The Hollywood Reporter: Risky Business

'Public Enemies' tries to make a few new friends

By Steven Zeitchik

We're heading out for a few days so posting will be light, but before we do we're keeping a close eye on the box-office, where this July 4th finally offers a legitimate horse race.

This date on the calendar has been the province of a single summer blockbuster since as far back as we can recall (or at least since Will Smith exploded numerous bad guys in "Independence Day" twelve years ago, effectively obliterating any memory we previously had). In the last few years the date been home to the likes of "Superman Returns," "War of the Worlds" and the first "Transformers" -- with very little room for anything else.

But there's of course no action tentpole launching this weekend (though it may not feel that way to any movie going up against "Transformers 2"). That means there's no film that will easily steamroll the competition, just two movies at opposite ends of the spectrum, on a holiday that doesn't tend to draw one kind of audience over another.

(And there's a greater potential for an upstart or fluke this year, since box office overall tends to be down when Americans celebrate July 4th on a Friday. The two lowest weekend-winner totals in the last decade came when we took Friday off, in 2008 and 2003.)

Grant Morrison and Clive Barker have a heart-to-heart

By Borys Kit

Some of the more imaginative minds in literature got together Wednesday as horror master Clive Barker interviewed comics superstar Grant Morrison at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles.

Morrison, whose deconstruction of DC heroes work “Final Crisis” just hit the N.Y. Times bestseller list, recently moved to LA from Scotland for movie work. The discussion ranged from gender politics and violence in comics, to Wonder Woman to the gayness of Captain America.

Among the nuggets: Morrison said he was “miserable and sick over a year”  writing "Final Crisis" as he got into the head of the evil character of Darkseid. He also said he preferred working at DC over Marvel (”They love the artist and creators...At Marvel, I love them, but there’s more of a house style  to create a universe.")

Meteor shower: Studios keep on loving them some videogames

By Steven Zeitchik

Now that Hollywood has plumbed every videogame out there and turned them into (mostly) bad movies, studios are scrambling to pick up...Atari 2600 games?

Four studios have been battling to land rights to the Atari classic "Asteroids," in which (unlike every other Atari game at the time) you controlled a dot on the screen, and pressed your button furiously in an attempt to shoot dots at all the other dots. God we loved the '80's.

Universal triumphed yesterday in what we're told was a furious bidding war. (Interesting move for the studio -- it has faltered a bit with adult-oriented dramas like "State of Play" and "Duplicity" this season, so it has been pushing ahead with what seems like even mor development on a slew of branded titles [the Ludlum books, Hasbro properties, monster remakes.])

There's a difference, though, between this pickup and most of the Playstation/Xbox frenzy of the past few years. "Asteroids" has about as much plot and backstory as a Cinemax special feature. Which means that, without the conventions of modern videogame storytelling to slow it down, it may actually work.

'Unstoppable,' the latest example of what studios are trying to stop

By Steven Zeitchik

Steven Soderbergh, rest easy. The studio system is not picking on you -- though it may have seemed that way after Sony abruptly pulled the plug on your baseball statfest "Moneyball" days before it was to enter production. It's just carefully weeding out filmmakers who want to make movies for a certain price and whose box-office slugging percentage doesn't exactly keep Albert Pujols up at night.

The latest such victim, which we've been reporting on these last few days, involves the Denzel Washington-Tony Scott action pic "Unstoppable." Not since the Danny Devito flub "What's the Worst that Can Happen?" has a title had more of an unintentional double entendre. The project is very much stoppable, and may in fact be stopped.

The story behind the runaway-train pic, which was to be the fourth Washington-Scott collaboration in the last five years, is developing into a story of runaway budgets. As a result, the movie is in pretty serious peril -- not "Moneyball" peril, but not much safer either -- and will likely miss its fall start date, if not a start date entirely.

Bruno: When shocking goes staged

By Steven Zeitchik

Fans waited years, the media waited months and activists waited -- well, they didn't wait at all before weighing in on the new "Bruno."

But the waiting ended for everyone - and Bruno's calculated outrageousness began - when Universal, at a series of screenings last week, pulled the wraps off a movie that's funny in some moments, priceless in others and flat in the spaces in-between. (Warning: A number of joke spoilers below.)

The envelope get more than a few shoves in the new pic, which follows Sacha Baron Cohen as he takes on clueless celebrities (a great throwaway quip about Mel Gibson as "the Fuhrer" - we can only imagine what Baron Cohen agent Ari Emanuel is thinking), his own self-deluded flamboyancy, a great faux-"We Are The World" number featuring Bono and other rock stars and (finally, in the second half of the pic) the exposing of red-state prejudices that Baron Cohen does best.

And yet for all the gasping and did-he-really-just-do-that reactions (none more so than after the repeated, extreme close-up of male frontal nudity, randomly dropped in to a possibly real focus-group for Bruno's reality-show pitch) there's something familiar -- and, in this youTube age, not unexpected -- about his antics.

Does Transformers 2 set a new low for the critic-audience divide?

By Steven Zeitchik

We knew the reviews would be fetid. And we knew the box-office would be smashing. But we didn't know the box-office would be this good and the reviews this bad.

So in the  wake of audiences  saying 'Quality? We care?' this weekend and sending "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" to near-record numbers, we came up with a little measuring tool to gauge just how much audiences disregard critics on a given pic. We call it the Fool-ometer, and it quantifies the gap between audience and critical approval.

It's a simple formula. To come up with a Fool-ometer score, we took a film's opening weekend and compared it to its reviewer approval (we used Rotten Tomatoes). So a blockbuster that was well-reviewed, like "Iron Man," scores in the range of a 1 -- in that case, the $98 million it earned opening weekend is just about one time the the 93% of critics who approved. That's the sort of number you want. "Dark Knight" is slightly higher, but that's mainly because it earned so damn much.

By contrast, Transformers scores a startling 5.5 -- the box-office of $112 million over the Fri-Sun period is more than five times the percentage of reviewers who approved, 20% on RT.

Can there be something (else) about Cameron?

By Steven Zeitchik

 

Reinventions run riot in "My Sister's Keeper," the surprisingly effective New Line tearjerker about a family whose daughter is dying of leukemia, which we saw earlier this week at its New York premiere.

 

Director Nick Cassavetes goes from the crime dramas of his post-"Notebook" phase back to Weepyville. Abigail Breslin plays a conflicted, (slightly) more complex (or at least confused) pre-adolescent instead of merely a cute one, as the patient's sister.
 

And most significantly, Cameron Diaz, playing the tenacious mother who fights for her daughter's life even well beyond when it's reasonable to do so, moves on from the romantic comedies and one-of-the-guys testosterone pics to Kleenex-factory territory. (Alec Baldwin, playing a smirking ambulance-chasing lawyer, pretty much stays where he's been for some time.)

 

Michael Jackson bit cut from 'Bruno'

By Steven Zeitchik and Matthew Belloni

The sudden death of Michael Jackson on Thursday prompted a series of discussions at Universal Pictures that resulted in the studio cutting a Jackson-related sketch from "Bruno" only hours before its Los Angeles premiere.

Uni removed a scene in which Bruno, the flamboyant Austrian journalist played by Sacha Baron Cohen, interviews an unsuspecting LaToya Jackson about a number of topics, including her brother.

Among the gags is a joke about the King of Pop's high-pitched voice, as well as an attempt to discover his contact info (Baron Cohen grabs LaToya's phone), as well as a reference to his trademark white glove, etc, all done in Baron Cohen's characteristically absurdist tone.

The scene played at press screenings earlier in the week, where it did not stand out as unusually outrageous in the context of the pic's other antics.

But after Jackson's death on Thursday, the studio and filmmakers decided to remove the scene for the premiere screening out of sensitivity to the Jackson family. The film now goes directly from Baron Cohen's gonzo interview with Paula Abdul to a focus-group for his faux reality show.

Still, because many critics attended those earlier showings, its content could make its way into reviews. In fact, removing the scene in a way calls more attention to it, though the studio clearly wanted to avoid even the perception of poor taste.

"We decided to take it out for tonight, and we'll reassess before the release whether to keep it out," said director Larry Charles at the premiere's afterparty. (Update: Uni now confirms the scene is officially out of the theatrical version, and says removing it won't be expensive because most of the prints have not yet been made or shipped).

It's rare that a studio changes a movie in post because of current events, though in a slightly different vein, Sony in the wake of 9/11 stopped playing a "Spider Man" trailer that showcased the Twin Towers.

Because we can: A few more thoughts on Oscar's decathlon day

By Steven Zeitchik

Our phone's been ringing off the hook ever since the ol' AMPAS crew decided to go with the everyone's-a-winner mentality. Mostly that's been awards publicists pitching their movies as best-pic contenders -- "It doesn't matter if you haven't seen any of them, you have  _ten_ movies to choose from." But it's also been consultants hashing out what this means for the awards business. A few nuggets:

-- To Trek or Not to Trek. The conventional thinking is that this opens up the field to a few tentpoles, because those were the ones just missing the cut before. But there's a whole other category that was getting overlooked: the movies pigeonholed simply as "performance" pictures (From last year, "The Wrestler" comes to mind.) Those type of generally overlooked specialty pics may just as likely crowd out the Star Trek and generally overlooked tentpole pics. Plus when it comes to said big-budgeters you can change rules, but you can't change perception. If something wasn't seen as a contender before, the idea that there are a few more lines on a voting sheet probably won't change that. There's always a dark drama to fill the void.

-- Studio Revival. The studios have done their damnedest to get out of the awards business. But the awards business just keeps pulling them back in. Despite most lots' success in not spending much on awards (Paramount and Ben Button excepted), they may now be roped back into the glitz, the glamour, the absurd overspending. Which leads us to...

--Vanity just got Vainer. Under the old system, certain stars -- ahem, Will Smith, ahem -- tended to get campaigns just because studios wanted to keep them happy. In the past, that meant the star's reps made a push, the studio made a nominal effort, and that was that. But the ten slots for best pic means reps -- obviously for directors and producers, but also for stars -- now have a lot more leverage. They can say, sure, so-and-so had no chance under the old system. But the new one? It's a lock. The end result could be a proliferation of futile campaigns of the sort we haven't seen since Michael Dukakis.

The dark side of Oscar's move to 10

By Steven Zeitchik

We love the idea that the Oscars are "returning" to a 10-film best pic race -- the last time it happened was in the middle of World War II, so not exactly something most of us remember fondly.

Still, Sid Ganis' announcement today that the Academy will double the number of nominees for its top prize this year is both a shrewd marketing move and a questionable policy change, and there'll no doubt be plenty to say about it over the coming season.

Most obviously (and hopefully, from Ganis' standpoint), it broadens the kind of movies that could get nominated, potentially also broadening the audience for the telecast. If the assumption was that "The Dark Knight" last year was the sixth best-pic choice and "Iron Man" wasn't far behind, that would have meant two superhero nominees in the mix (superhero nominees with no chance of winning, but that's another matter).

Of course if the criteria remain the same, it may just mean that there are more art house pictures nominated (isn't art house what the Oscars are supposed to be about anyway?). Which means that the Academy hasn't so much democratized (read: gone tentpole) with its biggest category as much as it's given us more specialty movies.

When humans meet Avatars

By Steven Zeitchik

James Cameron unspooled more than twenty minutes of footage from "Avatar" at an Amsterdam exhibitor conference called Cinema Expo Tuesday, to enthusiastic applause.

And yet despite reading and re-reading the reports about the substance of said footage, we're still scratching our heads.

The pic will no doubt have panache to burn, and, with Cameron's well-reputed flair and a reported $300 million budget, will certainly be a marvel to look at. But on a narrative level, the sequence of scenes that at least one blogger describes is somewhat less dazzling.

According to The Insider (via Comingsoon.net) the scenes basically set up the action, on a planet called Pandorum, with the Avatars --  blue creatures who await humans to inhabit them -- embarking on a series of challenges.

A grilling you won't find at your July 4th barbecue

You could watch repeated viewings of "Being John Malkovich," rent the collected works of Bunuel and Lynch and spend eight hours at a Salvador Dali exhibit and still not approach the level of surrealism of this Wrap interview with Nikki Finke (who sold her DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com site Tuesday to Mail.com Media Corporation).

Is 'Transformers' a neocon screed in disguise?

By Steven Zeitchik

We're reluctant to read any political subtext into a movie in which much of the screen time is given over to twenty-foot, talking CGI robots.

But after nine hours of sitting through//popping Advils at the "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" premiere tonight -- and then coming right out of the Westwood theater into the teeth of an Iranian election-protest -- we are left to wonder if the movie is an allegory for the Bush Doctrine, or at least a certain kind of post-9/11 hawkishness.

The pic's plot centers on a battle between the good machines and the bad machines, and the anointed teenager with visions of strange symbols which may or may not be a map and who must vanquish --  wait, does it matter? It shouldn't, except for a few notable clues.

First, there's a critical showdown between the commanders of a U.S. army unit and a suit-wearing wonk (read: namby-pamby Democrat) over whether the U.S.-Islamist -- er, Autobot-Decepticon -- fray is worth jumping into. An army commander boldly (and, in the movie's logic, presciently) makes the case for a military intervention (he all but says we need to stand up for our freedom) while Mr. Namby-Pamby makes the weaselly suggestion that all options must be considered, even -"diplomatic" ones (with the scene's implication that those who choose to talk would blithely throw away American lives).

Paramount and its Decepticons

By Steven Zeitchik

Is there a studio in a more complicated position than Paramount? The Melrose lot already has one of the summer's biggest hits and is set to release what will almost assuredly be the biggest -- and yet it's facing more shapeshifting unknowns than Sam Witwicky.

First, the company endured a massive leadership shakeup when Brad Weston and former It Boy John Lesher were ousted Friday (more on that in a moment). And now, thanks to TMZ, an e-mail has surfaced in which one of their biggest moneymaking directors slams them over marketing.

"Transformers" helmer Michael Bay, never shy about making his feelings known (or boasting about his own spending), called out Paramount about six weeks ago for a print and television approach that was "tepid and ineffective," "lame" and an "abject failure" (according to him).

Bay cited Jerry Bruckheimer -- not on this issue but on the danger of under-marketing in general -- cleverly signaling that he had friends in high places and the studio better step it up. (Bay eventually made nice with the studio, according to a later e-mail dug up by TMZ.)

Leaving aside the merits of the criticism -- Par did take out a Super Bowl ad and kept the momentum going with a strategic trailer rollout, though until recently you could argue that from a certain distance the prerelease blitz did seem a little weak by mega-tentpole standards -- we wonder what effect the words of a prized director, rabblerousing as he is, has on the perception of a studio.

L.A. Film Fest opens, with the help of some paper men

By Steven Zeitchik

The reaction was mixed to "Paper Man," the indie from Kiernan and Michele Mulroney that opened the Los Angeles Film Festival Thursday night (though it did feature the only conversation between two suicidal imaginary friends that we've ever seen on celluloid).

But potentially more noteworthy to us than the indie itself -- a Sundance-y story about a midlife crisis-afflicted Jeff Daniels and the odd relationship he strikes up with a troubled teenage girl -- is where the film debuted in the first place.

Producers actually debated taking their pic, which does not yet have domestic distribution, to Toronto (most filmmakers who have a film ready this time of year do). But in the end they opted to come to LAFF, in part because there's a natural industry audience here that could buy the movie but in part, they said, because it would get more attention than it would in the pressure cooker of Toronto.

Meet the new Conan, same as the old Conan

By Steven Zeitchik and Nellie Andreeva

Kickinger, left, and Schwarzenegger as Conan

Lionsgate and Nu Image/Millennium, the two companies behind the Conan reboot, might have found their new Conan -- and he bears striking similarities to the old Conan.

The companies are in talks with a 41-year-old Austrian actor named Roland Kickinger to play the title role that Arnold Schwarzenegger made famous in the 1982 classic "Conan the Barbarian."

There are more than a few eerie parallels between the personalities.

Like Schwarzenegger, Kickinger is a bodybuilder- turned-actor from the Central European country.

Like the California governor, he also had a role as a T-800 in the "Terminator" franchise (in Warner Bros.' current "Terminator Salvation").

And in a you-can't-make-this-stuff-up turn, Kickinger actually played a Conan-era version of Schwarzenegger in "See Arnold Run," the 2005 A&E biopic about the actor-turned-politician.