Coming Soon! - The Weekend Warrior

Preview and Projections for the Weekend of July 23, 2004
By Edward Douglas -

Greetings and welcome back to the Weekend Warrior, your weekly guide to the weekend's new movies. Tune in every Tuesday for the latest look at the upcoming weekend, and then check back on Friday for any last minute updates.

WEEKEND PROJECTIONS - final update 7.22.04

July continues to roll along with another sequel and another superhero movie, but this time, they’re not one and the same. Matt Damon reprises his role as undercover agent Jason Bourne, trying to stop the CIA in The Bourne Supremacy, another action-packed espionage thriller that should do as well or better than his 2002 hit. Halle Berry joins a long list of actresses taking on the mantle of Catwoman with a new take on the Batman character. For the third time this year, two movies geared towards a similar male audience will compete against each other, and once again, the sequel to a popular favorite will win out as The Bourne Supremacy smokes Catwoman by a two-to-one victory for the top slot. Smith’s I, Robot should end up somewhere in between the two combatants as it continues to draw business away from both of them. The independent comedy Napoleon Dynamite has its biggest expansion this weekend into just under 400 theatres, although its saturation might keep it from getting into the Top 10. Spider-Man 2 makes its debut in IMAX theatres on Friday, while next weekend's stoner comedy, Harold & Kumar go to White Castle will get sneak previews in almost 1,000 theatres nationwide on Friday night, as well.

TW	LW	Title	Weekend (in millions)	Change	# Of Theaters	Average	Week
1	New	The Bourne Supremacy	$40.0	N/A	3,158	$12,666	1
2	1	I, Robot	$27.0	-48%	3,494	$7,728	2
3	New	Catwoman	$16.0	N/A	3,117	$5,197	1
4	2	Spider-Man 2	$14.0	-44%	3,753	$3,730	4
5	4	A Cinderella Story	$8.0	-42%	2,625	$3,048	2
6	3	Anchorman	$7.5	-45%	2,936	$2,554	3
7	5	Fahrenheit 9/11	$4.4	-39%	1,855	$2,372	5
8	7	The Notebook	$4.2	-26%	2,003	$2,097	5
9	6	King Arthur	$3.0	-58%	2,104	$1,426	3
10	8	Dodgeball	$2.3	-42%	1,500	$1,675	5
			Est. Weekend Total $127.20	Est. Avg. Drop-Off -43%		Est. Average PTA $4,264

THE BOURNE SUPREMACY (Universal Pictures)
Starring: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Brian Cox, Joan Allen, Julia Stiles, Karl Urban, Tomas Arana, Tom Gallop
Directed by: Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday)
Rated PG-13
Tagline: “They should have left him alone”

In The Bourne Identity, sleeper agent/assassin Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) went on the run from his own agency, the CIA, when they tried to take him out of commission. Although he thought his troubles were over, he is forced back into the life when he is framed for a botched CIA operation, so he takes the fight back to them while trying to find out more about his past and the memories that haunt him.

In the season where big budget special effects action movies are king, The Bourne Identity was a bit of an anomaly when it came out in the summer of 2002, bypassing computerized effects and explosions in favor of a taut thriller with realistic hand-to-hand combat and car chases. Based on the bestseller by Robert Ludlum and previously made into a TV movie with Richard Chamberlain, it focused on the espionage and intrigue that the country was getting accustomed to in real life and from popular television shows like “24” and “Alias”. Despite early problems, it overcame what many expected to be a dead-on-arrival weekend against John Woo’s war movie Windtalkers to earn an astounding $27 million its opening weekend on its way to a theatrical gross over $120 million. It went onto have equal success as a video/DVD rental, becoming one of the top rentals of 2003 by earning almost $100 million.

The Bourne Identity’s success may even more surprising due to its star Matt Damon, who went from being a dramatic actor to becoming an unlikely action hero. With a variety of roles under his belt, Damon had a banner year in ’98, playing Will Hunting in Good Will Hunting, an Oscar winning drama he wrote with his buddy Ben Affleck, as well as playing Private Ryan in Steven Spielberg’s equally acclaimed war epic, Saving Private Ryan, and starring in the poker film, Rounders. After starring in Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law, Damon’s career took a bit of a lull with a role in Kevin Smith’s religious comedy Dogma and providing his voice for the animated sci-fi flop Titan A.E. The Legend of Bagger Vance, a drama that paired him with superstar Will Smith, didn’t do much better, failing to attain the business and Oscar buzz expected. (Maybe it didn’t do so well because Damon didn’t play the title role like he did in his other movies.) Things picked up with Steven Soderbergh’s popular remake of Ocean’s 11 with an impressive ensemble cast, a decent box office hit in 2001. Damon also appears in the sequel, Ocean’s 12, which comes out this December. All of these things perfectly set up for Damon to have his first big hit as a leading man since Good Will Hunting the following year. His attempt at comedy in the Farrelly Brothers’ 2003 comedy Stuck on You didn’t pan out, but Damon continues to be successful thanks to his combination of good looks and nice guy image that women love.

Matt Damon:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Stuck on You	12/12/03	3,003		$9.41	$3,134	$33.45
The Bourne Identity	6/14/02	2,638		$27.12	$10,281	$121.38
Ocean's 11	12/7/01	3,075		$38.11	$12,393	$183.13
Legend of Bagger Vance	11/3/00	2,061		$11.52	$5,590	$30.70
The Talented Mr. Ripley	12/25/99	2,307		$12.74	$5,522	$81.29
Rounders	9/11/98	2,176		$8.46	$3,888	$22.88
Saving Private Ryan	7/24/98	2,463		$30.58	$12,416	$216.12
Good Will Hunting	1/9/98	1,787	$8.75	$10.26	$5,741	$138.41

What made the first Bourne movie work so well is that there was a great story and many interesting characters brought to life by talented actors in key roles. For the sequel, Franka Potente, star of the classic German film Run Lola Run, returns as Bourne’s love interest, as do Brian Cox and Julia Stiles as the CIA agents trying to bring Bourne down. They’re joined by Joan Allen, an Oscar nominated actress who got attention for movies like the political thriller, The Contender.

Unlike most sequels that tend to use their bigger budget to make a bigger movie, often failing to capture what made the original so appealing—Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, Bad Boys 2, and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle come to mind—The Bourne Supremacy keeps almost all of the elements from the first movie rather than diverting from the formula. The one key element missing from the sequel is director Doug Liman, who took the brunt of the negative advance publicity on The Bourne Identity despite doing a great job. He bowed out, replaced by Paul Greengrass, who directed the low budget Irish pseudo-documentary Black Sunday and makes this his first big budget movie.

Even before The Bourne Identity, the espionage action-thriller had become a successful vehicle when paired with the right star. This was best seen with Harrison Ford taking on Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. A few years back, Ben Affleck took over the role for The Sum of All Fears coming out mere weeks before The Bourne Identity, and helping to set the groundwork for a resurgence of the genre that got its start the year before that when Brad Pitt and Robert Redford starred in the unlikely Thanksgiving hit, Spy Game. Popular stars like Will Smith and Mel Gibson had already attracted audiences with their espionage thrillers Enemy of the State and Conspiracy Theory, but outside of the James Bond franchise, the first Bourne film is still the strongest movie of the genre.

Espionage Action Thrillers:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
The Sum of All Fears	5/31/02	3,183		$31.18	$9,795	$118.47
Spy Game	11/23/01	2,770	$8.88	$21.69	$7,830	$62.34
Enemy of The State	11/20/98	2,393		$20.04	$8,374	$111.54
Ronin	9/25/98	2,487		$12.70	$5,107	$41.61
Conspiracy Theory	8/8/97	2,806		$19.31	$6,882	$76.12
Patriot Games	6/5/92	2,366		$18.51	$7,823	$82.88

While trying to avoid the pitfalls suffered from last summer’s sequels, The Bourne Supremacy may instead be hurt by the fact that it looks almost exactly the same as the first movie. People going to see the sequel may expect something bigger and better done with the characters, so a low-key approach may ultimately backfire for the movie as people feel that they’re watching the exact same movie. That be as it may, Universal is backing the sequel a bit stronger than the first film including a promotion that they used for last year’s 2 Fast 2 Furious, by including a free ticket to the sequel with the recently released Bourne Identity Special Edition DVD

Considering the number of people who saw and enjoyed the first movie, there’s very little keeping The Bourne Supremacy out of the top spot this weekend, especially with sequels doing better this year than they did last summer. The only things standing in the way of its success are the second week of Will Smith’s I, Robot, and the opening weekend of Halle Berry’s Catwoman, though neither pose much of a threat. With that in mind, The Bourne Supremacy should do significantly better than its predecessor, earning closer to 40 million its opening weekend and over $100 million overall.

CATWOMAN (Warner Brothers Pictures)
Starring: Halle Berry, Sharon Stone, Benjamin Bratt, Lambert Wilson, Alex Borstein, Michael Massee
Directed by: Pitof (Vidocq)
Rated PG-13

Patience Phillips (Halle Berry) is a shy graphic designer for a cosmetics company that discovers a dark secret about the company. When they try to shut her up by killing her, she ends up with the spirit and abilities of a cat, and along with an infatuated police officer (Benjamin Bratt), she uses her ability to get vengeance on the ones who tried to murder her.

In the last three years, comic book superheroes have become the perfect fodder for Hollywood to turn into action movies. While Warner Brothers was the leader in these types of movies during the 70s and 80s with movies based around their Superman and Batman characters, the majority of the comic book movies over the last few years have been based around Marvel Comics’ popular characters like Spider-Man and the Hulk. The latest wave kicked off in 1998 when popular actor Wesley Snipes took on the role of a third string character for Blade, but things really got into gear with Bryan Singer’s 2000 movie based on The X-Men and then completely exploded when 2002’s Spider-Man movie became the highest opening movie of all time—a record still unbroken two years later. This proved that there was a huge audience for superhero movies, opening the floodgates for other comic book characters, both known and not so much, to draw people into theatres.

Having not produced a movie based on one of their DC Comics characters in over seven years, Warner Brothers realized that they needed to catch up. Instead of revisiting one of their big two again, they chose update a popular secondary character from the Batman comics and television shows. Originally created in the early 40’s to give Batman a female villain, Catwoman was unlike the rest of Batman’s rogues’ gallery, since their unique love/hate relationship was built around the inherent sexual tension between them. When Batman was brought to television during the 60s, Catwoman followed close behind with memorable interpretations by Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt that became a permanent part of many guys’ fantasies. Catwoman also appeared regularly on many of the Batman cartoon shows, voiced by actresses like Adrienne Barbeau and Gina Gershon. The character’s last big screen apperance was portrayed by Michelle Pfeiffer for Batman Returns, the 1992 sequel to Tim Burton’s first Batman blockbuster.

Instead of using the catthief that most people know, Warner Brothers has taken the name and created an imaginative new superheroine, who is quite literally a cat woman. Following in the pawprints of Newmar, Kitt and Pfeiffer is actress Halle Berry, easily the hottest actress working in Hollywood and the best thing going for the movie. Ever since her early appearances in movies like Boomerang and B.A.P.S, Berry has established a large fanbase among African-American males due to her looks and sex appeal, something that helped bring audiences into the 2000 adaptation of The X-Men, and her 2001 follow-up Swordfish, with Hugh Jackman and John Travolta. Berry’s big break came from her smallest film, when her powerful and controversial performance in the indie drama Monster’s Ball earned her an Oscar, making her the first black woman to win it. As the secret agent Jinx, Berry brought new life to the James Bond franchise in 2002’s Die Another Day before returning as Storm in X2: X-Men United, a huge hit that grossed over $85 million its opening weekend. Despite poor reviews, Halle pulled her own weight in last year’s horror movie Gothika, which had a decent $19 million opening. Berry has remained in the limelight over the last year due to her domestic problems with future ex-husband Eric Benet, and though many people may empathize with her, there are just as many people that are sick of hearing about her in the news, so they may turn on her soon.

Halle Berry:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Gothika	11/21/03	2,382		$19.29	$8,097	$58.95
X2: X-Men United	5/2/03	3,741		$85.56	$22,871	$214.95
Die Another Day	11/22/02	3,314		$47.07	$14,204	$158.63
Monster's Ball	3/1/02	660	$11.38	$1.80	$2,727	$31.25
Swordfish	6/8/01	2,678		$18.14	$6,776	$69.72
The X-Men	7/14/00	3,025		$54.47	$18,007	$157.30
Bulworth	5/22/98	2,051	$0.23	$8.75	$4,266	$26.53

Berry is a big enough star to carry this movie on her own, although she does have the benefits of having another strong leading actress in Sharon Stone, though many may feel that she’s past her prime. After starring in erotic thrillers like Basic Instinct, Diabolique, and 1994’s Intersection, Stone’s career faltered in the early 2000’s as she was hit with health problems that sidelined her for a number of years. Her return to the screen in last year’s Cold Creek Manor was met with relative disinterest. Berry’s love interest in the movie, Benjamin Bratt, has the distinction of being one of Julia Roberts’ former boyfriends. After starring opposite Sandra Bullock in her holiday hit Miss Congeniality, he’s mainly appeared in bombs like Val Kilmer’s sci-fi flick Red Planet and the Katie Holmes thriller Abandon.

Despite its cast, Catwoman may do well based solely on its genre, since superhero movies have become very popular in the last few years. Catwoman may not be as well as known as some of the big guns, but her television and movie appearances have made her far more popular than other comic book characters that have gotten the big screen treatment like Daredevil and Hellboy. Despite it being based on a lesser known superhero, the star power behind Daredevil, which included Ben Affleck, Colin Farrell and Jennifer Garner, helped the movie based on that third string character to do well enough last year ($45 million opening over President’s Day) to spawn next year’s Elektra spin-off starring Garner.

Unfortunately, Warner Brothers is working against some of the worst advance buzz for a movie since the Bennifer disaster Gigli. The bad vibes began when pictures of the Catwoman costume began showing up. Although comic book fans are not exactly fashion mavens themselves, the reaction to the skin exposing costume was overwhelmingly negative. This was followed by the leak of an unfinished trailer that was so bad that it had many wondering what Warner Brothers was thinking. The official trailer was a little better, but the CGI type effects didn’t look nearly as good as in other superhero movies like Spider-Man. The vibe for the movie is so negative that there have been reports of the trailer being booed when it’s shown before other movies. As bad as the advance buzz is, the reviews probably won’t be much better. (Having seen the movie myself, it's not really that bad, but it's nowhere near as good as some of the better superhero movies.)

With that in mind, Warner Brothers’ confidence in the movie is staggering. After moving it around the release schedule, they decided to open Catwoman against the long-awaited sequel to The Bourne Identity. This isn’t exactly counter-programming since the genre appeals to the same audience that would be interested in the action thriller. This year, there have already been two face-offs between a comic book movie and another action movie. In early April, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, was given a big screen adaptation by director Guillermo Del Toro and Ron Perlman. Despite the relative obscurity of the character, it did decently against the Rock’s remake of Walking Tall. A few weeks later, Marvel’s attempt to revive their dark vigilante The Punisher with Thomas Jane was hurt by Lions Gate’s decision to put the movie against the second part of Quentin Tarantino’s popular Kill Bill saga. Of course, neither of those superhero movies had the star power or sex appeal of Berry to draw people into theatres.

Superhero Movies:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
The Punisher	4/16/04	2,649	$13.83	$5,223	$33.66
Hellboy	4/2/04	3,028	$23.17	$7,653	$59.10
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen	7/11/03	3,002	$23.08	$7,687	$66.46
The Hulk	6/20/03	3,660	$62.13	$16,975	$132.12
Daredevil	2/14/03	3,471	$45.03	$12,974	$102.54
Blade II	3/22/02	2,707	$32.53	$12,017	$81.65
Blade	8/21/98	2,322	$17.07	$7,351	$70.10
Batman Returns	6/19/92	2,644	$47.72	$18,048	$162.83

The question is whether Berry’s starpower will be enough to save this one. Although her sex appeal and her abundant physical aspects--conveniently shown off by the skimpy costume--might bring in her usual urban male fans, they tend to be rather unforgiving towards bad movies. It’s also not wise making a comic book movie that ignores the character’s history and her ties to Batman, something that may immediately lose the comic fans that would usually flock to see the movie. Then again, this weekend is the country's biggest comic book convention in San Diego, so fans there might turn out in droves.

Granted, they’ve tried to make an action movie that may appeal to women with its female star, but action movies with female heroines, at least in the States, have never done that well. There was a short-lived trend a few years back where movies like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Charlie’s Angels did well, but both original movies were so bad that their sequels didn’t do very well. Halle has been featured on a number of daytime talk shows like “Oprah”, promoting the movie with her impressive bullwhip skills, but it may be a little too late.

Despite the draw that Berry brings to her movies and the popularity of the Catwoman character, the people that would normally rush out to see this one opening weekend may be turned off by the lame trailer and the bad word-of-mouth and reviews, leaving this one to those with a morbid curiosity to find out if the movie really is as bad as it looks. This may be enough to bring the movie somewhere between $15 and 17 million its opening weekend, but if those curious learn that the movie really is as bad as people say, the bad word-of-mouth and slew of new releases will kill this one off very quickly.

UNDER THE RADAR

Do you live in a major North American city? If so, there are a number of limited release movies worth checking out. And if you don't live in one of the cities in which these movies open, look for some of them to hit your area sometime in the next few months.

THE BLIND SWORDSMAN: ZATOICHI (Miramax Films)
FESTIVAL EXPRESS (ThinkFilm)
FREE RADICALS (Kino International)
A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD (Warner Independent Pictures)
JU-ON (Lions Gate Films/Vitagraph Films)

Takeshi “Beat” Kitano brings the famous Japanese samurai hero to modern audiences with a stylish reinterpretation of the action hero in The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi. Like a cross between Robin Hood and Daredevil, the unlikely blind masseur, played by Kitano, uses his sword skills to help the people of a small village in this modern remake that opens in New York and Los Angeles this weekend. MY REVIEW

Festival Express is a documentary in the spirit of Woodstock about a series of concerts featuring Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead and The Band that took place in Canada during the summer of 1970, and the chartered train that took them from one stop to the next. Mixing amazing archival footage of the event with present day interviews, Festival Express opens in San Francisco this weekend and in New York and Los Angeles on July 30.

Free Radicals is Austrian director Barbara Albert ‘s answer to P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia, telling the story of a number of related characters who are brought together by the death of a young woman in a car accident. After its debut at the 2003 New York Film Festival, Austria’s submission for the 2003 Foreign Language Oscar opens in New York this weekend.

Colin Farrell and Sissy Spacek star in A Home at the End of the World, adapted by Michael Cunningham (The Hours) from his own novel. Farrell plays an orphaned hippie whose friendship with a sexually confused boy takes him to New York City in the early 80’s, where he ends up in a love triangle with his old friend and an unbalanced older woman (Robin Wright Penn). This rather odd character drama opens in limited release this weekend.

A vengeful spirit haunts a house killing anyone who happens into it in the Japanese cult horror film Ju-On. Fans of The Ring and Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street will enjoy this creepy surreal thriller from director Takashi Shimizu, who also helms the English language remake The Grudge, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, which will be out in time for Halloween. Ju-On opens in New York and Los Angeles this weekend and opens in other cities in the next few months. MY REVIEW

THIS TIME LAST YEAR

It was a weekend full of surprises as the movies that should have done well missed their mark and an underdog took the lead at the box office. In a summer already crowded with too many sequels, this weekend saw two more added to an oversaturated market as Robert Rodriguez returned for the third installment of his Spy Kids series and Angelina Jolie reprised her role as Lara Croft for a sequel to the 2001 hit. Although the second chapter didn’t far so well, Rodriguez took a novel approach to the third installment, Spy-Games 3-D: Game Over, by creating a 3-D movie complete with glasses. The gimmick worked and kids and their parents flocked out to see the movie, allowing it to gross over $33 million opening weekend. The $100 million sequel to the movie based on the popular video game, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life was expected to do as well as its predecessor, which earned over $48 million opening weekend but was a disaster with critics and fans a like. With that in mind, no one went to see the sequel, which had already experienced problems with the loss of a director, and it ended up taking a worse hit than Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, making less than $22 million opening weekend. This put it slightly ahead of the third new movie, Seabiscuit, the big screen adaptation of the bestselling non-fiction book starring Spider-Man’s Tobey Maguire. Opening in less than 2,000 theatres—over 1,000 less than the other two new movies— few thought that a horseracing movie could get people in theatres, but it made over $20 million earning the most money per theatre of the new movies.

It's a very busy weekend next week as M. Night Shyamalan returns with his latest horror film The Village; Denzel Washington stars in the remake of The Manchurian Candidate; The Thunderbirds are go in the big screen adaptation of the Saturday morning television show; while Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle presumably to hilarious results.

Copyright 2004 Edward Douglas