Your Weekly Guide to New Movies for December 16, 2005
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 and reviews.

WEEKEND PROJECTIONS - final update 12.15.05

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KING KONG (Universal Pictures)
Starring: Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Andy Serkis, Thomas Kretschmann, Colin Hanks, Kyle Chandler, Evan Parke, Lobo Chan, Jamie Bell, John Sumner, Craig Hall, Geraldine Brophy, Will Wallace, Joe Folau, Ray Woolf, John Clarke, Joe Folau, Will Wallace, Pip Mushin, Jed Brophy, Jason Whyte
Director: Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Frighteners)
Screenwriter(s): Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens (The Lord of the Rings trilogy)
Genres: Action, Adventure, Remake, Thriller
Rated PG-13
Theatre Count: 3,567
Tagline: “The Eighth Wonder of the World.”
MY REVIEW

Eccentric movie director Carl Denham (Jack Black) decides to film his next movie on the remote Skull Island, and he brings his newfound starlet Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) there, only to be attacked by the natives, dinosaurs, bugs and the island’s gorilla-like deity Kong, who immediately takes a liking to the actress.

In 1933, the fledging motion picture business was rocked with what might have been its first real blockbuster in the Merian Cooper directed King Kong, an amazing story about an ape that terrorized New York City, after being captured from the treacherous Skull Island. It was an amazing achievement in motion capture technology, mixing the animated creature with live actors playing off his actions. When it opened with much fanfare, it earned a whopping $90,000 its opening weekend on its way to almost $1.7 million, which doesn’t sound that impressive, but at the time, that was a lot of money! (For example, you could rent an apartment in New York for a quarter a week in those days…it’s true!) In 1976, a year after the success of Jaws, mega-producer Dino De Laurentiis produced a big budget remake of King Kong starring Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges, and it earned around $80 million worldwide, but was scoffed at by true Kong fans.

Six years earlier, a 9-year-old New Zealand boy named Peter Jackson first watched the original King Kong. It was love at first sight, and the boy would become so obsessed with it that he decided he wanted to make movies himself. After a few years making low budget cult horror films in New Zealand, Jackson was discovered by Hollywood, where he was hired to direct The Frighteners in 1996. Although it bombed at the box office, it became a bit of a cult hit, and Jackson decided to follow it with his own version of King Kong. The project quickly stalled, but Jackson then got the rights to J.R. Tolkiens’ fantasy novels The Lord of the Rings, and began working on getting the funding for a trilogy of films based on it. It was probably a wise move, because by doing those movies first and them grossing just under $3 billion worldwide, Jackson was able to put his name on the map, moving his name up to the ranks with the likes of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron, who could pretty much do what they want without interference from the studio. Thirty-five years after first seeing the movie, Jackson’s dream of making his own version of King Kong has come true, and the success of the Rings trilogy got him an unprecedented $207 million budget from Universal Pictures to make an effects-laden action epic that would still remain true to the original classic.

Peter Jackson
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King	12/19/03	3,703	$51.47	$72.62	$19,614	$377.03
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers	12/20/02	3,622	$40.04	$61.50	$16,980	$340.48
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring	12/21/01	3,359	$27.91	$47.21	$14,055	$313.39
Frighteners	7/19/96	1,669		$5.57	$3,337	$16.55

To play the “beauty” to Kong’s beast, Jackson’s first and only choice was actress Naomi Watts, better known for a different ring, that based on the Japanese horror franchise The Ring, which spawned two movies that grossed over $70 million. Years earlier, Watts became a sudden “it girl” when she appeared in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, which received a lot of acclaim from critics, and in 2003, she was nominated for her first Oscar for her role in Alejandro González Iñárritu drama 21 Grams with Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro. In recent years, she’s been splitting her time between The Ring and smaller indies like The Assassination of Richard Nixon and We Don't Live Here, which has given her a lot of cred among movie fans of all ages.

The career of Kong’s male lead Adrien Brody took a surprising turn for the better, when he won an Oscar for his leading role in Roman Polanski’s holocaust drama The Pianist. Brody would also seem like an overnight sensation, but actually, the 32-year-old New Yorker had been making movies for years, having played a memorable role in Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam in 1999. Last year, he starred with Joaquin Phoenix in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, a movie that earned $100 million despite a critical lashing.

And then there’s the Jack Black factor. It’s impossible to deny that the large and loud comic actor/rock star has more than his own share of fans—possibly more than the other two leads—thanks to his work in movies and from his metal folk group Tenacious D. Although he’s been appearing in movies since Tim Robbins’ 1992 film Bob Roberts, things started to pick up when he stole the movie High Fidelity from under John Cusack, before appearing in other popular comedies like the Farrelly Brothers’ Shallow Hal to the hit family film School of Rock. Not that Black hadn’t already been courting a younger audience, since he also provided his voice for popular animated films like Ice Age and DreamWorks’ Shark Tale. It’s obviously paid off as those kids are growing up and appreciating Black even more, and he’s slowly being carried into the upper echelon of comics along with Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey and Mike Myers. Black plays a more dramatic role in the film as director Carl Denham, but his fans will probably appreciate his comic delivery and want to see the movie just for him.

The Cast - Watts, Black and Brody
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
The Ring Two	3/18/05	3,332		$35.07	$10,524	$75.89
The Ring	10/18/02	1,981		$15.02	$7,580	$128.29
21 Grams	11/21/03	291	$3.31	$1.22	$4,206	$16.43
School of Rock	10/3/03	2,614		$19.62	$7,507	$81.05
Orange County	1/11/02	2,317		$15.05	$6,497	$41.03
Shallow Hal	11/9/01	2,771		$23.28	$8,401	$70.83
High Fidelity	3/31/00	1,183		$6.43	$5,435	$27.04
The Village	7/30/04	3,730		$50.75	$13,605	$113.03

More importantly, King Kong reunites Jackson with one of the actors who helped him break ground on Lord of the Rings, since Andy Serkis helped bring the all-CG character Gollum to amazing life. He provides the same service here, giving the big ape Kong his humanity and emotions, as well as playing a secondary character. There are other reunions in the cast, such as Colin Hanks reuniting with Jack Black after Orange County as Carl Denham’s assistant, and Thomas Kretchmann once again plays opposite Brody after The Pianist with the crew of the S.S. Venture rounded out by Jamie Bell AKA Billy Elliot.

But the cast probably doesn’t really matter, because it’s all about King Kong, and let’s face it, we’re talking about an iconic character along the lines of Superman and Batman here, with over seventy years of history. You can probably say “King Kong” to anyone anywhere in the world, and they’ll know what you’re talking about. The same thing can probably be said for Peter Jackson at this point, and for the most part, he’s using the same team as The Lord of the Rings, writing the script with Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens, and then having 1933 New York City and the creatures of Skull Island created in the computers by Richard Taylor and Weta FX. The only major person not back from Lord of the Rings is Oscar winning composer Howard Shore, who has been replaced by James Newton Howard.

The anticipation for Jackson’s version of Kong is enormous, close to that of Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, another big budget CG remake, and it follows in a long line of highly anticipated remakes like Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla in 1998 and Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes three years later. A few months after Godzilla stiffed, a remake of the Kong imitator Mighty Joe Young opened over Christmas weekend, targeting a family audience, but not doing very much business. Unfortunately, these types of films rarely deliver on the anticipation—just look at Michael Bay’s three-hour Pearl Harbor or Ang Lee’s The Hulk, both which did decent their opening weekends, but then quickly lost ground as bad word-of-mouth spread. Then there’s the case of James Cameron’s Titanic, which had equal anticipation and skepticism, and after a 28 million opening weekend eight years ago, it went on to become the highest grossing film of all time, grossing $600 million in the United States alone. So far, reviews of King Kong are very favorable, which can only help in the long run.

Because King Kong is essentially a monster movie, its audience may be more limited to teen and older males--many guys making it their #1 must-see film of the season--and though it has a romance angle, women and younger girls might not be so interested in what looks like an action movie. Parents will probably be wary of bringing younger kids, compared to something like The Chronicles of Narnia. The hype for Kong culminating at a packed standing room only panel at the Comic-Con International in San Diego in July, where the stars showed up and Jackson sent a preliminary version of the film’s central T-Rex battle. Of course, it was preaching to the converted, but there’s enough buzz on the internet to drive people to see the movie as soon as they can.

To determine how Kong might do its opening, we need to look not only at the success of The Lord of the Rings movies, but also the success of other highly anticipated big budget epics. Just this past summer, there was a doozy in the Steven Spielberg remake of War of the Worlds, starring Tom Cruise, which made just over $100 million in five days. One can expect King Kong to do almost as much business, although the longer running time and the lack of a school holiday might make it a tougher battle. The presence of The Chronicles of Narnia, a huge hit for Disney last weekend, earning over $65 million, might affect Kong, since many theatres may be forced to keep Narnia to meet demand. King Kong is also slightly over 3 hours long, which means most theatres will only be able to show it four times per day on each room, which might limit the amount of money it can bring in. Although The Return of the King was about 15 minutes longer, it also had nothing on the scale of Narnia to compete with. Without the sequel factor of Lord of the Rings and the built-in fanbase of students and church groups that flocked to Narnia, Jackson’s remake might have a bit of trouble breaking the December opening record.

The weekend before Christmas tends to be slower because many people are either working to get ahead before the holidays or out shopping for gifts. It shouldn’t have that much of an impact, although it’s a definite trend which affected the opening weekend of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings and others. Still, demand to see the movie is so high that the recent New York premiere had to be held on 37 screens in two separate theatres in order to hold the 8,000 people that wanted to see it, and there have been dozens of packed preview screenings in the last couple weeks showing positive amounts of interest, although they could also cut down on the number of people paying to see it. With older audiences and women likely to see King Kong over the holidays, it should still have a comfortable run at the top for three or even four weeks.

Related Comparisons
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
War of the Worlds	6/29/05	3,908	$35.68	$64.88	$16,602	$234.27
The Hulk	6/20/03	3,660		$62.13	$16,975	$132.12
Planet of the Apes	7/27/01	3,500		$68.53	$19,581	$180.01
Pearl Harbor	5/25/01	3,214		$59.08	$18,382	$198.54
Mighty Joe Young	12/25/98	2,502		$10.60	$4,237	$50.63
Godzilla	5/22/98	3,310	$18.53	$44.74	$13,517	$136.31
Titanic	12/19/97	2,674		$28.64	$10,711	$600.79
Congo	6/9/95	2,649		$24.64	$9,302	$80.96
Gorillas in the Mist	9/23/88	1,081		$4.04	$3,740	$24.73

Why I Should See It: It’s King Kong as done by Peter Jackson! Doh.
Why Not: Because it’s three hours long with almost an hour with no creatures and no Kong, which is the main reason to see the movie.

Bottom Line: With so much anticipation teamed with critical acclaim, it would seem like King Kong is only the second or third must-see movies of the year, and it should do well opening weekend, even if it's mainly among teen and olderguys. While it would normally be expected to set box office records, the combination of Wednesday opening with the proximity to the holidays and the three-hour running time might limit its actual weekend chances, but it should be able to pick up the slack over the holidays to get into the Top 3 top films of the year.

Projection: $39 to 43 million in its first two days, followed by another $66 to 69 million over the weekend ($108 to 110 million five-day) and a total in the range of $280 million. (Update: Having just made $9.8 million in its opening day, it's doubtful that King Kong can pick up the slack over the weekend, and it's probably going to make closer to $85 million in its first five days.)

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THE FAMILY STONE (20^th Century Fox)
Starring: Sarah Jessica Parker, Diane Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Dermot Mulroney, Luke Wilson, Craig T. Nelson, Claire Danes, Tyrone Giordano, Elizabeth Reaser, Paul Schneider, Brian J. White
Director/Screenwriter: Thomas Bezucha (Big Eden)
Genres: Comedy, Family, Romance, Holiday
Rated PG-13
Theatre Count: 2,465
Tagline: “Feel the Love.”
MY REVIEW

Everett Stone (Dermot Mulroney) brings his girlfriend Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) home to meet his family, who aren’t too receptive about this uptight woman he’s brought home, with his younger sister Amy (Rachel McAdams) being downright nasty and his mother (Diane Keaton) not approving of his interest in asking her to marry him. One thing leads to another to create a Christmas that the Stone family will not soon forget.

Thomas Bezucha must have thought he struck the pot of gold when the script for his second film, The Family Stone, was picked up by 20^th Century Fox. A lot of the deal probably has to do with producer Michael London, who was coming off a huge hit with the movie Sideways for the Fox Searchlight subsidiary. Having Fox and London behind the movie was probably pivotal in Bezucha getting such an amazing all-star cast for his first major motion picture.

What do you do after starring in one of the hottest shows on cable television for six years? Why, return to movies, of course, and that’s exactly what Sarah Jessica Parker has done with her first movie in almost four years. If you’re like me, you’ll still remember Parker from the ‘80s television show “Square Pegs” but apparently, she’s better known now for the HBO comedy “Sex and the City.” In the time between, she’s starred in a bunch of movies including Steve Martin’s L.A. Story, Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, and her great role in the Nicholas Cage romantic comedy Honeymoon in Vegas. The common thread between them is that they’re all quirky alternative comedies, and while Meredith is a lot more uptight than Parker’s normal characters, the humor should appeal to her fans from “Sex and the City.” (Oddly, Parker’s husband Matthew Broderick also has a movie this weekend, because The Producers movie musical will open in limited release.)

The Family Stone marks the third time Parker’s appeared in a movie with acting legend Diane Keaton after the 2001 bomb Town and Country and the 1996 hit The First Wives’ Club. As the matriarch of the family Stone, Keaton is already getting the same kind of Oscar buzz that she got for her last movie Something's Gotta Give with Jack Nicholson. Then again, when one of your earliest films is Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, you know that you have a good career ahead of you, and Keaton has made the most of it, winning an Oscar for her role in former hubby Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, and continually earning respect from critics and peers alike. She also has experience in the family comedy genre, having starred with Steve Martin in both Father of the Bride movies. Although Keaton’s role in the movie is being played down, the buzz for her as a frontrunner in the supporting actress Oscar race will certainly help The Family Stone down the line.

Sarah Jessica Parker, Diane Keaton and Rachel McAdams
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Town and Country	4/27/01	2,222		$3.03	$1,363	$6.71
First Wives Club	9/20/96	1,922		$18.91	$9,839	$105.49
Honeymoon in Vegas	8/28/92	1,637		$7.32	$4,472	$35.22
Something's Gotta Give	12/12/03	2,677		$16.06	$6,001	$111.88
Hanging Up	2/18/00	2,618		$13.57	$5,183	$36.04
Father of the Bride 2	12/8/95	1,949		$11.13	$5,711	$76.59
Father of the Bride	12/20/91	1,561		$7.03	$4,504	$89.10
Red Eye	8/19/05	3,079		$16.17	$5,251	$57.87
Wedding Crashers	7/15//05	2,925		$33.90	$11,590	$209.11
The Notebook	6/25/04	2,303		$13.46	$5,847	$79.67
Mean Girls	4/30/04	2,839		$24.43	$8,606	$86.05

The two women are joined by Rachel McAdams, who has become a bit of an “it girl” in the last two years, beginning with the Lindsay Lohan comedy Mean Girls, which started a run of hit movies including romantic drama The Notebook a few months later. This past summer, McAdams appeared in two more big movies, the R-rated comedy hit Wedding Crashers and Wes Craven’s thriller Red Eye. The fourth actress in the film’s romantic equation is Claire Danes, who plays Sarah Jessica Parker’s sister, and has a major role in the story. Her last movie Shopgirl teamed her with Steve Martin and Jason Schwartzman, and it got her a lot of attention, but not nearly as much as her 2003 blockbuster Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. For the most part, Danes has been playing major roles in smaller indie films in the years since she was first introduced on “My So-Called Life.”

The male lead is Dermot Mulroney, who has also been doing the romantic comedy thing with this year’s The Wedding Date and Must Love Dogs, and his pothead brother Ben is played by Luke Wilson, who has bulked up a bit for the role. Wilson has his share of comedies with a romantic angle from Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tennenbaums to Alex and Emma, which teamed him with Kate Hudson. He also starred in the popular comedy Old School with Vince Vaughn and Will Ferrell, both of whom have gone onto bigger careers since then. The rest of the supporting cast includes Craig T. Nelson, best known from the television sitcom “Coach”, although he also provided the voice for Mr. Incredible in last year’s Pixar hit The Incredibles.

The Family Stone is a great Christmas-themed movie, and it probably would have done better opening over Thanksgiving, but so far, Fox hasn’t really done much to let people know it’s out there. It’s the type of movie that could benefit from early sneak previews to build word-of-mouth, but oddly, Fox’s commercials play up Sarah Jessica Parker and almost ignore Diane Keaton, who is just as likely to bring in this movie’s target older female audience. Still, there’s going to be an audience looking for an alternative to King Kong, and this looks like it could offer a few more laughs and tears, a bit like Fox’s last “chick flick” In Her Shoes did in October. Expect a smaller opening and decent word-of-mouth and legs, as people discover it.

Related Comparisons
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Must Love Dogs	7/29/05	2,505		$12.85	$5,132	$43.89
The Wedding Date	2/4/05	1,695		$11.13	$6,566	$31.59
About Schmidt	12/13/02	816	$3.49	$8.53	$10,457	$65.00
Alex and Emma	6/20/03	2,310		$6.11	$2,645	$14.21
Old School	2/21/03	2,689		$17.45	$6,491	$75.16
The Royal Tenenbaums	1/4/02	751	$12.19	$8.51	$11,344	$52.35
Sideways	10/22/04	4		$0.21	$51,761	$66.19
Meet the Parents	10/6/00	2,614		$28.62	$10,949	$166.23
Home for the Holidays	11/3/95	1,000		$4.01	$4,010	$17.47

Why I Should See It: This holiday-themed family comedy’s strongest asset is its cast, which should offer plenty of laughs and tears looking for something a bit more down-to-earth than King Kong.
Why Not: Some of the humor is kinda slapsticky and let’s face it…theatres aren’t going to give it many screen, when so many more people are going to want to see Peter Jackson’s ape this weekend.

Bottom Line: The Family Stone is an indie family comedy being released by a major studio, and while it has the kind of elements that could appeal to a wide group of audiences, it’s mostly going to play to older women over 30, not the type who might rush out to go to the movies this weekend. It probably won’t find that audience opening weekend, but its Christmas theme should certainly help it over the holidays thanks to strong word-of-mouth from those who see it.

Projection: $9 to 11 million opening weekend on its way to $45 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.

First, it was a movie, then it was a musical, and now it’s a movie musical, as THE PRODUCERS (Universal Pictures), this week’s WARRIOR’S PICK, is brought to the big screen by stage director Susan Stroman. Written by Mel Brooks based on his own 1968 film, the musical follows the plot by Broadway producer Max Bialystock (Nathan Lane) and accountant Leo Bloom (Matthew Broderick) to try to make the biggest flop in Broadway history, “Springtime for Hitler”, with the presumption that they can make more from a flop than a hit. Will Ferrell and Uma Thurman take over key roles from the original Broadway cast, as it opens in single theatres in New York, L.A. and other select cities. MY REVIEW

Tommy Lee Jones stars in his directorial debut THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA (Sony Pictures Classics) as crusty ranch foreman Pete Perkins, whose Mexican friend is accidentally killed and then buried by a border patrol officer (Barry Pepper), who Pete then forces to bring his friend’s body across the desert for a proper burial in Mexico. Like many other recent films, it will get an Oscar consideration run in New York and L.A. for a week before getting its official release on February 3. MY REVIEW (Coming Soon!)

HOODWINKED (The Weinstein Co.) from brothers Cory and Todd Edwards takes the well-known fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood, and gives it a modern “Rashomon” like twist. The first animated film from the Weinstein Company, which features the voices of Anne Hathaway, Glenn Close and others, will get a one-week L.A. release to be eligible for Oscars before its wide release on January 13.

Opening at the ImaginAsian in New York is ELECTRIC SHADOWS (First Run Features) from first-time director Ziao Jiang, about a chance encounter between a delivery man and a disturbed woman that turns into a life-long friendship due to the love of cinema which they share. Opening at New York’s Film Forum is THE GRACE LEE PROJECT (LeeLee Films), a documentary by director Grace Lee about the experience of being an Asian woman in America by covering the stories of several women also named Grace Lee.

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THIS TIME LAST YEAR

The week before Christmas saw one movie based on a children’s book that hoped to replicate the success of Harry Potter, and two movies that failed to get much interest. The popular dark fantasy series Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events about a group of orphans tormented by their uncle, Count Olav (Jim Carrey), underperformed expectations, earning just $30 million over the weekend, far less than Carrey’s last film Bruce Almighty despite the addition of Meryl Streep. Over the course of the holidays, it would make $100 million but like last year’s Cat in the Hat, it would be considered a disappointment. Also, Adam Sandler and Téa Leoni starred in James L. Brooks’ latest comedy Spanglish, trying to recreate the Oscar magic of his last movie As Good As It Gets, but it was panned critically and ended up making less than $9 million opening weekend. Dennis Quaid headlined the remake of The Flight of the Phoenix, directed by John (Behind Enemy Lines) Moore, but it really didn’t get very much of an audience, earning just over $5 million in 2,600 theatres, which was only enough to get it into 8^th place.

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Next week, Christmas weekend is here with six new movies in wide release and a bunch of movies expanding nationwide. It kicks off on Wednesday with two comedies: Cheaper by the Dozen 2, starring Steve Martin and Eugene Levy, and a remake of Fun with Dick and Jane, starring Jim Carrey and Téa Leoni. On Friday, Johnny Knoxville stars in the Special Olympics comedy (yes, you read that right), The Ringer, joined by the expansion of Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha. On Christmas Day, we get the Rob Reiner directed Rumor Has It, with Jennifer Aniston and Kevin Costner, and the Aussie horror of Wolf Creek. Frankly, if that isn’t enough movies for you, then you write the damn column!

Copyright 2005 Edward Douglas

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