Preview and Projections for the Weekend of June 11, 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 6.10.04

What has normally been a bad weekend at the box office for new movies is compacted by two or three solid blockbusters that continue to run rampant over the box office, most notably Shrek 2 and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. This weekend, they’ll face a sequel (of sorts), a remake (of sorts) and the movie adaptation of a popular comic strip, none of which will have what it takes to make much of an impact on what should remain the Top 2 for a second weekend in a row. Of the new movies, Vin Diesel’s return in The Chronicles of Riddick, the sequel to Pitch Black, might have the best chance of making a mark with a strong pull for science fiction and action fans, while the big screen debut of Jim Davis’ Garfield, voiced by Bill Murray, should attract the youngest of kiddies. On the other hand, Frank Oz’s remake of The Stepford Wives, with the all-star cast of Nicole Kidman, Bette Midler, and Matthew Broderick, stands the best chance at being the month’s first bomb, following in the footsteps of other highly publicized June releases from years past. It won't help that none of the new movies have had very good reviews. (For more on this, see the section directly below.) On the limited release front, the Christian high school comedy, Saved! with Jena Malone and Mandy Moore, expands into over 500 theatres, hoping to capitalize on the buzz from its Memorial Day opening, so we may see it creeping into the Top 10. The weekend sneak previews include Steven Spielberg and Tom Hank's The Terminal on Friday night and the romantic drama The Notebook on Saturday.

TW	LW	Title	Weekend (in millions)	Change	# Of Theaters	Average	Week
1	1	Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban	$55.0	-42%	3,855	$14,267	2
2	2	Shrek 2	$24.0	-36%	3,843	$6,245	4
3	New	The Chronicles of Riddick	$22.5	N/A	2,758	$8,158	1
4	New	Garfield	$15.5	N/A	3,130	$5,010	1
5	3	The Day After Tomorrow	$14.0	-50%	3,210	$4,361	3
6	New	The Stepford Wives	$13.5	N/A	3,057	$4,416	1
7	4	Raising Helen	$3.8	-42%	2,103	$1,807	3
8	5	Troy	$3.1	-48%	2,003	$1,548	5
9	13	Saved!	$2.2	588%	589	$3,735	3
10	6	Mean Girls	$1.5	-52%	944	$1,483	7
			Est. Weekend Total $155.10	Est. Avg. Drop-Off 45%		Est. Average PTA $5,114

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JUNE FLOPS

This weekend, three new movies enter a marketplace in the footsteps of three $70 million plus movies that have been fighting for every theatre and screen. While each of them has a chance to do well, the odds are working against them, and we’re reminded why June is such a sketchy time to release a new movie. This is nothing new as every year the competition for box office dollars gets more fierce. During the month of May, studios release their biggest tentpole movies including many long-awaited sequels, making it harder for smaller June movies to get any attention. A lot of it comes down to who has the marketing dollars and whether or not they’re willing to risk it on something that isn’t a sure thing.

Last year, this weekend, three new movies opened that didn’t do nearly as well as expected (see below) and every year before, there was a movie that was highly promoted and looked like it could do well, but then failed to meet expectations. In 2002, it was Bad Company, an action-comedy starring Chris Rock and Anthony Hopkins and directed by Joel Schumacher. The year before that, it was Evolution, a new sci-fi comedy directed by the man behind Men in Black. The sci-fi animated movie Titan A.E. was a good precursor to how poorly Final Fantasy would do later that summer, and stars of big movies have found themselves with disappointing summer follow-ups like Martin Lawrence’s self-fulfilling What’s the Worst That Could Happen? and Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Can’t Hardly Wait. None of these movies grossed over $40 million.

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Rugrats Go Wild!	6/13/03	3,041	$11.56	$3,800	$39.40
Hollywood Homicide	6/13/03	2,840	$11.11	$3,914	$30.21
Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd	6/13/03	2,609	$10.85	$4,157	$26.21
Bad Company	6/7/02	2,944	$11.01	$3,739	$30.16
Evolution	6/8/01	2,611	$13.41	$5,135	$38.31
What's the Worst That Could Happen?	6/1/01	2,675	$13.05	$4,878	$32.10
Titan A.E.	6/16/00	2,734	$9.38	$3,431	$22.65
Boys and Girls	6/16/00	1,983	$7.01	$3,535	$20.63
Instinct	6/4/99	2,059	$10.39	$5,046	$34.10
Can't Hardly Wait	6/12/98	1,987	$8.03	$4,041	$26.61

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THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK (Universal Pictures)
Starring: Vin Diesel, Thandie Newton, Karl Urban, Colm Feore, Linus Roache, Keith David, Yorick van Wageningen, Alexa Davalos, Judi Dench
Directed by: David Twohy (Pitch Black, Below)
Rated PG-13
Tagline: “All the power in the universe can’t change destiny.”

Richard Riddick (Diesel), the anti-hero from Pitch Black is back. This time, the space fugitive with night vision is being chased across the galaxy by mercenaries out to collect the price on his head. On the planet Helion, he encounters Lord Marshal (Colm Feore) and his invading warriors the Necromongers, and when Riddick is imprisoned, he must escape and put a stop to Marshal’s evil reign.

In 2000, a then unknown actor named Vin Diesel starred in a sci-fi thriller directed by David Twohy that looked at first like a cheap rip-off of Aliens. Pitch Black opened during a busy President’s Day weekend and held its own against three other movies, taking fourth place with a relatively modest $14 million, which wasn’t bad considering that it opened in almost 1,000 theatres fewer than the other new movies that had much bigger stars. Although it only went on to earn less than $40 million theatrically and another $40 million in video rentals, Pitch Black became a clearly defined cult hit among science-fiction fans, who enjoyed the creatures and Vin Diesel’s anti-hero with attitude.

As Vin Diesel’s popularity exploded with back-to-back hits in The Fast and the Furious and xXx, Universal wisely greenlit a sequel to Pitch Black, giving Twohy an astounding $100 million budget to make the ultimate science fiction sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick. So why would a low-budget science-fiction movie like Pitch Black warrant such a huge sequel? Fortunately, Riddick has a number of precedents in the science-fiction realm, since there have been a number of breakout hits that only found an audience after leaving theatres, setting the stage for huge blockbuster sequels. Two of them were directed by James Cameron, the man behind the popular 70’s sci-fi thriller The Terminator, starring Arnold Schwarzeneger. He followed that with a sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien before returning to his own franchise with T2: Judgment Day, a $200 million blockbuster sequel to a movie that made even less than Pitch Black in theatres. Another comparable sequel is Rambo: First Blood Part 2, the follow-up to Sylvester Stallone’s First Blood, which did very well three years later.

Surprise Sequels:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Terminator 2	7/5/91	2,274	$20.54	$31.77	$13,971	$204.84
The Terminator	10/26/84	1,005		$4.02	$4,000	$38.37
Aliens	7/18/86	1,437		$10.05	$6,995	$85.16
Alien	5/25/79	91		$3.53	$38,767	$78.94
Rambo: First Blood Pt 2	5/24/85	2,074		$20.18	$9,728	$150.42
First Blood	10/22/82	901		$6.64	$7,371	$47.21

Riddick is about as much a sequel as Rambo was, featuring the same character in a brand-new space-faring adventure. Most people may not even know that it’s a sequel, instead seeing it as the latest action movie from the popular Vin Diesel, returning him to a genre and realm that his fans can appreciate. When Pitch Black came out in 2000, Diesel had only done a few things, voicing the title character in the animated favorite The Iron Giant and playing a secondary role in Steven Spielberg’s war epic Saving Private Ryan. The week Pitch Black came out, Vin Diesel also starred in the low-key stock exchange drama Boiling Room with Ben Affleck. Neither movie put Diesel on the map, but the following summer, Diesel hit the big time as the star of the breakout racing flick The Fast and the Furious, a movie that surprised many by making over $40 million opening weekend. His 2002 spy vehicle xXx did a similar amount of business, but then both Diesel and director Rob Cohen bowed out of sequels to both movies. After that, Diesel laid low for awhile, as a number of long-shelved films saw the light of day. Neither Knockaround Guys nor A Man Apart did particularly well, forcing many to wonder whether Diesel’s career had peaked, although neither played up to Diesel’s forte. Riddick returns Diesel to what he does best, straight-out action, plus it puts him back into a genre that has a large and devout fanbase of young males that appreciate Diesel’s movies. Riddick is also the first sequel that Diesel has done, adding to its potential.

Vin Diesel:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
A Man Apart	4/4/03	2,459	$11.02	$4,481	$26.50
Knockaround Guys	10/11/02	1,806	$5.02	$2,778	$11.63
xXx	8/9/02	3,374	$44.51	$13,191	$141.20
The Fast and the Furious	6/22/01	2,628	$40.09	$15,255	$144.51
Pitch Black	2/18/00	1,832	$11.58	$6,321	$39.24
Boiler Room	2/18/00	1,335	$5.74	$4,300	$16.84

Vin Diesel is joined by a highly eclectic cast with the award for “least likely to star in a Vin Diesel action flick” going to Academy Award winning actress Dame Judi Dench. The senior actress is best known for smaller scale dramatic fare like Shakespeare in Love, Chocolat and Iris, performances that earned her three Oscar nominations and a win for Shakespeare in Love. She also has some experience in the action genre, having taken on the role of M in the last four James Bond movies. Thandie Newton has a bit more experience in the genre after co-starring with Tom Cruise in the 2000 blockbuster Mission: Impossible 2. The rest of her career has been relatively low-key from her debut in the Oprah approved drama Beloved and Jonathan Demme’s dismal remake The Truth About Charlie a few years back.

David Twohy may be one of the few directors that can pull together this diverse cast, although his career has not exactly been stellar since Pitch Black. A few years ago, he collaborated with Pi director Darren Aronofsky for the undersea horror thriller, Below, which was shuffled around the schedule before getting a rather quiet limited release. You may have trouble finding someone who has seen it.

By comparison, Riddick looks like a solid effects-laden science fiction movie in the vein of The Matrix, using classical sci-fi plot devices such as world-conquering races. The genre has proven to be extremely successful with movies like the Star Trek series. Unlike Pitch Black, this is also getting a more beneficial PG-13 rating, and the summer release should allow it to do better than Pitch Black’s low-key spring opening. The only other movie that may take away from the male target audience is Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow, which has grossed over $125 million. Its weak plot and poor science has not generated enough positive word-of-mouth to do much damage to Riddick’s opening, as it will entice those disappointed and looking for something more straight-forward. Then again, the plot will sound beyond dumb towards all but the devout science-fiction fanatics, so it’s not the type of movie that may find a mass audience beyond them. The other question is whether fans of the original movie will even care at this point.

Universal is putting a lot behind Vin Diesel bringing his followers back into theatres for Riddick. The first series of trailer barely even showed or mentioned Diesel, but in a brilliant bit of marketing, Universal premiered the first ten minutes of the movie on MTV, an effort that has proven worthwhile for a number of other movies this summer. Diesel’s latest is getting a rather moderate release compared to other summer openers, probably because theatres are concerned about taking screens away from the sure things.

The questionable demand for a sequel to Pitch Black won’t matter much, since Riddick looks like a strong movie for the abundant number of sci-fi and action fans. Although it won’t even come close to defeating Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in its second weekend, Riddick should be able to pull in between $23 and 25 million this weekend.

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GARFIELD: THE MOVIE (20^th Century Fox)
Starring: Bill Murray (voice), Breckin Meyer, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Debra Messing, Brad Garrett, Alan Cumming, Nick Cannon, Jimmy Kimmel, David Eigenberg, Mo'nique
Directed by: Peter Hewitt (Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, The Borrowers, Tom and Huck)
Rated PG
Tagline: “It’s all about me-ow!”

America’s favorite cartoon cat Garfield comes to the big screen in this live action family comedy featuring Bill Murray as the voice of the computer-generated feline. When Garfield’s owner Jon (Breckin Meyer) gets a new dog named Odie, Garfield is compelled to find ways to get rid of his competition, but when Odie is kidnapped, Garfield puts aside the rivalry to save him.

In 1978, cartoonist Jim Davis introduced Garfield, the arrogant know-it-all cat with a penchant for lasagna who was quickly taken to the bosom of American comic strip fans. Over the next 25 years, the comic strip would become very popular, being syndicated in thousands of newspapers world wide, to the point of attaining a Guiness world record in 2002 for being the most syndicated comic strip in the world. In the 80’s and 90’s, Garfield’s popularity spawned a marketing and merchandising blitz leading to an animated career in 1982 with a television special ”Here Comes Garfield” followed by a long-running cartoon that ran from 1988 to 1994.

Ten years later, the comic strip may not be nearly as popular as newer strips like Dilbert or Boondoggle, but the character may be one of the most recognized comic strips after maybe “Peanuts” and a few others. The question is whether bringing him to the big screen might somehow revive the popularity of the cartoon, and the producers have decided to follow the trend by mixing live action with a computer animated Garfield.

This trend has proven to be popular with the kids as a lot of computer-generated talking animal movies have provided fodder for surprise hits in the last few years. The biggest of these movies was Scooby-Doo, which used a similar formula to bring a popular cartoon to the big screen, even opening the same weekend two years ago. The first Stuart Little movie, based on a children’s book, also proved to be popular fare in the winter of 1999. Even original premises like Kangaroo Jack and Good Boy! had decent openings despite not featuring known characters. Like those latter two movies, Garfield looks stupid as hell, and it might be a painful experience for most parents to sit through, but it’s in good company. Kangaroo Jack got trashed by critics with only an 8% rating on rottentomatoes, but it made over $65 million. (Update: Garfield isn't doing much better with the critics with its rating also being in the 8% range as of Thursday.) The ultimate talking animal movie, Cats and Dogs, which may have been influenced by the original Garfield cartoon, was a respectable 4^th of July hit in 2001. Not all talking animals and cartoon characters have done well though, as proven by the failure of The Adventures of the Rocky and Bullwinkle and Disney’s The Country Bears, neither which figured out the magic that gets kids and parents into theatres.

CGI Talking Animals:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Good Boy!	10/10/03	3,225		$13.11	$4,064	$37.57
Kangaroo Jack	1/17/03	2,818		$16.58	$5,884	$66.72
The Country Bears	7/26/02	2,553		$5.31	$2,080	$16.99
Scooby-Doo	6/14/02	3,447		$54.16	$15,712	$153.29
Stuart Little 2	7/19/02	3,255		$15.12	$4,644	$64.15
Stuart Little	12/17/99	2,878		$15.02	$5,219	$140.02
Cats and Dogs	7/6/01	3,040	$14.05	$21.71	$7,140	$93.38
The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle	6/30/00	2,458		$6.81	$2,771	$26.00

Garfield’s voice is provided by none other than Bill Murray, former Saturday Night Live veteran whose successful career includes movies like Ghostbusters and Caddyshack. Murray’s involvement has been played down, maybe because his agents are worried that he might lose some of the momentum and credibility he earned as an actor with his Oscar nomination for Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation.

The only other actor with any star power might be Jennifer Love Hewitt. A star of the FOX family drama “Party of Five”, Hewitt made the jump to movies in 1997 with the horror movie, I Know What You Did Last Summer. The sequel and her subsequent movies didn’t do nearly as well. Heartbreakers, her comedy with Sigourney Weaver, did earn closer to $40 million, and her appearance with Jackie Chan in family action-comedy The Tuxedo did slightly better, but her career seems to have hit a road bump which won’t help Garfield.

The eclectic cast also includes Alan Cumming (Nightcrawler in X2), Drumline’s Nick Cannon, television stars Debra Messing (“Will and Grace”) and Brad Garrett (“Everybody Loves Raymond”) and talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. You wouldn’t know any of this from seeing the trailer, commercials or movie poster.

Jennifer Love Hewitt:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
The Tuxedo	9/27/02	3,022	$15.05	$4,980	$50.28
Heartbreakers	3/23/01	2,750	$11.80	$4,291	$40.28
Can't Hardly Wait	6/12/98	1,987	$8.03	$4,041	$26.61
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer	11/13/98	2,443	$16.50	$6,754	$40.00
I Know What You Did Last Summer	10/17/97	2,524	$15.82	$6,268	$72.22

Of the three new movies this weekend, Garfield has as many things working in its favor as it does working against it. It’s the kind of fun movie that younger kids will probably love, especially those that might be young for the scarier parts of Harry Potter. Unfortunately, they’ll have to persuade their parents to take them, and with better movies like Shrek 2 still in theatres, this may be a harder sell. Of course, the character was popular enough in the 90’s, that those same parents will at least be willing to see a movie starring the character.

On the plus side, FOX is really pushing this movie hard in hopes that the kids beg and plead their parents to see it. Besides the cute trailers spoofing Spider-Man and Risky Business, there have been tons of tie-ins, including cups and popcorn bags at some big movie chains. FOX even ran a preview of the movie during the television debut of Cats and Dog, although it may backfire, since the CGI Garfield looks even worse when compared to the critters from that movie. (Update: Then again, 20th Century Fox is confident enough in the cat to give him the widest release of the weekend, something that should surely help it find its young audience.)

Although the predominantly older male audience that goes to movies and movie sites will probably scoff at any chances of this movie’s success, one can’t deny the popularity of the character and the draw that talking animals have on kids. Let’s not forget that even Shrek 2 had a few of them and they got some of the movie’s biggest laughs. These things should save it from a similar fate as The Country Bears, but the negatives working against it might keep Garfield down to a more moderate opening somewhere between $15 and 16 million.

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THE STEPFORD WIVES (Paramount Pictures)
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Roger Bart, Glenn Close, Faith Hill, Bette Midler, Christopher Walken, Mike White, Lisa Masters, Jon Lovitz
Directed by: Frank Oz (The Score, Bowfinger, In & Out, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels)
Rated PG-13
Tagline: “The wives of Stepford have a secret.”

In this remake of the 1975 thriller, Nicole Kidman plays a professional woman who moves to the beautiful suburb of Stepford with her husband (Matthew Broderick), only to discover that all their female neighbors are a bit too perfect, lacking any semblance of personality or character, and completely subservient to the men. Along with the town’s only normal woman, a sarcastic alcoholic played by Bette Midler, they must uncover the secret of Stepford and why all the men are all so deliriously happy.

The remakes keep on rolling as Hollywood continues to stripmine the 70’s and 80’s for ideas in hopes of refreshing them for a new generation. The Stepford Wives is a weird animal. The original movie was a straight drama-thriller based on the novel by Ira Levin about a town gone horribly wrong, and though it wasn’t a commercial success, it struck a chord with women and spawned a number of television movies based on the premise. For the new version, director Frank Oz has assembled an amazing cast and added elements of comedy in hopes of updating the premise for a modern audience, turning it into the unofficial sequel to Lindsay Lohan’s recent comedy Mean Girls.

At the center of this ensemble piece is an Academy Award winning actress who has kept prominently in the public eye over the last few years. Aussie export Nicole Kidman first got noticed in the thriller Dead Calm, but her career really heated up when she started dating and then married superstar actor Tom Cruise. They even starred in a number of movies together, including Far and Away and Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 swan song, Eyes Wide Shut. When they got divorced, some thought that Kidman’s career couldn’t survive, but she proved her detractors wrong by starring in two 2001 surprise hits, Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge, which earned her an Oscar nomination, and the horror film, The Others. The following year, she received her first Academy Award from her role in Stephen Daldry’s The Hours with Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep, and then, she appeared in Anthony Minghella’s Cold Mountain with Renee Zellweger, which was overlooked by the Academy but became her second highest grossing movie after The Others. The Stepford Wives takes Kidman back into the realms of dark comedy she first surveyed in Gus Van Sant’s To Die For—she even plays a television personality in both. It was Kidman’s first film as a true solo star, but nothing in the last few years points to her fans wanting to see her in a comedy, let alone a Hollywood remake. Kidman is definitely popular and has gotten more so in the last few years, and though her fanbase tries to catch most of her movies, even they have their limits as shown by the lack of success of the long-delayed Birthday Girl, The Human Stain and Lars Von Triers’ Dogville. (Note: Kidman is my favorite actress, but I will not be making any effort to see the movie in theatres.)

Nicole Kidman:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Cold Mountain	12/26/03	2,163	$4.51	$14.57	$6,738	$78.38
The Human Stain	10/31/03	160		$1.03	$6,463	$5.38
The Hours	1/17/03	402	$3.78	$4.64	$11,555	$41.60
Birthday Girl	2/1/02	1,000		$2.37	$2,370	$4.92
The Others	8/10/01	1,678		$14.09	$8,397	$96.08
Moulin Rouge	6/1/01	2,279	$0.68	$13.72	$6,019	$57.22
Eyes Wide Shut	7/16/99	2,411		$21.71	$9,005	$55.64
To Die For	10/6/95	928	$0.70	$6.23	$6,713	$21.10

Kidman is joined by a trio of popular women who will be bringing the Stepford Wives to life. This movie is the first prominent movie in four years for Bette Midler, a popular entertainer who has appeared in movies dating back to the 70’s and 80’s. Her successful singing career led to movies like The Thorn and The Rose in the 70’s, but her career hit its stride in the late 80’s with three successive hit comedies and the popular chick flick, Beaches, which provided Midler with her biggest hit single, “Wind Beneath My Wings”. Her movies in the 90’s were sporadic and her last two movies in 2000, Isn’t She Great? And Drowning Mona both bombed, though. This may be a good time and vehicle for her return, but only women over thirty may be drawn to the movie because of her. The same can be said for Glen Close who plays the head of the Stepford Wives. A terrific dramatic actress who starred in many popular 80’s movies like Fatal Attraction and Dangerous Liaisons, she has kept a rather low-key profile in the last few years. They’re joined by the big screen debut of country singer Faith Hill, who may have a bigger fanbase at this point than either of the two actresses.

The “Divine” Miss M:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Drowning Mona	3/3/00	1,981		$5.80	$2,928	$15.43
Isn't She Great?	1/28/00	750		$1.37	$1,827	$2.95
First Wives Club	9/20/96	1,922		$18.91	$9,839	$105.49
Beaches	1/13/89	706	$1.04	$5.16	$7,309	$56.44
Outrageous Fortune	1/30/87	1,081		$6.40	$5,924	$52.86
Ruthless People	6/27/86	1,111		$5.27	$4,747	$71.62
Down and Out in Beverly Hills	1/31/86	806		$5.72	$7,104	$62.13

Keeping in theme with the 80’s revival theme of the movie, Kidman’s husband is played by Matthew Broderick (AKA Mr. Sarah Jessica Parker), a comedic actor best known for playing the title role in the 80’s comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Broderick’s film career has been pretty extensive despite not being considered an upper echelon film star. He provided the voice for Simba in Disney’s The Lion King, appeared in Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla, as well as in comedies like Alexander Payne’s Election and The Cable Guy with Jim Carrey. Most recently, he took a bit of a break from movies to appear on Broadway with Nathan Lane in the hit musical adaptation of Mel Brooks’ The Producers, which he’ll be bringing to the big screen next year. Although Broderick is well liked by a wide audience, he’s by no means a box office draw on his own. Appearing in his fourth movie of 2004, Christopher Walken plays the role of one of the bad guys in The Stepford Wives, following his appearance in the Denzel Washington hit, Man on Fire, and the Ben Stiller-Jack Black flop Envy.

Oz has assembled an impressive and talented cast, but whether he can sell this retro premise to a modern audience is another story, and it won’t help that the movie is written by Paul Rudnick, the man behind last year’s late summer flop Marci X, who previously teamed with Oz on their high concept gay comedy, In & Out.

There have been a number of movies about robotic people like Robin Williams’ Bicentennial Man and Steven Spielberg’s Artificial Intelligence, but The Stepford Wives look a lot like the 1987 comedy-thriller The Witches of Eastwick starring Jack Nicholson, Cher, and Michelle Pfeiffer, which opened the same weekend fourteen years ago. It did decently, but it also came out during the 80’s when movies like that thrived. The appeal of the movie might be similar to The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, another female-empowering comedy with an impressive cast. While that did decently two years ago, it was also based on a popular Oprah-approved book rather than a long-forgotten 70’s thriller.

Other Comparisons:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood	6/7/02	2,507	$16.17	$6,449	$69.59
A.I. Artificial Intelligence	6/29/01	3,242	$29.35	$9,054	$78.56
Bicentennial Man	12/17/99	2,519	$8.23	$3,267	$58.22
The Witches of Eastwick	6/12/87	1,103	$9.45	$8,571	$63.76

Obviously, the movie is being targeted towards women—both young and old—but the premise of the movie seems fairly sexist and misogynist in the way that the comedy has been added to the mix, softening up the message that perfection isn’t everything. Maybe women will still want to see it to root for the free-thinking, independent women, but the very concept of Nicole Kidman playing the protagonist railing against “perfect women” seems so ironic and laughable that few might be able to take the movie or its message very seriously.

And that’s the biggest problem with The Stepford Wives. It doesn’t know if it’s a comedy or a thriller. The original was a straight horror movie, but Frank Oz has infused elements of humor into the original premise, since it lends itself to a number of obvious jokes. This would be fine if it was being marketed as a comedy, but half the commercials make it look like a horror/science-fiction movie. Trying to make a single movie appeal to everyone rarely works, because it tends to leave people disappointed if it’s not what they expected.

There were also rumors buzzing around about troubles on the set, with the cast having to return this past spring so that Oz could do reshoots. This is often indicative that a movie has problems, something that the critics will likely pick up on while analyzing the movie. Older adults that may have been drawn to the movie are the most likely to be influenced by any bad reviews, so it could hurt the movie’s chances at the box office if it doesn’t get their support. (Update: Right now the average at rottentomatoes is at a low 20% rotten, which will not work in the movie's favor.)

Working in the movie’s favor is its strong teaser that debuted last year. Instead of showing scenes from the movie, it featured a commercial for the latest object for the man who has everything, closing on Nicole Kidman in Stepford Wife mode—though Nicole may not even get Stepfordized in the actual movie. Granted, it was a rip-off of the recent teaser for Resident Evil: Apocalypse, which in turn was stolen for I, Robot, but it did get moviegoers interested in the movie, as well as winning a Golden Trailer award for its clever take on the film’s premise. The trailer that followed did not do much to help the movie, giving away far too much of the plot and showing that the movie’s jokes weren’t particularly funny.

In a bizarre twist, The Stepford Wives is getting a wider release than the other two new movies, despite not having the built-in audience of a science fiction or a kids movie based on a popular characters. Every summer has to have a few bombs and this one looks like it has very little to offer anyone, despite the amazing cast, many of whom dragged themselves out of retirement to do it. With that in mind, expect this one to have a disappointing opening earning less than $13 or 14 million.

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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.

BROADWAY: THE GOLDEN AGE (Dada Films)
THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT (Regent Releasing)
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (Paramount/Fox Searchlight)
WORD WARS (Seventh Art Releasing)

Rick McKay’s documentary Broadway: The Golden Age features interviews with hundreds of Broadway legends including Elaine Stritch, Carol Burnett, Angela Lansbury, Tommy Tune and others, talking about the early days of Broadway and how they got there. Opening in New York and Los Angeles this weekend, a follow-up documentary called Broadway: The Next Generation is in the works.

The Hunting of the President is a powerful documentary by Nickolas Perry and Harry Thomason about the attempts by the Republican Party to bring down the Clinton administration over the course of his regime back to his days as governor of Arkansas. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, this documentary based on the New York Times bestseller, opens in New York this weekend and in Little Rock, Arkansas the next.

Napoleon Dynamite is the strangest kid at Preston High School in Idaho, an outcast with a red afro, geeky habits and a crazy family. Life is driving him crazy until he befriends two similar outcasts including a shy Mexican who he tries to get elected as class president. A hit at the last Sundance Film Festival, Napoleon Dynamite was bought by Fox Searchlight, who now teams with MTV Films to release it in major cities this weekend before a wider expansion over the next few weeks. MY REVIEW

The documentary Word Wars follows the path of four very different scrabble players on their way to the national tournament in San Diego. Showing all sides of the game and the people obsessed with it, this documentary that should appeal to fans of Spellbound and Cinemania opens in New York on Friday. MY REVIEW

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THIS TIME LAST YEAR

Despite the release of three prominent new movies, the top 3 movies from the previous weekend barely budged, although the #1 and #2 movies flopped places as Disney’s Finding Nemo retook the top spot for a second time, edging closer to $200 million and displacing the action sequel, 2 Fast 2 Furious. Jim Carrey’s return to comedy, Bruce Almighty, took third place with a healthy $14 million in its fourth weekend, also bringing it closer to $200 million. The three new movies all made within a million of each other over the weekend, although none of them met up to expectations. At the top by a slight margin was the third movie based on the Nickelodeon cartoon, Rugrats Go Wild, teaming the family of tots with the Wild Thornberrys. Its $11.6 million was almost half the opening of the previous installment, Rugrats in Paris, which could point to the death of traditional animation to CGI like Finding Nemo. Next up was Ron Shelton’s buddy cop comedy, Hollywood Homicide with the odd pairing of Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett. With a $75 million budget, an opening around $11 million was not exactly a good sign that the genre was alive and well. Attempting a sequel to a Jim Carrey movie without Jim Carrey proved to be a bad idea, as the prequel Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd made the least of the three new movies, earning less than $11 million opening weekend for sixth place.

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Next week, Tom Hanks takes on customs in The Terminal; Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughan take on the great recess playground sport in Dodgeball: A True Underdogs Story; and Jackie Chan and Steven Coogan take on Jules Verne’s classic Around the World in 80 Days.

Copyright 2004 Edward Douglas