Box Office: Jupiter Descending
Sunday, February 8, 2015 at 11:50PM Amir bringing you the weekend’s box office news. While awards season was in full swing this weekend with the DGA, BAFTAs and Grammys, Spongebob: Sponge Out of Water swept in and wiped off its competition while entering the top five best selling February releases of all time. This is one those films that totally slid below the radar for me; then again, the Venn diagram of people who care about this film and people who care about DGAs and BAFTAs is two separate circles. The weekend’s far buzzier title for cinephiles was Jupiter Ascending, the new visualeffectsapalooza from the Wachowski siblings. It is predictably visually stunning with incoherent plotting and confusing editing etc. etc. Like Cloud Atlas, this was mostly a failure, financially speaking, and you have to wonder how long it will be before they stop getting bankrolled for their strange visions. Finally, Julianne Moore and Jeff Bridges’ Seventh Son also bombed, but Universal, having predicted the dreadful critical response, made the very smart decision of opening it internationally a few weeks ago, so they’ve already made up the costs elsewhere.
TOP TEN
01 THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE $56 NEW
02 AMERICAN SNIPER $24.1 (cum. $282.2)
03 JUPITER ASCENDING $19 NEW
04 THE SEVENTH SON $7.1 NEW
05 PADDINGTON $5.3 (cum. $57.2)
06 PROJECT ALMANAC $5.3 (cum. $15.7)
07 THE IMITATION GAME $4.8 (cum. $74.7)
08 THE WEDDING RINGER $4.8 (cum. $55.1)
09 BLACK OR WHITE $4.5 (cum. $13.1)
10 THE BOY NEXT DOOR $4.1(cum. $30.8)
American Sniper slipped to number 2 on the list but is now firmly the third best film of 2014, still with a reasonable shot at becoming first. Not that being the box office champ necessarily helps its chances with winning the Oscar though – the last time the box office champ (among the nominees) won the Oscar was Slumdog Millionaire in 2008. The Imitation Game is the second best selling best picture nominee and will remain so, given it is still going strong at the theatres. Here is an interesting stat in case you love meaningless stats: the second best selling film is the most likely winner of the Academy award in recent years. Of the thirteen winners this century, five came second in financial terms. Those horrendous “honor the man, honor the film” ads might pay off after all.
I don't think I've ever hated a modern Oscar campaign tactic as much as this one. (h/t @raysubers) pic.twitter.com/atOAIEUxAZ
— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) February 3, 2015
I haven’t been catching up with recent releases at the theatres, but have been rewatching all of Iranian auteur Dariush Mehrjui’s films because of my upcoming introduction of his film, Hamoun, at TIFF, which you should attend if you’re in or around Toronto!
What have you been watching?
Reader Comments (19)
Interesting stat:
American Sniper made 282.27 million so far.
The combined sum of its fellow best picture nominees: also 282.27 mil.
That is a fucking terrible Oscar campaign.... fuck you Harvey Weinstein.
It was a very French weekend for my movie-watching, as I finally got to see Two Days, One Night at the indie theatre (great movie/Communist Party recruitment tool, and Marion is astoundingly good), and I watched Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring on Blu-ray.
I think you're under-estimating the appeal of SpongeBob SquarePants.
how dare you said that?!
I cannot wait to see Spongebob, and I'm also an avid follower of the awards race.
Finally got to see Still Alice this week, and I'm pleased that Moore's likely win is fully earned. She's incredible in it.
This weekend had to choose between Under the Skin, Paris Texas and Daisies for our stay-in-out-of-the-cold movie - proof that I'm living the life I was meant to live. (Chose Daisies)
And re: American Sniper. Will that be the weirdest #1 movie of the year or what??
Best film podcast on the internet!
Nothing anywhere else is even half as funny as you guys!
TCM has been playing a lot of Oscar-nominated shorts in between features this month. It's quite interesting to see what was nominated in, say, 1942. The BF was shocked to see the DVR almost complete full of random 12 and 13 minute shorts.
I'm really happy for Paddington. I haven't seen it but I loved the books, and there's a good bunch of people in that one.
Saw the Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts program at the theater.
A solid lineup - nothing really blew me away, but only one film - the Kiarostami-lite Aya - really grated on my nerves.
At home, I saw:
Horns: incoherent third tier YA "horror"
Far from Vietnam: really liked this; a riveting, sad history lesson, extraordinary assembly of archival footage
The Babadook: solid, potent horror; admirably ambitious given its scale; deflates rather dramatically in the final twenty minutes
And the first episode of Better Call Saul, which was really fun, though, based on the ending, I really hope there's a unique story to tell there, and it's not just a series of curtain calls for popular Breaking Bad characters.
I was catching up on dvd releases, and discovered "What we did on our Holiday" the Brit comedy with Rosamund Pike, David Tennant, Billy Connolly, and talented children. This was a hit back in the summer in the UK, and it's very funny. Great scenes between Tennant and Pike as parents trying to survive the car trip to Scotland. Check it out, really good.
Also "A Trip to Italy" with Steve Coogan and Rob Bryden - sequel to their previous film - "The Trip". More dinner scenes, driving, etc, but it was good fun, and leaves one wishing for a nice vacation in Italy.
These movies left me in a good frame of mind to face the week.
Remember when Jeff Bridges was getting his due (and an encore) as one of our finest actors? That took a turn.
The worst thing about that Imitation Game billboard is the missing'U'!"
Saw Cake with one of my friends, who had it on screener. God am I glad Aniston didn't get the Oscar nomination so I didn't feel like I HAD to see it. It's fine, but nothing that hasn't been seen at least a dozen times before, and done much better. Aniston's work is nearly all surface, and a bit uneven at that. It needed approximately 50% more bitchy dead Anna Kendrick.
That ad campaign is nauseating.
CharlieG, I have heard about TCM playing the shorts, but my cable doesn't appear to list them. It only lists the movies so maybe the movies I have set to be recorded will feature a short before them? I hope so. Grr.
Mike in Canada: I saw Still Alice, too, and I agree with you: Juli's performance is not only great, it was a relief to know that it was great.
I thought Still Alice was better than I'd been led to believe, too. I didn't break any ground but it had a strong point of view about how it wanted to tell the story: with her in every scene, with the progression of the disease setting the pace of the narrative. I was intrigued to know they used Olivier Assayas's cinematographer -- I could see some of his clinical distance in the film's p.o.v.
I saw Jupiter Ascending, which I commented upon briefly in the podcast comments.
The only other movie I saw was Leviathan, which FINALLY opened here. I liked it on the whole, though I still hope that Ida beats it in the Oscar race.
I saw " Seventh Son" - Bridges is always good, Moore wasn't campy enough, why do they keep casting the dull Mr Barnes ? In the books the hero is 13 years old which would make more sense with the Harryhausen style monsters.