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| Ender's Game wins, but studios play for higher stakes | Ender's Game wins, but studios play for higher stakes |
| (about 1 month later) | |
| The latest indie success | The latest indie success |
| Ender's Game pulled off the latest coup for independent cinema – that is to say, any movie not produced by a major studio – as the young adult sci-fi adaptation opened top in North America on an estimated $28m (£17.5m) through Lionsgate-Summit. There has been plenty of box office success for independent cinema so far this year – think Insidious: Chapter 2, The Purge, 2 Guns – but the timing here cannot be beaten. | Ender's Game pulled off the latest coup for independent cinema – that is to say, any movie not produced by a major studio – as the young adult sci-fi adaptation opened top in North America on an estimated $28m (£17.5m) through Lionsgate-Summit. There has been plenty of box office success for independent cinema so far this year – think Insidious: Chapter 2, The Purge, 2 Guns – but the timing here cannot be beaten. |
| See if this film is playing near you | |
| On Tuesday the world's leading buyers and sellers head to Santa Monica in California for the annual American Film Market and those who licensed rights for Ender's Game in their territories will be strutting about like peacocks. It's the perfect morale booster for the business at a time of ongoing complaints about the crowded distribution landscape and the mass exodus to TV by Hollywood's Great And Good (David Fincher, Steven Spielberg, Tom Tykwer et al). | On Tuesday the world's leading buyers and sellers head to Santa Monica in California for the annual American Film Market and those who licensed rights for Ender's Game in their territories will be strutting about like peacocks. It's the perfect morale booster for the business at a time of ongoing complaints about the crowded distribution landscape and the mass exodus to TV by Hollywood's Great And Good (David Fincher, Steven Spielberg, Tom Tykwer et al). |
| Heading for $100m | Heading for $100m |
| During last year's awards season much of the talk was about how many of the best picture Oscar contenders had crossed $100m at the North American box office. (Six out of nine, to be clear.) Beware the $100m benchmark, however, for it is an unreliable barometer of commercial success. Most heavyweight studio movies cost more than that to produce and market and must gross considerably more to break even, whereas others costing a fraction of the bigger budgets can be deemed a triumph if they gross more than $30m. Nonetheless in the interests of headline-grabbing comparisons that are actually rather shallow, it is worth noting that as likely best picture nominee Captain Phillips heads towards $100m the number of movies to do so this season could be about the same as last year. Lee Daniel's The Butler has crossed $100m and Gravity has breached the $200m barrier and it is conceivable that four upcoming releases – The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Saving Mr Banks, The Wolf Of Wall Street and American Hustle – could do the same. | During last year's awards season much of the talk was about how many of the best picture Oscar contenders had crossed $100m at the North American box office. (Six out of nine, to be clear.) Beware the $100m benchmark, however, for it is an unreliable barometer of commercial success. Most heavyweight studio movies cost more than that to produce and market and must gross considerably more to break even, whereas others costing a fraction of the bigger budgets can be deemed a triumph if they gross more than $30m. Nonetheless in the interests of headline-grabbing comparisons that are actually rather shallow, it is worth noting that as likely best picture nominee Captain Phillips heads towards $100m the number of movies to do so this season could be about the same as last year. Lee Daniel's The Butler has crossed $100m and Gravity has breached the $200m barrier and it is conceivable that four upcoming releases – The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Saving Mr Banks, The Wolf Of Wall Street and American Hustle – could do the same. |
| Dallas Buyers Club commences | Dallas Buyers Club commences |
| Awards contender and true-life story The Dallas Buyers Club hit the ground running at the weekend with a nice $264,000 haul from nine venues that resulted in – the figure they all care about – a very healthy $29,333 per-site average. Matthew McConaughey shed a lot of weight to play Ron Woodroof and that alone is a statement of intent. Dramatic physical transformations usually add heft to an actor's awards prospects (unless you're Christian Bale in The Machinist – that went too far) and McConaughey is a frontrunner for his portrayal of the homophobic Texan cowboy who contracted HIV and found a way to smuggle affordable medicine into the US for everyone's benefit, in the process learning to become a better human being. With its lead character's redeeming arc, highly charismatic performance and noticeable weight loss, Dallas Buyer Club is going to be in the race until the bitter end. It could be a bittersweet swansong for Focus Features as we know it. The famed arthouse distributor is undergoing a dramatic transformation of its own. Recently parent company NBCUniversal announced that Focus would merge with the more commercial FilmDistrict in a move that got tongues wagging. Nobody's gone on the record to explain the vision in any detail yet, but this will certainly change the inflection of the release slate, which includes Fifty Shades of Grey. Not exactly Brokeback Mountain or Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, is it? | Awards contender and true-life story The Dallas Buyers Club hit the ground running at the weekend with a nice $264,000 haul from nine venues that resulted in – the figure they all care about – a very healthy $29,333 per-site average. Matthew McConaughey shed a lot of weight to play Ron Woodroof and that alone is a statement of intent. Dramatic physical transformations usually add heft to an actor's awards prospects (unless you're Christian Bale in The Machinist – that went too far) and McConaughey is a frontrunner for his portrayal of the homophobic Texan cowboy who contracted HIV and found a way to smuggle affordable medicine into the US for everyone's benefit, in the process learning to become a better human being. With its lead character's redeeming arc, highly charismatic performance and noticeable weight loss, Dallas Buyer Club is going to be in the race until the bitter end. It could be a bittersweet swansong for Focus Features as we know it. The famed arthouse distributor is undergoing a dramatic transformation of its own. Recently parent company NBCUniversal announced that Focus would merge with the more commercial FilmDistrict in a move that got tongues wagging. Nobody's gone on the record to explain the vision in any detail yet, but this will certainly change the inflection of the release slate, which includes Fifty Shades of Grey. Not exactly Brokeback Mountain or Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, is it? |
| Digital revenues | Digital revenues |
| Keanu Reeves's mystical martial arts movie Man Of Tai Chi arrived through RADiUS-TWC, the Weinstein Company offshoot that makes a name for itself championing cool, riskier fare. The theatrical debut was nothing to write home about on $112,300 from 110 theatres, but the point is the movie was able to open on this number of screens because it also arrived on 27 September on VOD platforms. Thus far the digital release has generated around $1.5m, according to a report last week on Deadline. Distributors are notoriously reluctant to share digital revenues and while this is a step in the right direction, the figures still reveal little unless we're told how many people paid to watch the film and given precise cuts for the cable/satellite/digital carriers. | Keanu Reeves's mystical martial arts movie Man Of Tai Chi arrived through RADiUS-TWC, the Weinstein Company offshoot that makes a name for itself championing cool, riskier fare. The theatrical debut was nothing to write home about on $112,300 from 110 theatres, but the point is the movie was able to open on this number of screens because it also arrived on 27 September on VOD platforms. Thus far the digital release has generated around $1.5m, according to a report last week on Deadline. Distributors are notoriously reluctant to share digital revenues and while this is a step in the right direction, the figures still reveal little unless we're told how many people paid to watch the film and given precise cuts for the cable/satellite/digital carriers. |
| Diana bombs | Diana bombs |
| Word heading into the weekend was that the Princess Diana biopic was a stinker and the audience seems to agree. eOne released Oliver Hirschbiegel's movie starring Naomi Watts to $64,900 from 38 sites, or a rather dismal $1,708 per-site average. That pretty much puts the kibosh on the movie's awards prospects. Cruel world. | Word heading into the weekend was that the Princess Diana biopic was a stinker and the audience seems to agree. eOne released Oliver Hirschbiegel's movie starring Naomi Watts to $64,900 from 38 sites, or a rather dismal $1,708 per-site average. That pretty much puts the kibosh on the movie's awards prospects. Cruel world. |
| North American top 10, 1-13 November 2013 | North American top 10, 1-13 November 2013 |
| 1. Ender's Game, $28m | 1. Ender's Game, $28m |
| 2. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, $20.5m. Total: $62.1m | 2. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, $20.5m. Total: $62.1m |
| 3. Last Vegas, $16.5m | 3. Last Vegas, $16.5m |
| 4. Free Birds, $16.2m | 4. Free Birds, $16.2m |
| 5. Gravity, $13.1m. Total: $219.2m | 5. Gravity, $13.1m. Total: $219.2m |
| 6. Captain Phillips, $8.5m. Total: $82.6m | 6. Captain Phillips, $8.5m. Total: $82.6m |
| 7. 12 Years a Slave, $4.6m. Total: $8.8m | 7. 12 Years a Slave, $4.6m. Total: $8.8m |
| 8. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, $4.2m. Total: $106.2m | 8. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, $4.2m. Total: $106.2m |
| 9. Carrie, $3.4m. Total: $31.9m | 9. Carrie, $3.4m. Total: $31.9m |
| 10. The Counselor, $3.3m. Total: $13.4m | 10. The Counselor, $3.3m. Total: $13.4m |
| More from the US box office | More from the US box office |
| • Ender's Game – review • More US box office analysis | • Ender's Game – review • More US box office analysis |
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