CLOSE CONTEST: RoboCop, About Last Night
The sentiment among many insiders is you can’t beat the original, but MGM and Columbia Pictures gave it a go nonetheless with a rebooted RoboCop. Twenty-seven years after Paul Verhoeven’s dazzling Hollywood debut left a dent in the zeitgeist, the gifted Brazilian director Jos Padilha has had a go, with mixed results. The new movie has earned fans and detractors and while it still has a pop at corporate greed, there is also a fresh focus on the perils of drone warfare. The number three launch on $21.5mn (12.8mn) was not the best start in an admittedly crowded weekend and RoboCop 2.0 will need to fire its turbo boosters if the North American box office is to play a part in recouping the reported $100mn budget. It’s off to a great start internationally though, on a number one $35mn haul.
Sony’s Screen Gems division scored a palpable hit with the number two debut of this romcom starring Kevin Hart and Regina Hall, two faces that are well known to US audiences generally and among black audiences in particular.
Hall is a familiar face in movies and comedy star Hart is getting out there now and starred in recent number one hit, Ride Along. Screen Gems will not have spent a lot on About Last Night estimates put the budget at around $12.5mn so this smartly priced piece of entertainment is well on its way to profit. Sony executives can anticipate several more weeks of solid theatrical performance followed by strong numbers on VOD, digital platforms and TV.
Each week too many movies jostle for attention in the charts and each week too many fail to make an impression. We hear about the big hits and one or two big flops, but behind the end-of-year headlines lie hundreds of mid-range titles that have faded into oblivion.
Two releases that appear destined for such a fate opened at the weekend. Universal’s romance Endless Love starring Alex Pettyfer, the UK model and actor who is yet to break out, arrived at number five on $13.4mn. Warner Bros’ fantasy Winter’s Tale, starring Colin Farrell and Jessica Brown Findlay, debuted in seventh place on $7.8mn. US critics pilloried both movies and without A-list stars with proven box office cachet, it would seem this is the only time we will hear about their theatrical careers.
George Clooney’s WWII adventure about a ragtag band of heroes who rescue artefacts from the Nazis received its international premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival a little while ago.
Advance word in the early days of the festival, which wound up at the weekend, was that the movie was not that good. The coming weeks will judge its merits in the eyes of the great US public, but so far the North American run has not impressed.
China Lion waits to spring
Beijing Love Story did not score the kind of result that sets the charts alight, but is interesting nonetheless. The romance opened well outside the top 20 on $128,000 from nine venues, but distributor China Lion Films will take heart from what amounts to a small incursion into North America. The movie opened day-and-date in China, where a relatively modest $25mn placed it in the top five at the international weekend charts and would have seen it rank third in North America. With the growing ascendancy of Chinese movies worldwide, how many years are left before a Chinese-made movie dominates the US charts? — By Jeremy Kay, Guardian News & Media
Jared Leto took 15 years to sign Dallas ...
Oscar-nominated actor Jared Leto has said that he got the script of Dallas Buyers Club 15 years back, but he doesn’t remember looking at it thoroughly. “I was sent the script... it was 15 years ago. I doubt it resembled anything like the script I got last year, so quite a bit of work had been done. I don’t think I read the script 15 years ago, I just got sent it, I may have looked at a couple of pages,” Leto said in a statement. “But everything happens for a reason, the script needed 15 years to gestate, I needed six years off from films to marinate and here we are,” he added. Leto has already won Golden Globe and SAG awards for playing an Aids positive person in Dallas Buyers Club. — IANS
JLO avoids breaks to
avert career stagnation?
Singer-actress Jennifer Lopez reportedly avoids taking a break from work because she fears if she will take time off, her career will “be over”. The singer, who has five-year-old twins Max and Emme with ex-husband Marc Anthony, is always working on new projects and ideas, but her busy schedule makes some people around her uncomfortable, reports contactmusic.com.
“Jennifer is constantly working, 24 hours a day. She makes phone calls at all hours of the night. She’ll have an idea and work non-stop until it happens. That kind of work ethic is why she’s had success, but it’s hard for people to deal with,” said a source. “She’s afraid that if she takes time off it will all be over. She actually took a break when she was with Marc Anthony and had the kids. Her career kind of stalled. She freaked out. She got everything back up and running because she was afraid. She feels that if she’s not on top of everything it will go away,” the source added. — IANS
Clooney still looking for happiness
Actor George Clooney says he is still looking for happiness, and peacefulness. The 52-year-old, who was mocked by Tina Fey at the Golden Globe awards over his constant pursuit of younger women, has responded by saying that he is getting “wiser” as he is growing older, but his priorities remain the same, reports femalefirst.co.uk. Discussing the joke, Clooney said: “Yes, I did hear and I heard everybody laughing very hard too.”
“All I will say is we get wiser as we get older. And that what I am looking for in life is the same as I always have; happiness, peacefulness and joy. And that’s all I’m going to say about that because otherwise I’d get into trouble,” he added. — IANS
Top 10
1 The Lego Movie
2 About Last Night
3 RoboCop
4 The Monuments Men
5 Endless Love
6 Ride Along
7 Winter’s Tale
8 Frozen
9 Lone Survivor
10 That Awkward Moment
BELOW:
1) GESTATION: Jared Leto
2) WORKAHOLIC: Jennifer Lopez