The Screengrab : Summer 2008

Screengrab Predicts: The Top 5 Bombs of Summer 2008

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:30:00 GMT

And now, The Screengrab’s predictions for the Top 5 box office disappointments and/or outright disastrous flops of Summer 2008!

(Want to play along at home? Let us know your Top 5 picks for upcoming Summer Bombs, and compare them to our collective and individual predictions. Whoever scores the most correct answers WINS AN IMAGINARY FANTASY DATE WITH MIKE MYERS AND/OR SARAH JESSICA PARKER!)

5. SEX AND THE CITY

I guess I shouldn't exactly say that I'm confident this movie will be a huge failure. More like I'm praying to any god that will listen that it will be. (LP)

What kind of sick, twisted, topsy-turvy world do we live in where the promised Deadwood TV movies have never materialized, yet Sex and the City gets the full-fledged big screen treatment? No sort of world for me, I know that much. As hard as it is for me to believe that anyone on the planet still cares about the sex lives of Sarah Jessica Parker and her pals, I'm sure there are a few fans left out there. But they'll all see this on the first weekend and then it will sink like a stone. (SV)

Yes, the show has a built-in fan base, but will it be enough? The fact is, this is opening the week after Indiana Jones, and there are many more women who will buy a ticket for Indy than there are men who'll pay to see Carrie and Company on the big screen. Perhaps an early-fall release would have been a better idea? (PC)

4. SPEED RACER

Who was this movie made for? Everyone's heard of the show, but who remembers it all that well? Looks too kiddish for most adults, and too hyperkinetic for the family audience. Factor in the film's release date- the second week in May, historically a bum weekend- and the outlook here isn't promising. (PC)

Dissenting Opinion: Intersecting that demographic sweet spot where NASCAR fans, nostalgic hipsters, Japanese animation buffs, and people with nothing better to do on a hot afternoon meet, this cartoon revival will score big, and drive up sales of Steve Albini records and pet monkeys. (LP)

3. THE HAPPENING

It's not happening anymore for M. Night Shyamalan, who has seen his stock drop from Hitchcock heir to 21st century Ed Wood with each successive release. (SV)

Five years ago, the M. Night Shyamalan name would have been enough to guarantee box office. However, after The Village and Lady In the Water, the studio is going to have to step up their game to recoup their investment here. And without a Bruce Willis in the lead role, it's going to be that much harder. (PC)

DISSENTING OPINION: While I am on record as a LeBeouf hater, I’m an ardent Shyamalan apologist. For me, even his stinkers are interesting (or at least amusing), and I’m apparently the only guy in America who actually enjoyed Lady In The Water enough to put it on my year-end Top Ten List. Oh, sure, it SEEMS like it’s going to bomb...but the SHOCKING TWIST ENDING is that, y’know, it might not be a TOTAL fiasco. (AO)

2. THE LOVE GURU

Is there anyone out there who doesn't think this looks like total shit? Mike Myers appears onscreen for the first time in five years, but let's not forget that his last leading-man role was- UGH- THE CAT IN THE HAT. (PC)

Coroners examining the bomb crater will have trouble separating the remains of The Love Guru from the remains of Heather Graham’s The Guru in an adjacent crater, and will thus bury them together in the Tomb of the Unseen Faux-Indian Musical Comedy. (AO)

1. THE INCREDIBLE HULK

Taking a movie, based on a very hard-sell Marvel character (whose entire existence is predicated on violence and stupidity), which was one of the few recent superhero movies to totally bomb and remaking it only a few years later with a much worse director? Now that's a formula for success! (LP)

Marvel Studios has gone out of their way to sell this film as a completely different creature than the last movie. But will people get the message? I think they underestimate how much people disliked the last Hulk, and it's going to take a lot of good press to make audiences believe they won't get fooled again. (PC)

By the way...does anyone else think a giant green ‘roid-ragin’ CGI depiction of Ed Norton is inherently hilarious? What’s next, Sean Penn as Martian Manhunter? (AO)

Memorandum Opinion: I don't want to say I'm rooting against The Incredible Hulk exactly, but as one of the few defenders of Ang Lee's version, I would feel some satisfaction if the presumably louder, faster, dumber sequel/remake/whatever-it-is met with an even worse box office fate. (SV)

DISHONORABLE MENTION:

HANCOCK

Recent presidential elections have shown us time and again that America has no tolerance for poor moral values, like this movie with 'cock' in the title and which features Will Smith, and yet does not have a single occurrence of the phrase "Aw hell naw". (LP)

GET SMART

The appeal of the old TV show -- a number of episodes of which were written by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry -- wasn't its spy satire; it was its smart, character-driven comedy. The movie looks to go for cheap retro thrills and ultra-broad laughs, and America's love affair with Steve Carrell may have peaked. (LP)

People like Steve Carell on TV, but after last summer's Evan Almighty, his box-office clout is pretty questionable. This uninspired-looking TV spinoff probably won't counter that. (PC)

THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR

Does anyone still actually care? (PC)

WANTED/HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY

2008 is the summer of comic book movies, but there's such a thing as overkill. Without the name recognition of Batman or the marketing push of Iron Man, these will probably be lost in the shuffle. (PC)

**************

The above list reflects the combined, weighted picks of four of our resident Screengrab know-it-alls. Below, our original ballots:

Leonard Pierce

1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2. The Incredible Hulk

3. Hancock

4. Get Smart

5. Sex and the City

Scott Von Doviak

1. The Happening

2. Sex and the City

3. You Don’t Mess With the Zohan

4. The Love Guru

5. The Incredible Hulk

Paul Clark

1. Speed Racer

2. The Incredible Hulk

3. The Love Guru

4. Get Smart

5. Wanted/Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Andrew Osborne

1. The Love Guru

2. The Incredible Hulk

3. Speed Racer

4. Wall*E

5. Hancock

-- Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce

Screengrab Predicts: The Top 5 Hits of Summer 2008

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Studio executives, like TV weathermen, can be wrong half the time and still make a pretty fine living. One major difference, of course, is “The Suits” in Hollywood spend zillions on publicity and advertising campaigns to attempt to make their forecasts come true...and even then, they’re only right about half the time when it comes to cinematic hits and misses.

We here at the Screengrab will take that action. With the 2008 Blockbuster Season bearing down on us LIKE A RADIOACTIVE SPACE BUS THAT TRANSFORMS INTO A GIANT ROBOT LOADED WITH EXPLOSIVES, we hereby offer our predictions for the summer’s Top 5 Hits and Misses, in hopes of scoring ourselves sweet development deals based on our uncanny pop culture pulse-fingering prognostication abilities.

For the purposes of this experiment, “HIT” and “MISS” will refer not to the critical reception or cinematic quality of the films in question (because, really, who cares about that stuff?). Instead, we’ll calculate the accuracy of our predictions based on each film’s domestic box office gross in relation to its marketing/production budget and the hype/expectation surrounding it.

Want to play along at home? Let us know your Top 5 picks for upcoming Summer Hits, and compare them to our collective and individual predictions. Whoever scores the most correct answers WINS A BRAND NEW IMAGINARY CAR!

And now, our picks for the Top 5 HITS of Summer 2008:

5. KUNG FU PANDA

This one's pretty easy to explain: (1) Kung fu. (2) Pandas. It's got something for everyone! (LP)

Plurality Opinion: Dreamworks' annual summer animated movie doesn't have the built-in audience of the Shrek franchise, but it should still do good family business for the three weeks before Wall*E hits screens. (PC)

Memorandum Opinion: I haven’t seen that Panda on any big plastic soda cups yet, but maybe I haven’t been hanging out in the right fast food restaurants or convenience stores. This movie just squeaked onto our list as a result of numerous split votes elsewhere...but who knows? Maybe panda is the new penguin! (AO)

4. IRON MAN

Another gamble here, but one worth betting on due to it being the first high-profile summer release. Iron Man isn't an icon like Batman or Spider-Man, but Paramount has done a bang-up job promoting the film, and the re-emergence of Robert Downey Jr. as a high-profile leading man is the kind of story that can do wonders for a movie's public awareness. (PC)

3. INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL

Come on, like it could possibly be anything else. Indiana Jones is one of the iconic characters in cinema. Who's not looking forward to this? Add to that the fact that the film's got next to no competition for the month or so after it's released and this is the one to beat. Here's hoping it's actually good. (PC)

Memorandum Opinion: I'm going to call this as a slight box office disappointment that nevertheless cracks the top five. Indy's heyday was a long time ago, and even Lucas and Spielberg seem to be trying to downplay expectations. (SV)

Dissenting Opinion: First of all, that title is just way too long. Titles more than 20 letters long are for artsy foreign movies. Second, is there really that big an audience for this outside of hardcore geek circles? The key demographic for summer action flicks wasn't even born when the LAST Indiana Jones movie came out. (LP)

2. THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN

Advance word is that the second in the Narnia series outdoes the first in terms of pacing, script, and special effects, but my guess is that it'll succeed because conservatives bitched so much about the previous movie not getting enough attention that America will guiltily drag themselves to see it just to shut them up. (LP)

Dissenting Opinion: The last installment in the Narnia franchise was a blockbuster, but that was released in December. In a more competitive summer season, it should have a solid opening weekend before getting trounced by Indiana Jones. (PC)

1. THE DARK KNIGHT

There's pretty much no way this thing will bomb. Even if it had a bad director, a crummy script, an unpopular main character, and a poorly-designed set, geeks would flock to it in droves. But it doesn't have any of those things, AND one of its stars died mysteriously during filming! That's money in the bank, people. (LP)

Let's see: blockbuster sequel, over a solid year's worth of hype, extensive viral marketing campaign, hugely popular hero and villain, and to top it off, a much-buzzed final complete performance by Heath Ledger. Even non-Batfans are going to want to get a load of his Joker, which should push The Dark Knight to the top of the heap. (SV)

Batman is back in the public's good graces after the awesomeness of Batman Begins, and this one's got the most popular of Bat-villains, The Joker. And sad to say, but the hype around the late Mr. Ledger's performance will only help the movie's chances at the box office. (PC)

HONORABLE MENTION:

HANCOCK:

Will Smith. July 4. Action, comedy, superheroes, you name it. It's got practically everything one could ask for from a midsummer release. (PC)

WALL*E

Here's where things get a little less certain. Sure, WALL-E is a Disney/Pixar release, with all the family cachet that implies. However, it may not be as cuddly as some of the family favorites Pixar has made in the past. Still, this is the highest-profile family-friendly release of the summer, so this is the one to beat. Besides, if Pixar can strike box-office gold with rats in a kitchen... (PC)

TROPIC THUNDER

Historically, August is the time when comedy re-emerges as box-office gold. After months of blockbuster bloat, audiences will want to laugh again, and this movie- starring Ben Stiller and newly-hot Robert Downey Jr.- looks to have the most potential for success. (PC)

AMERICAN TEEN

An instant America’s sweetheart cuddly “rebel” poster girl and a trailer that’s so John Hughes accessible that megaplex audiences may not realize it’s a documentary until it’s too late to get their money back may turn this Sundance fave into an indie hit (at the very least) and maybe even a real live mainstream smash. (AO)

PINEAPPLE EXPRESS

If the rabid anticipation of this flick by the teenage dudes at my last family gathering bears any relation to the feelings of teenage dudes across the nation, this could be a sleeper hit. Plus: Apatow. (AO)

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS

With a combination of everyone's favorite annoying jackass, Ashton Kutcher, and a title drawn from an ad campaign predicated on date rape, fatal drug overdoses, and dead hookers, how can it miss? (LP)

***

The above list reflects the combined, weighted picks of four of our resident Screengrab know-it-alls. Below, our original ballots:

Leonard Pierce

1. The Dark Knight

2. Kung Fu Panda

3. Speed Racer

4. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

5. What Happens In Vegas

Scott Von Doviak

1. The Dark Knight

2. Iron Man

3. Hancock

4. Prince Caspian

5. Indiana Jones

Paul Clark

1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2. Hancock

3. The Dark Knight

4. Wall*E

5. Iron Man

Andrew Osborne

1. Indiana Jones

2. The Dark Knight

3. Prince Caspian

4. The Pineapple Express

5. American Teen

-- Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce