance DreamWorks Animation can't afford right now), and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay 1.0 making a huge amount of money that's still sufficiently less huge than its predecessors that it feels kind of underwhelming. Which is a bizarre thing to say about a movie making a huge sum of money by any standard you could possibly come up with, but such is the bigotry of high expectations. The saggy box office of 2014 continues its relentless march of mediocrity.

While the Hunger Games hold steady in the #1 slot, and almost certain to do it again next week, the most exciting story is about a different game altogether: The Imitation Game, which opened to $482,000 for the three-day weekend at 4 locations. This gives it a mindblowing per-screen average of $120,500, the second-best of the 2014 after The Grand Budapest Hotel in March.

THE TOP DOZEN (Fri-Sun)
01 THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY - PART 1 $56.9 (cum. $225.7) Michael's Review
02 PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR $25.8 NEW Tim's Review
03 BIG HERO 6 $18.8 (cum. $167.2) Tim's Review / Nathaniel's Take
04 INTERSTELLAR $15.8 (cum $147.1) Michael's Review / The Podcast
05 HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 $15.7 NEW
06 DUMB & DUMBER TO $38.3 (cum $72.2)
07 THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING $5.1 (cum. $9.6) Nathaniel's Review
08 GONE GIRL $2.5 (cum. $160.8) The Podcast /  Jason's Review
09 BIRDMAN $1.9 (cum. $17.2) The Podcast / Nathaniel's Review
10 ST. VINCENT $1.8 (cum. $39.3) Michael's Review
11 BEYOND THE LIGHTS $1.6 (cum. $12.8)
12 FURY $1.6 (cum. $81.9) Michael's Review

PLATFORM / LIMITED
excluding wide openers losing theaters
01 FOXCATCHER $1.0 72 locations (cum. $2.1) Nathaniel's Review / Michael's Review
02 WHIPLASH $.50 179 locations (cum. $4.0) The Podcast / Michael's Review
03 THE IMITATION GAME $.48 4 locations NEW The Podcast / Meet the Contenders
04 ROSEWATER $.36 216 locations (cum. $2.6)

It was a solid weekend overall for the Oscar hopefuls - The Theory of Everything's wide-release expansion more than doubled its whole take in limited release in just three days, while Foxcatcher, still rolling out, had the highest per-screen average of any film to make more than a million for the weekend. Nothing to set the world on fire, but solid performances for the adult-skewing titles. And much the same can be said for the sturdy if not awe-inspiring $27,000 made by The Babadook during its first three days in release at three theaters - and while it has a legitimate shot at precisely no Oscars whatsoever, it's still a top-shelf scary movie that everybody with even a slight affection for horror cinema owes themselves to see at the first opportunity.

What did you see this weekend? Does anyone else think this impressive start augurs well for The Imitation Game with audiences and the Academy?

Meet the Contenders: Benedict Cumberbatch "The Imitation Game"

Each weekend a profile on a just-opened Oscar contender. Here's abstew on this weekend's new release, THE IMITATION GAME.

Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing in The Imitation Game

Best Actor

Born: Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch was born 19 July 1976 in London, England 

The Role: Norwegian film director Morten Tyldum (Headhunters) makes his English-language film debut with this film starring Cumberbatch as real-life British mathematician Alan Turing, who during WWII was in charge of a team that cracked Germany's Enigma code, thus making it able for the Allies to win the war. The film jumps back and forth between three periods in Turing's life, primarily focusing on his work during the war, his early days as a lonely youth in boarding school, and his post-war conviction for gross indecency after admitting to his homosexuality.

The film had been in development for a few years since Graham Moore's script topping the annual Black List in 2011. At one point Leonardo DiCaprio was attached to star and directors such as Ron Howard and David Yates had shown interest before eventually landing with Tyldum and Cumberbatch.  

Click to read more ...

Podcast: An Interstellar Imitation Game

Travel with us into the black hole that is odd hit-and-miss reactions to the ambitious emotional Interstellar. We also discuss The Imitation Game and the controversy over its presentation of its gay protagonist. Starring: Nick Davis, Joe Reid, Katey Rich, and your host Nathaniel R.

33 minutes
00:01 Chris Nolan's Interstellar with asides to Inception and 2001: A Space Odyssey and Contact and the ways in which it does or doesn't stretch Nolan's 
20:30 How does The Imitation Game machine work? Does its trifurcated structure work? And what of its collective performances?

You can listen at the bottom of the post or download on iTunes. The Imitation Game opens this weekend. Continue the conversation in the comments! 

Interstellar / Imitation Game