Category: Movies

‘Potter’ smashes ‘Spider-Man 3’ record, earning $396.7 million

https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31996600/ns/entertainment-movies/

As more movies play in digital 3-D, there’s evidence that audiences are becoming less interested in the ballyhooed format that many in Hollywood have predicted will stem the long-term erosion of theater attendance.

https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2009/07/3d-starting-to-look-flat-at-the-box-office.html

A table of inflation-adjusted US box-office receipts produced by Bloomberg gives the crown to Gone With the Wind

https://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jul/07/titanic-gone-with-the-wind

Film companies dubious of specialty pickups

With the first half of the year in film festivals behind us, it’s hard not to notice the nearly complete lack of specialty film pickups by studios.

https://www.variety.com/article/VR1118005595.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&nid=2563

Kodak Retires Kodachrome Color Film After 74-Year Run

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-kodak-film23-2009jun23,0,247186.story

…there’s still not much money in Web video advertising — certainly not enough to earn a profit on videos that cost anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000 each to produce….

Our article focuses on the remarkable number of quickly abandoned Web video efforts in Hollywood over the past few years. A few remain, however.

They all have slightly different strategies and models, but most of them share one of two defining characteristics that separate them from the space’s many failures: Web video serves a larger strategy and thus doesn’t need to earn a profit, or it’s being produced at virtually no cost.

https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2009/06/after-many-hollywoodbacked-flops-whos-left-in-web-video.html

2009’s year-to-date was half a billion dollars ahead of last year’s. But this past weekend was the 3rd in a row to fall short of 2008: ticket buyers spent only $138.3 million for the opening of The Taking Of Pelham 123 as well as more Hangover and Up. But that’s down a whopping 23.1% from last year when The Incredible Hulk opened.

https://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/bad-news-bears-maul-summer-movie-biz/

“Terminator: Salvation” isn’t really sticking with Stateside critics or ticketbuyers, but it’s a different story overseas.

The Christian Bale-starrer landed in the top international spot again this weekend, taking in $46.1 million in 80 territories, according to studio estimates.

Once again it seems there’s an audience for every movie somewhere in the world.

https://www.thewrap.com/article/terminator-stays-top-overseas_3651

…A lot of science-fiction films these days are a string of special-effects set pieces. I miss those science fiction films which focused on people and storytelling, explaining how a human being survives and maintains their humanity in an alien environment or how their humanity is eroding away. Films like Outland, Silent Running and Alien did that. They were all about human beings and how they survived such scenarios. I wanted Moon to do that. The TV show Battlestar Galactica concentrated on people, but I don’t think that many recent feature films have done it….

https://www.studiodaily.com/main/technique/casestudies/10992.html

The decline of the Terminator franchise suggests that a hunger for something in cinemagoers is going unmet – ideas.

Some of the cheaply made sci-fi B movies of the 1950s may still hold lessons for the over-endowed movie-makers of today. One might be that science fiction needs more than whizz-bangery to succeed.

Anyone know a movie like that? 🙂

https://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/jun/08/science-fiction-terminator-salvation-cyborgs