Darth Elektra
Film.
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Coming Soon: The Weekend Warrior: February 12 - 15.
(4 day weekend)
2. The Wolfman (Universal) - $32.5 million
Analysis:
Why I Should See It: The original "Wolfman" movie is considered a horror classic and the great cast should help this one.
Why Not: Delayed for a year and not screened until opening weekend? Something's not quite kosher in Wolfsville.
Projections: $31 to 33 million over the four-day weekend and roughly $75 to 80 million total.
(4 day weekend)
2. The Wolfman (Universal) - $32.5 million
Analysis:
If there's one thing Universal Studios is better at than any of their competition, it's monsters. After all, they were the studio who first introduced classic movie monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy and the Wolfman to the screen. The first two were based on works of literature, and they were groundbreaking as some of the movies of the post-silent era; the latter two were original creations. In the past few decades, the first three have all had star-studded big budget remakes, The Mummy being reinvented roughly ten years ago as an action-adventure franchise. Meanwhile, the Wolfman remained fairly dormant for a number of years while other studios jumped on the werewolf bandwagon and the popularity of the creatures has grown in popularity in recent years. The clearest example has to be the "Twilight" saga, of course, which introduced its own hunky shirtless werewolves to moviegoers with New Moon, making it one of the biggest movies of 2009. While movies like Blood and Chocolate and Stan Winston's Skinwalkers and even Wes Craven's Cursed bombed, Screen Gems launched the "Underworld" series about a war between vampires and werewolves, which have done great business, finding a strong audience of mostly males with its gory take on the creatures.
Playing the role of Lawrence Talbot made famous by Lon Chaney in the 1941 classic is Benicio Del Toro, the Oscar-winning actor who first got attention for his role in Bryan Singer's debut The Usual Suspects before winning an Oscar for Steven Soderbergh's Traffic. Del Toro hasn't been in that many movies since then with notable roles in Awards fodder like 21 Grams, Things We Lost in the Fire and Soderbergh's epic Che. His only real forays into genre were his small role in Frank Miller's Sin City and the thriller The Hunted. Talbot's love interest in the remake is played by British actress Emily Blunt who has been getting strong notices for her roles in smaller movies like Sunshine Cleaning and The Young Victoria (currently in theaters) but she'll probably be best known for key role in the chick flick hit The Devil Wears Prada.The real sell of the movie might be the film's other Oscar winner, Sir Anthony Hopkins, who successfully drove Universal's serial killer franchise playing Hannibal Lecter and who was also involved with the Zorro movies of the '90s. Even though it's hard to imagine him as a box office draw, he does bring a certain amount of prestige to the project that makes it seem like a much more worthwhile remake than some of the cheap horror movies we've seen in recent years.
Directing the movie is Joe Johnston, a big name in genre having helmed movies like The Rocketeer and Jurassic Park III, although a straight horror movie like The Wolfman is quite a departure from his last movie which was the Disney action-adventure Hidalgo. He got the gig after the original director Mark Romanek bailed due to creative differences, and in the last couple years, there's been a lot of word that the movie was plagued with similar problems. What sets a lot of alarm bells ringing is that the movie has been delayed for over a year. Sure, we can figure that part of the delays might have been to get the important transformation scenes right, but releasing the movie in February, even over the holiday weekend, is not showing the type of confidence the studio would have if they released it in October or during the summer. (Although both The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal were released in February, those were very much exceptions.)
One key thing that's going to speak volumes to horror fans is that they had Rick Baker on board to handle the make-up effects, Baker having done the amazing transformation in An American Werewolf in London, considered by many to be a werewolf classic. He also did The Howling, Wolf with Jack Nicholson and many other movies that required hairy creatures, so Baker really knows his stuff. One thing that might throw modern audiences off is that the movie is done as a period piece rather than as a movie set in modern times, although the recent success of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes seems to show that American audiences may be more open to period genre movies.
While the movie's inability to get PG-13 rating might hurt its chances at getting younger teens over the holiday weekend, releasing it with an R-rating and all the blood and gore expected with the violent creatures will mean the movie can and will be taken more seriously among horror fans. The amount of gore might also detract it from branching out to other audiences. Universal's marketing for the movie has been solid, although they haven't really been using the name actors they have in the movie, instead focusing on the eerie visuals while keeping the werewolf somewhat hidden (another warning sign). You probably won't have seen any of the actors doing the talk show rounds in the past few weeks, although that's likely to kick into high gear this coming week. For the most part, Universal has waited until the last week to screen it for critics, which is not something the studio normally does. The movie has basically been hidden and chances are that it's not very good. Even so, one can only have doubts that the movie will be as good as they hope and either way, it's likely to do most of its business on Friday and Saturday and then start dropping off over the week, then get slaughtered by Martin Scorsese's own horror offering Shutter Island next week.
Playing the role of Lawrence Talbot made famous by Lon Chaney in the 1941 classic is Benicio Del Toro, the Oscar-winning actor who first got attention for his role in Bryan Singer's debut The Usual Suspects before winning an Oscar for Steven Soderbergh's Traffic. Del Toro hasn't been in that many movies since then with notable roles in Awards fodder like 21 Grams, Things We Lost in the Fire and Soderbergh's epic Che. His only real forays into genre were his small role in Frank Miller's Sin City and the thriller The Hunted. Talbot's love interest in the remake is played by British actress Emily Blunt who has been getting strong notices for her roles in smaller movies like Sunshine Cleaning and The Young Victoria (currently in theaters) but she'll probably be best known for key role in the chick flick hit The Devil Wears Prada.The real sell of the movie might be the film's other Oscar winner, Sir Anthony Hopkins, who successfully drove Universal's serial killer franchise playing Hannibal Lecter and who was also involved with the Zorro movies of the '90s. Even though it's hard to imagine him as a box office draw, he does bring a certain amount of prestige to the project that makes it seem like a much more worthwhile remake than some of the cheap horror movies we've seen in recent years.
Directing the movie is Joe Johnston, a big name in genre having helmed movies like The Rocketeer and Jurassic Park III, although a straight horror movie like The Wolfman is quite a departure from his last movie which was the Disney action-adventure Hidalgo. He got the gig after the original director Mark Romanek bailed due to creative differences, and in the last couple years, there's been a lot of word that the movie was plagued with similar problems. What sets a lot of alarm bells ringing is that the movie has been delayed for over a year. Sure, we can figure that part of the delays might have been to get the important transformation scenes right, but releasing the movie in February, even over the holiday weekend, is not showing the type of confidence the studio would have if they released it in October or during the summer. (Although both The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal were released in February, those were very much exceptions.)
One key thing that's going to speak volumes to horror fans is that they had Rick Baker on board to handle the make-up effects, Baker having done the amazing transformation in An American Werewolf in London, considered by many to be a werewolf classic. He also did The Howling, Wolf with Jack Nicholson and many other movies that required hairy creatures, so Baker really knows his stuff. One thing that might throw modern audiences off is that the movie is done as a period piece rather than as a movie set in modern times, although the recent success of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes seems to show that American audiences may be more open to period genre movies.
While the movie's inability to get PG-13 rating might hurt its chances at getting younger teens over the holiday weekend, releasing it with an R-rating and all the blood and gore expected with the violent creatures will mean the movie can and will be taken more seriously among horror fans. The amount of gore might also detract it from branching out to other audiences. Universal's marketing for the movie has been solid, although they haven't really been using the name actors they have in the movie, instead focusing on the eerie visuals while keeping the werewolf somewhat hidden (another warning sign). You probably won't have seen any of the actors doing the talk show rounds in the past few weeks, although that's likely to kick into high gear this coming week. For the most part, Universal has waited until the last week to screen it for critics, which is not something the studio normally does. The movie has basically been hidden and chances are that it's not very good. Even so, one can only have doubts that the movie will be as good as they hope and either way, it's likely to do most of its business on Friday and Saturday and then start dropping off over the week, then get slaughtered by Martin Scorsese's own horror offering Shutter Island next week.
Why I Should See It: The original "Wolfman" movie is considered a horror classic and the great cast should help this one.
Why Not: Delayed for a year and not screened until opening weekend? Something's not quite kosher in Wolfsville.
Projections: $31 to 33 million over the four-day weekend and roughly $75 to 80 million total.
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