Producer's failure

There's a lot of finger pointing going on right now regarding the film "Selma," and its failure to garner more then one Oscar nomination.  Personally, I feel those fingers should be directed at the producers for bungling the timing of the release so terribly.  Last year saw 2 films with black casts receive multiple nominations, of course "The Butler" was released in the spring and "10 Years a Slave" in late August, which gave them months to generate good 'press.'  This was not the case with "Selma," which was released to 19 theaters on 12/16, expanding to 22 theaters for the first week in January, a time when its Box Office actually declined.  The Box Office did pick up on 1/9 when the film was released nationally, but by then most of the Academy voters had already sent in their nominations.  Another issue compounding the last release mistake was the fact that DVD's of the film were not sent to Academy voters ahead of time.  The producer's excuse was that the film was released too late for them to do that.  What were they thinking?

There was a time when many of the nominated films were released late in the year, mostly because the studios wanted to make sure they remained fresh in the voter's minds.  Then a little movie called "The Silence of the Lambs," which was released on Valentines day in 1991, went on to sweep the Grand Prix of Oscars (Actor, Actress, Director & Film).  It proved that memorable films, those which truly merit awards, are not easily forgotten.  And, of course, this doesn't mean films released late don't get nominated, look at "Into the Woods" and "Unbroken," however it does indicate that if you release late in the year, you need to go deep and wide into the nation.  Twenty two theaters isn't going to get you squat.  The movie industry waits for no one.  It is constantly moving forward, because even now there are people thinking of next year's awards.

The World's End kicks ass seriously

On Monday morning I was surprised to see that Lee Daniels' The Butler had been number one at the box office for the 2nd week in a row, not because of the subject matter, but because this is a small film and usually small films don't stay at the top too long.  Once the target audience had seen the film, these little movies usually fade away.  What I had been hoping for was that another small film, "The World's End," would have managed to have found a spot in the top three, specifically because the film has been getting good reviews (Rotten Tomatoes either 93% or 97% depending upon which day you looked).  To my chagrin, it came in at number 4, which becomes less disappointing the more you look at the numbers, not just ticket sales but theater count as well.  "The Butler" was playing in 3110 theaters, an increase of 170 - in that many theaters the $16 + million it made is more then a little disappointing.  "We're the Millers," was playing in 3445 theaters and made 3.5 million less - boy was that a waste of empty seats.  Normally, as you continue down the rank, especially for opening weekend films, the news just gets worse.  Except....

 

 

for "The World's End."  This little film came in fourth place in ticket sales with $8.8 million dollars in seats sold.  And, it did this in less then half of the theaters showing "The Butler."  That's right, this little film was in 1551 theaters, almost 50% less then the number one movie of the weekend.  The Jennifer Anniston film which was in almost 2500 more movie theaters beat by a little over $4 million - that is an hellatious amount of empty seats, in fact I would not be surprised if there were showing where there was no one in the audience at all.  If you do the numbers, "The World's End" kicked ass this past weekend.  What in the hell were those theater owners thinking?  How can you possible resist one night, 6 friends, 12 bars and killer, alien robots?