Fan Fare

Russell Crowe the $200 million man at foreign box office

Russell Crowe’s career may cooled a little in North America, but the New Zealand-born Australian resident remains a firm favorite with international audiences.

His latest release, “Robin Hood,” just passed the $200 million mark at the foreign box office, the first time he has hit a double-century since his Oscar-winning “Gladiator” ended up with $270 million in 2000.

On a worldwide basis, including respectable U.S./Canada sales of $104 million, the period action-adventure has earned $305.7 million. The only films ahead of it in Crowe’s canon are “Gladiator” ($457 million) and “A Beautiful Mind” ($313.5 million). Crowe will likely have to wait until later this year to see if “Robin Hood” can move up to No. 2. The film has yet to open in just one market — Japan, in December. 

According to “Robin Hood” distributor Universal Pictures, top foreign markets so far include: Britain ($22 million), France ($17 million), Australia ($16 million), Italy ($14 million), Germany ($14 million), Spain ($12 million), Russia $12 million, South Korea $10 million, Mexico $9 million, Brazil ($8 million) and China ($7 million).

Love and Marriage … the box office equation?

The top three directors at the North American box office have walked down the aisle a total of 11 times, leading to the decidedly unscientific conclusion that romantic comedies may be better for your marriage than heavy dramas.

Garry Marshall (pictured at left), the man behind last weekend’s champion “Valentine’s Day” as well as “Pretty Woman” and the sitcom “Happy Days,” let the team down by being married just once, to the same woman since 1963 (per Wikipedia).

That leaves current chart-topper Martin Scorsese (“Shutter Island”) and all-time star James Cameron (“Avatar”) with five wives each on their scorecards and approximately zero romantic comedies between them. 

Scorsese did take a break from gunning down gangsters and crucifying Jesus to get romantic with the dramatic Edith Wharton adaptation “The Age of Innocence,” not that too many people noticed. 

Plenty of people did notice the romantic nature of “Titanic,” even if Cameron killed off about 1,500 people including the star. Things were evidently more romantic behind the camera as the married filmmaker hooked up with his co-star Suzy Amis, now his fifth wife.

The thesis might need more work, though, as the three husbands of romantic-comedy specialist Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail) or the three wives and one very estranged former girlfriend of Woody Allen might attest.

Hugh Grant, Sarah Jessica Parker movie flops — few noticed

“No” appears to be the resounding response when someone mentions the new movie “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” The interrogative fish-out-of-water comedy starring Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker, earned just $7 million at the weekend box office in North America, coming in at No. 4.

The good news is that few fans seemed to really noticed, because all eyes were on “Avatar,” which opened to $73 million. It was a savvy scheduling move by Columbia Pictures that just didn’t work out. If “Morgans” had done well, the studio could have hailed it as a bold counterprogramming move.

But no one had great hopes for ”Morgans,” with prognosticators forecasting a tally in the $10 million range. Critics panned it. The only positive notice among 16 top critics polled by Rotten Tomatoes came from the New York Times, whose review was hardly enthusiastic. Grant and Parker play a bickering couple relocated to the U.S. sticks (i.e. Wyoming) under the Federal Witness Protection Program. The film’s writer-director, Marc Lawrence,  previously worked with Grant in “Music and Lyrics” and “Two Weeks Notice.”

Columbia said the film tended to appeal to older women, but Fox’s “Avatar” played surprisingly strongly to old folks (i.e. people older than 25) and women, as well. At least the film did better than a similar-skewing comedy-drama “Everybody’s Fine,” starring Robert De Niro, which opened to $3.9 million earlier this month and has earned $8.8 million to date. Next up for this quality-conscious demo is writer/director Nancy Meyers’ Christmas Day comedy “It’s Complicated,” starring Meryl Streep, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.

Vampires + romance = box office love

(Reporting and video by Marc Price)

Since when did girls start liking guys that stay up all hours at night — drinking? Blood, no less. Since when? Since always. And if a vamp knows how to bite more than her neck, all the better.

Vampire flicks have come a long way since Bella Lugosi, and while we’re a little young to have seen Lugosi in theaters, we do remember Jim Carrey and Lauren Hutton in “Once Bitten” (Today, that would be titled “Cougar Vampire”). We remember “An American Werewolf in London” and “Teen Wolf” — we’re allowed to mention werewolves given “New Moon” and its pack. And we can say, the beasts are doing far better today romancing the gals.

On the the subject of vamps, we note Johnny Depp was named People magazine’s sexiest man of the year (you can read about that here) last week. Johnny Depp? Everybody knows Robert Pattinson is the sexiest man — or is it Taylor Lautner? C’mon you “Twi-hards” (that’s a few of you pictured at the premiere at left), which is it: vampire Edward Cullen or werewolf Jacob Black? Pattinson or Lautner?

The movie smashed weekend box office records with a domestic haul of nearly $141 million (read that here), and we were out there again. We asked women: would they let Robert Pattinson drink their blood? The answer is below.

Sandra Bullock scores touchdown at box office

It’s been a wild year at the box office for Sandra Bullock, whose report card this decade has been middling at best.

The actress, 45, returned to theaters for the first time in more than two years in June with the romantic comedy “The Proposal,” which went on to become the biggest film of her career (before accounting for inflation), with $164 million in domestic ticket sales. But then came her September stinker, “All About Steve,” which was one of her weakest entries with $34 million in ticket sales. She is pictured at the premiere of the latter film, looking happier than she should have been.

Bullock bounced back this weekend with the sports drama “The Blind Side,” which kicked off with $34.5 million, a personal best. The opening was good enough for a distant No. 2 behind “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” ($140.7 million, but who’s counting?).

Critics and fans embraced the fact-based saga of a Tennessee housewife who takes in a homeless black teenager and turns him into a football hero. John Lee Hancock (“The Rookie”) directed from an adaptation of Michael Lewis’ book “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game.” It scored a 70 percent positive rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, compared to 30 percent for the “Twilight” sequel. Exit polling conducted by CinemaScore gave it an exceedingly rare A-plus across all demographics. There’s even talk of an Oscar nod, which would be a first for the two-time Golden Globe nominee.

“The Blind Side” was produced for $29 million by Alcon Entertainment, which specializes in female-skewing fare like the “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” movies. The company is financed by FedEx Corp Chairman Frederick W. Smith, and it has a distribution deal with Warner Bros. Pictures.

Bullock cut her undisclosed fee to star in the film, but will share in the profits. “She’ll make quite a bit of money on the movie,” said Broderick Johnson, who runs Alcon with Andrew Kosove.

Johnson predicted the movie would enjoy “a remarkable run” in North America, and reach the $150 million level. But how will it play overseas? American sports dramas have limited foreign appeal, and so the marketing will emphasize the human-interest side. The strategy seemed to work in North America, where women accounted for 55 percent of the audience. Johnson said the international rollout will be worked out next week, but it would likely be spearheaded by launches in the Bullock strongholds of Britain and Germany (her late mother’s homeland).

Fans seek midnight romance under light of “New Moon”

Fans lined up Thursday night at movie theaters to be among the first to get bitten by the “New Moon” phenomenon, the sequel to last year’s “Twilight.” The vampire romance movie ended up setting a box office record of $26.3 million for those midnight screenings by drawing fans like the ones profiled in our Fan Fare video below.

Who will go to “New Moon?” Lots of teen girls, for sure, but also moms who are into the story, young women and the men they drag along on dates. Those groups are expected to snap up tickets to the tune of about $100 million at U.S. and Canadian box offices this weekend. That’s a lot of howling at the “New Moon.”

“New Moon,” of course, has generated plenty of buzz. Tracking firm Trendrr said that in the last three months, more than 100,000 “New Moon” related videos have been added to YouTube.com. Trendrr also said that on Thursday, Twitter.com received more than 91,000 posts related to “New Moon.”

But despite all that popularity, the Vatican is not on-board. This week, an official with the Catholic Church called the film “nothing more than a moral vacuum with a deviant message.” This despite influential film critic Roger Ebert saying that the “Twilight Saga is an extended metaphor for teen chastity.” Who to believe?

For the uninitiated, “New Moon” is the second installment in the “Twilight” franchise based on the books by Stephenie Meyer. In the books and the movies, high school student Bella Swan (Kristen Stewartin the films) falls in love with the vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). But in “New Moon,” there’s another boy competing for Bella’s affection, and that is werewolf Jacob Black, played by 17 year-old actor Taylor Lautner, photographed above at right. As a result, some fans going to “New Moon” are on Team Edward and some are on Team Jacob. As if any fan support is going to change which way Bella’s vampire-loving heart really leans.

Check out the video below.

Michael Jackson’s “This Is It,” was it at box offices

Michael Jackson movie “This Is It” has finally come, but it is not quite gone — not yet.

In fact Columbia Pictures, the movie studio behind the film that looks at Jackson’s rehearsals for the London concerts that were to have been his comeback, said on Sunday it would extend the run in theaters.

The movie turned in a solid, if less than spectacular, debut at theaters around the world this weekend. Its total ticket sales since its debut last Wednesday are $101 million — $32.5 million in the U.S. and Canada and another $68.5 million. You can read about the box office here and a review here. And if you want to watch what some moviegoers had to say about “This Is It,” click below.

Box office gets “Wild” as adults groove with kids’ tale

Director Spike Jonze’s movie adaptation “Where the Wild Things Are” proved naysayers wrong this past weekend with a strong opening at U.S. box offices, making $32.5 million. The film brought Jonze’s hipster ethic to a popular 1963 children’s book, and managed to attract both adults and kids.

Of course, other movies have done that before, including this year’s Disney/Pixar film “Up.” But the doubters were particularly vocal about “Where the Wild Things Are” because early in the production process there were questions about whether the film was too scary for young kids and not scary enough for adults. You can read about some of it here, but none of those past concerns seemed to matter over the weekend.

Other movies that opened this past weekend included the thriller “Law Abiding Citizen,” about an average guy who takes the law into his own hands. The horror movie “Paranormal Activity,” which cost $15,000 to make and has been widened out each week to more theaters, also did well, and has made $33.7 million since it opened in limited release on Sept. 25.

We talked to movie fans this weekend to get their opinions on the latest releases. You can see the video by clicking below.

(video by Marc Price)

Four months of summer end in a Hollywood haze

The summer movie season is officially over with the end of this weekend and — much like a hazy day in Hollywood –  results were mixed. Box office was up based on higher average ticket prices, but attendance was down, which generally speaking has been the case for years as movies competed with other forms of entertainment.

The expected big hits, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” paid handsomely at box offices. Some movies flopped: “Land of the Lost,” “Year One.” Others were big surprises: “The Hangover.” And the indie market did well with “500 Days of Summer” and “The Hurt Locker.”

We were out on the streets in Las Vegas this past weekend, asking people what they they liked and didn’t this summer. Even Elvis gets a crack at our Flip camera. Click below for a quick view.

(video by Marc Price)

‘Harry Potter’ sales fail to live up to opening weekend hype

Remember the breathless reports concerning the record-breaking opening of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” in July?

The sixth movie in the fantasy franchise surpassed “Spider-Man 3″ to set new worldwide ($394 million) and foreign ($236 million) records, and its North American tally ($158.0 million) was $18 million higher than that of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” two years earlier. (Note: Data are slightly different in the link as they were estimates, and the final figures were issued the following day.)

“Phoenix” ended up with $938 million worldwide, the seventh-biggest movie of all time before accounting for inflation. So it was only natural to assume that the new one might have a chance to become the first in the series to crack $1 billion.

Not so fast. It turns out “Spider-Man 3″ ($891 million) was a better benchmark for the film. “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” has earned $905.4 million after opening at No. 1 during the weekend in its last market, Greece. It’s the biggest movie of the year, the third-biggest in the series and the 12th biggest of all time. If it can squeeze out an extra $15 million, it will crack the top 10. BUT, it won’t get to $1 billion.

The North American total of $294.3 million just passed “Phoenix” ($292 million) to trail only the $317.5 million haul for 2001′s “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” which ended up with $975 million worldwide. Its foreign total stands at $611.1 million, but that’s quite a bit short of the $700 million forecast by Variety on the basis of that opening weekend.

Warner Bros. Pictures, which leads the studio field with eight No. 1 openings in North America this year, never publicly issued forecasts and an executive declined during opening weekend to discuss the billion-dollar possibility. Still, when studios trumpet record-breaking launches, boosted by ticket-price inflation, premium-priced IMAX screenings and simultaneous worldwide roll-outs, not even young wizards are immune to market forces for long.