Bossy Babies & Ghostly Shells at the Box Office
Sunday, April 2, 2017 at 8:07PM What did you see this weekend?
I caught the three top new titles and we'll share feelings about them over the next few days along with reactions to tonight's forthcoming Feud and Big Little Lies episodes. So much to talk about. It's going to be a big week at The Film Experience, so stay tuned and return often.
TOP WIDE
01 The Boss Baby $49 new
02 Beauty & The Beast $47.5 (cum. $395.4) Review
03 Ghost in the Shell $19 new
04 Power Rangers $14.5 (cum. $65)
05 Kong Skull Island $8.8 (cum. $147.8) Review
TOP LIMITED
01 The Zookeeper's Wife $3.3 new 541 screens
02 T2 Trainspotting $400K (cum. $1.1) 140 screens
03 The Devotion of Suspect X $330K new 43 screens
04 The Last Word $212K (cum. $1.4) 289 screens
05 Kedi $165K (cum. $2) 105 screens Review
06 Personal Shopper $159K (cum. $791K) 150 screens Review
That's a good start for The Zookeeper's Wife which risked a nearly-wide opening despite not being "bankable" in the current ways (i.e. not being an animated comedy or franchise-oriented or effects driven).
A lot of people online have been gleeful about Ghost in the Shell's lukewarm start (given the controversies over whitewashing Asian stories) but we're rarely gleeful about failure considering Hollywood often learns the wrong lessons from it. We would love casting to be more racially appropriate -- we've been shouting about giving Asian actors more roles forever here at TFE -- but we would also really love ambitious provocative sci-fi pictures and female-driven genre pictures to do well and knowing Hollywood they'll probably blame the failure on "too female" and "not enough action" rather than the more optimistic takeaway that the internet is pushing, i.e. "people want Asian leads in Asian stories"
Reader Comments (22)
B&B was worse than I expected. The CGI characters and the contemporary humor were huge misfires for me. I do think the love story is improved and more believable with the backstories added, and I liked the additional songs, especially the Beast's. Still, I found myself cringing and counting the minutes. Nothing was improved upon, and some of the more iconic numbers were duds. Mangling "Be Our Guest" that badly should be a crime.
I honestly don't think the whitewashing is what got GHOST IN THE SHELL its disappointing opening. At least not in the way people are discussing it. I definitely think the casting never allowed the film to gain a proper narrative. Anytime anybody discussed it it was about the casting. It was - and pardon the extremely gauche metaphor - like Hillary Clinton's emails. Other narratives were there for the taking (the original films status as a classic film, an influencer of The Matrix, etc etc as well as ScarJo's continued status as a bankable star and all that stuff) but media wasn't interested. It meant audiences were probably turned off more because they thought there mustn't be much there rather than turned off because an Asian actor wasn't cast. If that makes sense.
Having said that, the marketing was also bad and March/April have been surprisingly big with Beauty and the Beast (women), Logan (action), Power Rangers (mid-'90s nostalgia) and Get Out (zeitgeist).
Hopefully for Chastain, her movie can leg it to a half-decent haul like they got with THE WOMAN IN GOLD a couple of years back.
Beauty and the Beast - I enjoyed this more than I thought I would, largely because Emma Watson, Dan Stevens and Luke Evans were so winning and pleasurable to watch.
T2 Trainspotting - very violent and pointless. I left after 30 minutes.
Hopefully, fans of Scarlett Johansson and Tilda Swinton would learn a lesson, and stop trying to defend them for everything they do.
I'm having a Twin Peaks experience.
Finally finishing it after trying years ago. And whoa! I've been depriving myself. Everything in the first part of the show (season 1 + the first 8-9 episodes of season 2), concerning the Laura Palmer mystery, is just incredible. In fact, I'm confident that the episode where the killer is revealed is the greatest episode of television I've ever seen. The show is so bizarre, terrifying, and wonderful; I am baffled it was on ABC.
And then it goes downhill almost immediately and becomes so dumb. I'm not finished yet, and thankfully it's starting to pick up again. I'm told the last few are great, the last one in particular being one of the best. So I'm holding up!
First week all year I didn't go to the cinema.
Roger - I've been doing the same thing (I'm just a few episodes past the episode you're talking about) and I'm constantly amazed that it was aired on network tv and people dug it. America's a crazy place.
I watched Joan Crawford go all gangsta gal in her late WB period in 'The Damned Don't Cry!' and 'This Woman is Dangerous.' The first is a great mashup of every WB JC movie; the second is a mishmash strictly for Joan-nuts. Here's my take on them!
http://ricksrealreel.blogspot.com/2017/04/gangsta-gal-joan-crawford-is-damned-and.html
I saw " Power Rangers" which was enjoyable thanks to its attractive young cast- unfortunately once they put on their ranger drag they become less interesting and more generic- the climax looked like a deleted scene from those endless transformer movie- do we really need ANOTHER sequel to that toy franchise?
I never thought I would say something like this: "Scarlett Johansson saves the movie from being a total misfire!", but she does indeed!
To me she was always a fine actress, but she wasn't the kind of actress who saves a movie from being bad. "Ghost in the Shell" is no masterpiece, but I didn't mind to spend money on the movie. Her performance and the visuals were good. Shame it failed to capture the original movie's aura...! (bad bad screenplay btw)
I watched 20th Century Women and Silence. Enjoyed both tremendously. I would say this was my favorite Annette Bening performance, and Andrew Garfield's hair is a masterpiece.
Also, happy birthday to "the real" Marsha Mason, who turns 75 today.
Whitewashing sucks, and movies are such big projects it means everyone involved is partially responsible for it. Emma Stone, Tilda Swinton, Scarlet Johansson -- they are part of the problem. 2 of the 3 refuse to apologize, and all three of them have done nothing to improve Asian representation. That's white privilege for you.
Yay for The Zookeepers Wife and all of the women involved with that film :)
I watched the doco 'Tower'. It was good.
Rewatching Season 2 of The Vampire Diaries, which was indeed great TV.
I'm one of those who is sadistically cackling about GitS's underwhelming Box Office turnout. As a Chinese person, I am sick to death of Hollywood starlets who have their pick of their roles (ScarJo, Emma Stone) stealing roles from my east Asian sisters, who struggle with visibility in Hollywood enough as it is.
Glad GitS has been hit where it hurts.
To have two of these (Iron Fist, by refusing to update dated source material, and now GitS, with ACTUAL white washing) to bomb either critically or commercially back to back in the space of a month? It'd be VERY hard for Hollywood to take the wrong lesson.
Happy for Chastain. We were actually moved to a larger theatre to accomodate the crowd. The movie was good, too, although there could have been more scenes of her cuddling with animals!
Saw The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened - a very interesting doc for musical theater/Sondheim fans, but I also love stories (like 20th Century Women) that track people through their lives so you see what happens to them and how their choices and external circumstances shape their journey. It's also fascinating to see so many talented people make so many mistakes on a project. As a doc, the focus felt a little unbalanced and padded at times but overall it was very entertaining.
Also saw Lifeboat. An interesting entry in Hitchcock's canon. Not fantastic, not terrible. Just when you think it's predictable it ends up surprising you, but not in any major "Plot Twist" kind of way. It's also a fine showcase for Tallulah Bankhead.
And saw Zootopia, which is as great as everyone says it is. Really smart, charming, funny and fun.
Also binged all of season 1 of Chewing Gum. Such a crazy, absurd, hilarious show. Michaela Coel definitely has a unique voice and perspective that I want to see more of.
I'm not saying Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell was necessarily the right decision, but does anyone really think it would have done substantially better with, say, Rinko Kikuchi in the lead role? The simple fact is that live-action blockbusters with $100 million+ budgets are becoming a risky proposition unless you're an established brand (like Marvel/DC) or franchise (like Star Wars or Fast and the Furious). The film didn't flop because of whitewashing, it flopped because it wasn't very good, had poor marketing and had a stupidly high budget. As someone pointed out, Ex Machina takes many of the ideas of Ghost in the Shell, does them well, and only cost $15 million!
I think Glenn Dunks is right. The bad word surrounding Ghost in the Shell put off a lot of potential audience members rather than the whitewashing per se.
And Scarlett should still be perceived as a bankable action star. Look at the box-office success of Lucy from only three years back. What's more, it was an original concept without any ready-made fanbase. So I hope Hollywood looks at Ghost in the Shell's underwhelming opening weekend and attributes it to the whitewashing controversy rather than the presence of a female lead.
I rewatched Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and it might be my favorite spy movie ever. I think it is so underrated. Gary Oldman should have won the Oscar but no complaints either about Jean Dujardin as I loved The Artist as well.
Charlie: Would it have topped? Probably not. But it would have gotten more, probably a "fair, but not spectacular, for it's budget" opening of $35-40 million.
If Rinko was in this role it at least would've gotten her more visibility.