Preview and Projections for the Weekend of July 8, 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 7.7.05

The kickoff weekend to the second half of the year is becoming legendary for daring face-offs between movies that are trying to grab anyone who has already seen the massive effects spectaculars released on the 4^th fof July. In 2003, it was Pirates of the Caribbean vs. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; last year, it was Anchorman vs. Jerry Bruckheimer’s King Arthur (In This Weekend Last Year, you can see how that turned out). This year, Marvel and Fox Studios bring comic fans the long-awaited big screen version of Marvel’s premiere superteam, Fantastic Four, starring Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis (“The Shield”) and Julian McMahon (“Nick/Tuck”), and directed by Barbershop’s Tim Story. Hoping that the early negative backlash to the trailer will have older moviegoers looking for something different, Touchstone Pictures chose to challenge it with a remake of the Japanese suspense thriller Dark Water, starring Jennifer Connelly. Neither movie looks like it will redefine its genre, but while Fantastic Four may not match the success of X-Men five years ago, it should do substantially better than the psychological horror film. Both films will have enough problems taking on the second weekend of the Spielberg-Cruise megahit War of the Worlds, which will try to stay on top with word-of-mouth and repeat business.

DARK WATER (Touchstone Pictures)
Starring: Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Tim Roth, Dougray Scott, Pete Postlethwaite, Ariel Gade, Camryn Manheim, Dougray Scott
Directed by: Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries, Central Station, Behind the Sun)
Genres: Horror, Suspense, Thriller, Remake
Rated PG-13
Theatre Count: 2,657
Tagline: “Some mysteries were never meant to be solved.”
Mini-Review: Someone must have forgotten to tell Walter Salles that he was making a horror movie, because except for the horrors of NY apartment living and the nightmares of raising a child alone, you'll be waiting a long time for any true scares...and waiting...and waiting. aJohn C. Reilly and Tim Roth do a lot with nothing parts, but s great as the movie looks, ditto Connelly, this ends up being rehash of other movies we've already seen this year. They also made the mistake of keeping the same bad ending as the original. Rating: 6 out of 10

Amidst a messy divorce, a single mother (Jennifer Connelly) and her young daughter move into a new apartment complex with her young daughter, only to be plagued by water problems as a leak in their ceiling turns out to be something far more sinister and haunting.

Dark Water is the third American remake of a Japanese thriller—fourth if you count The Ring 2 although the only thing the sequel had in common with the original Japanese sequel was its director—and it looks like it’s going to try to squeeze the last drop out of the horror remake trend that has gotten quite out of control this year. With the not quite as catchy title of Honogurai Mizu no Soko Kara, the original movie was Hideo Nakata’s follow-up to Ringu (the just as catchy Japanese name for The Ring). Because it was based on a story by “The Ring” writer Koji Suzuki, there are many aspects in common from the main character being a single mother, to the connection between ghosts and water, but it’s still a very different movie. It’s not like a water leak plays as deadly a threat as the famed videotape. Still, Touchstone Pictures is hoping that those similarities are enough for Dark Water to appeal to those who saw The Ring, and in a summer where originality is key, those similarities may end up hurting the movie as jaded audiences may just think it’s another Ring rip-off.

That said, the movie showcases the return of Jennifer Connelly, a talented actress who hasn’t been seen on screen since 2003’s House of Sand and Fog, for which she was overlooked for a second Oscar nomination in favor of her co-star Ben Kingsley. Connelly has not been the most prolific actresses in Hollywood, but she has a long history of leading roles in genre films going back to Dario Argento’s Phenomena and the fantasy classic Labyrinth, to the early comic book film The Rocketeer and my personal favorite Dark City. In 2000, Connelly started getting more critical attention for her role in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream and in the biodrama Pollock, which was followed by an Oscar-winning supporting role in Ron Howard’s biopic A Beautiful Mind in 2001. Connelly only did two movies after that, playing Betty Ross in The Hulk and then House of Sand And Fog, spending the last few years raising a family with her new husband (and Beautiful Mind co-star) Paul Bettany. Despite her Oscar, it’s questionable whether Connelly is enough of a draw, especially after a year out of the limelight, to bring people into theatres.

Dark Water is also significant in that it’s the first English language film from Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles, who paved the way for Brazilian cinema in the States with his 1998 film Central Station. After directing a few other low-key films, he had the vision to Fernando Meirelles’ City of God and direct the Che Guevara road trip film The Motorcycle Diaries. Both received Oscar nominations for their screenplay, while the latter won an Oscar for best song--much to the surprise of Beyonce Knowles, who performed all the other songs at the ceremony. Despite his brilliance, Salles’ name is not very well known outside of Brazil and his American fans, so he’s not being used to sell the film. As a matter of fact, Salles has all but washed his hands of the project after numerous rumors of him having problems with the studio and being unhappy with how the film turned out.

Cast and Director
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
House of Sand and Fog	12/19/03	438	$0.09	$1.72	$3,928	$13.00
The Hulk	6/20/03	3,660		$62.13	$16,975	$132.12
A Beautiful Mind	1/4/02	1,853	$21.21	$16.57	$8,940	$170.71
Criminal	9/10/04	77		$0.28	$3,678	$0.91
Chicago	2/7/03	1,841		$10.79	$5,859	$170.68
Magnolia	1/7/00	1,034	$0.92	$5.69	$5,503	$22.45
The Motorcycle Diaries	9/24/04	167	$1.78	$1.51	$9,042	$16.76

The film’s only other known actor is John C. Reilly, who cut his teeth on the films of Paul Thomas Anderson like Boogie Nights and Magnolia, before scoring a role in the movie musical Chicago, for which he got his first Oscar nomination. He next starred in the George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh produced Criminal, a remake of the Argentine crime film 9 Queens, but it didn’t make much money in theatres. If this is anything like the original movie, his role as a slimy real estate agent will be minimal.

There’s already a strong legacy for summertime ghost movies doing well, starting back in 199 with a modern remake of The Haunting. A few weeks later, M. Night Shyamalan made a name for himself with The Sixth Sense, a huge buzz film, which went on to earn almost $300 million. The next year’s offering was the Harrison Ford-Michelle Pfeiffer thriller What Lies Beneath, which used a similar watery theme, and the following year, Nicole Kidman followed the musical Moulin Rouge, with an even bigger hit with the thriller The Others. By then, every studio was trying to create the “next Sixth Sense”, which quickly tapped out the genre until Hollywood starting looking to Japan for inspiration. The first and still the best of the Asian imports, The Ring, starring Nicole’s pal Naomi Watts, was a sleeper hit in the fall of 2002, and two years later, a remake of the Japanese cult thriller The Grudge, starring Sara Michelle Gellar, set a new record for a movie with a female lead, making $39 million. This past March, the sequel The Ring 2, directed by Hideo Nakata, doubled the original movie’s opening weekend business, then ended up grossing $50 million less in total. It’s likely that the summer thrillers of 1999 to 2001 were filling a strong interest in ghosts and scares that had been absent for some time. This year started with a slew of eerie thrillers, from White Noise to Hide and Seek to Boogeyman, and the diminishing returns became quite evident when the remake of House of Wax kicked off the summer with a poor showing.

Still, it’s assumed that the success and popularities of movies like The Ring, The Grudge and the stronger movies is enough for Dark Water to cash in on the trend. Originally, the movie was scheduled to come out in early August like The Sixth Sense and The Others, but in a classic case of studio hubris, Touchstone Pictures decided that the picture was strong enough to take on the long-awaited superhero movie Fantastic Four, which had been getting some negative backlash from an early teaser.

Dark Water’s creepy trailer and commercials could entice horror fans this weekend, although one has to wonder if mainstream horror fans might find anything particularly scary about a water leak. It’s more likely that critics will get behind the movie because of Salles and Connelly, and that it will find more of an older audience, including women, but it likely will be too slow for the teens who usually thrive on the genre. . Still, the movie is only opening in around 2500 theatres rather than the uber-release that has become the norm, showing a lack of confidence among exhibitors.

Ghosts
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
House of Wax	5/6/05	3,111	$12.08	$3,882	$31.57
Boogeyman	2/4/05	3,052	$19.02	$6,232	$46.36
The Grudge	10/22/04	3,245	$39.13	$12,058	$110.18
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
The Others	8/10/01	1,678	$14.09	$8,397	$96.08
What Lies Beneath	7/21/00	2,813	$29.70	$10,558	$155.37
The Sixth Sense	8/6/99	2,161	$26.68	$12,346	$293.50
The Haunting	7/23/99	2,808	$33.44	$11,909	$91.19

Why I Should See It: The pairing of an Oscar winning actress and a talented director like Salles should be of interest to those hoping for a better thriller than Boogeyman
Why Not: Besides the fact that these remakes have gotten out of hand, this looks too much like The Ring. And are we really supposed to be scared of water now?

The Bottom Line: It’s certainly nice to see Jennifer Connelly back, and this type of ghost thriller has a strong history of doing well at the box office. That said, this being the summer of remakes, audiences are getting sick of spending their money on movies they’ve already seen, and the fact this looks like movies like The Ring and The Sixth Sense may do more harm than good.

Projection: $13 to 14 million opening weekend on its way to around $35 million total.

FANTASTIC FOUR (20th Century Fox)
Starring: Michael Chiklis, Ioan Gruffudd, Chris Evans, Jessica Alba, Julian McMahon, Maria Menounos, Kerry Washington, Hamish Linklater, Laurie Holden
Directed by: Tim Story (Barbershop, Taxi)
Genres: Superhero, Action, Adventure, Science Fiction
Rated PG-13
Theatre Count: 3,602
Tagline: “Prepare for the fantastic.”
Mini-Review: Maybe I'm too old or too much of a fan of the original comic books, so you'll excuse me if I don't drool over the latest attempt to "fix" another Marvel property by putting it through the same MTV-WB sieve as "classics" like Daredevil. Sure, they get a few things right like the Thing-Torch rivalry, and you have to love a movie that gets Alba to disrobe, but bad writing, poor casting and even worse acting just kills any chance of it capturing the magic that is the FF. And the special effects won't be winning any awards, either. This was so disappointing that it left me hoping that in the next zombie movie, Jack Kirby will return to get his revenge on Avi Arad.
Rating: 4 (of course) out of 10

During a failed experiment in space, Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd), Sue and Johnny Storm (Jessica Alba and Chris Evans), Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) and Dr. Victor Von Doom are bombarded by cosmic rays, changing their molecular systems and giving them superpowers. Four of them become the superhero team, the Fantastic Four, while Doom…well, let’s just say that he’s not so nice.

It’s been over forty years since Stan Lee and Jack Kirby hailed the Marvel Age of Comics with the debut of the Fantastic Four, and the company’s flagship title is finally getting the proper big screen treatment. Not that this isn’t the first attempt at bringing the FF to the big screen, as B-movie mogul Roger Corman produced a movie with the characters just over ten years ago. It was so bad that it was never released, although bootleg tapes of the disaster can still be found at comic conventions.

After their success with two X-Men movies and Daredevil, Marvel has reteamed with Fox to give moviegoing audiences a taste of the family superteam, although it might find itself facing a group of jaded comic fans who have been skeptical of the project ever since the director was announced. Not to say that there’s anything wrong with Tim Story as a director, but his previous films, the hit urban comedy Barbershop and the commercial disaster Taxi, are not exactly the types of movies that gain confidence among comic fans. Then again, the latter movie helped get Story the gig on the movie.

The first thing Story did right was hiring Jessica Alba to play Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman. Of the ensemble cast, Alba has the most star power and has been growing a real fanbase of horny drooling comic book fanboys thanks to her FOX show “Dark Angel”, and playing a stripper in Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City earlier this year didn’t hurt. She should be the biggest draw for most guys, although she also had a surprise hit with the dance movie Honey, which brought a number of younger female fans.

Those same young women may see the movie to drool over the good-looking Chris Evans playing Sue’s brother Johnny AKA the Human Torch. The Massachusetts native starred in Not Another Teen Movie and The Perfect Score before having a semi-hit with last September’s thriller Cellular. That film’s success may have been more due to the premise than Evans’ presence, although his quips and one-liners are being heavily featured in the trailers and commercials.

Michael Chiklis and Julian McMahon both star in their own hit television shows on the FX cable channel, Chiklis playing Detective Vic Mackie on “The Shield” and McMahon in the controversial “Nip/Tuck.” Neither has had very much movie experience before playing the key roles of Ben Grimm, the Thing, and Dr. Victor Von Doom. On the other hand, Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd (pronounced Yo-an Griffith) starred in Disney’s King Arthur, which opened poorly this weekend last year, but is best known in the United Kingdom for playing Lt. Horatio Hornblower on the British television series. (Gruffudd has also been hotly rumored to take on the mantle of James Bond, as well.) Kerry Washington fleshes out the cast as Ben Grimm’s blind girlfriend Alicia, for which she may have gotten some tips from Jamie Foxx, when she played Ray Charles’ wife in Ray.

Director and Cast
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Sin City	4/1/05	3,230		$29.12	$9,016	$73.59
Honey	12/5/03	1,942		$12.86	$6,620	$30.00
King Arthur	7/9/04	3,086	$8.43	$15.19	$4,924	$51.80
Cellular	9/10/04	2,749		$10.10	$3,674	$32.00
The Perfect Score	1/30/04	2,208		$4.87	$2,207	$10.39
Taxi	10/8/04	3,001	$0.62	$12.03	$4,009	$36.61
Barbershop	9/13/02	1,605		$20.63	$12,852	$75.07

20^th Century Fox are hoping that Fantastic Four will do as well as X-Men, which kicked off the new wave of movies based on Marvel characters in July 2000. It’s especially important after their Daredevil spin-off Elektra bombed earlier this year. Although X-Men was slightly overshadowed by the success of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, Fox’s take on Daredevil, starring Affleck, attracted some of that audience in 2003, despite not being received that well by comic book fans. At least, the Fantastic Four are better known outside of the world of comic book fans thanks to their three or four Saturday morning cartoons over the course of the ‘70s through the ‘90s. As Marvel’s flagship title, it has had a rich publishing history, being one of the few titles published monthly for forty years, but unlike X-Men, Marvel is supporting the movie by expanding the team into three monthly titles and various spin-offs in hopes of building up the FF’s fanbase.

Unfortunately, the movie is opening with a good amount of dissent and early criticism from its primary target audience, because many are worried that it will be another Hollywood abomination like The Hulk. Some of the concerns are simply due to Story’s questionable experience, but most of the vocal complaints are due to the trailers and commercials which play up the jokes. Few have been very impressed with the look of Michael Chiklis wearing a rather cheesy looking Thing suit. It’s all too reminiscent of the complaints about how bad the CGI title character looked in the early commercials for The Hulk, although that survived early negativity to gross $60 million opening weekend before losing audiences to bad word-of-mouth.

Fantastic Four is opening in market that is far more jaded and cynical. Moviegoers are being a lot more reticent about seeing movies that aren’t new or original, something that hit Warner’s Batman Begins, which earned less than $50 million opening weekend despite almost universal critical acclaim except for this guy. (Hi, Devin!) (It won’t help matters if people figure out that the movie was cowritten by Michael France, writer of arguably two of Marvel’s worst recent films, The Punisher and The Hulk.) While the movie is meant to be one of Fox’s big summer movies, it was originally meant to open over 4^th of July weekend until Paramount decided to put the Spielberg War of the Worlds into that weekend, forcing the FF to come out the next weekend.

One advantage Fantastic Four has over the other big summer movies like Revenge of the Sith, War of the Worlds and Batman Begins, is that it’s a lot lighter in tone. That should help it appeal to the younger kid and teens who enjoyed the concept of a superhero family from Pixar Studio’s The Incredibles. Then again, the success of The Incredibles may hurt Fantastic Four, since the characters have similar powers and it looked so much better than Fantastic Four. (There have even been rumors that Story and Fox went back to the drawing board to rework the effects after seeing The Incredibles.)

Fox certainly has stepped up the marketing and promotions for the movie with commercial tie-ins for various products, tons of toys, as well as a trailer attached to the biggest movie of the year, Star Wars: Episode III, something that certainly helped the awareness of Mr. and Mrs. Smith last month. Still, commercializing popular characters rarely has much (if any) of a positive impact on whether anyone goes to see a movie, especially if they’re given reasons to be wary of it.

Comic Book Movies
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Elektra	1/14/05	3,203		$14.79	$4,618	$24.41
The Punisher	4/16/04	2,649		$13.83	$5,223	$33.68
The Hulk	6/20/03	3,660		$62.13	$16,975	$132.12
Daredevil	2/14/03	3,471		$40.31	$11,613	$102.54
X2: X-Men United	5/2/03	3,741		$85.56	$22,871	$214.95
X-Men	7/14/00	3,025		$54.47	$18,007	$157.30
Spider-Man 2	7/2/04	4,152	$64.26	$88.52	$21,232	$371.17
Spider-Man	5/3/02	3,615		$114.84	$31,769	$405.69
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen	7/11/03	3,002		$23.08	$7,687	$66.46
The Incredibles	11/5/04	3,933		$70.47	$17,917	$261.44

Why I Should See It: The Fantastic Four really are one of the greatest super teams ever created, and their big screen debut is pretty exciting.
Why Not: If it’s even remotely as bad as everyone thinks it might be, it’s going to be Clobbering Time!!

Bottom Line: Coming into the weekend with some negative skepticism from fans of the comics, Fantastic Four should still do decently, at least opening weekend, because moviegoers will go see it for the action and effects. It may have a hard time taking on the second weekend of Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, but it should come out victorious with around $40 million, not exactly Spider-Man numbers. Ultimately, the movie may prove that not all comic book characters work when turned into movies. (Update: The reviews for the FF are terrible, and though that might not have that much effect opening weekend, expect it to kill its chance at legs.)

Projection: $38 to 41 million on its way to around $100 million.

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 WARRIOR’S PICKS this week are the sports documentary MURDERBALL (THINKFilm) and Sebastien Cordero’s CRONICAS (Palm Pictures). Murderball looks at the competitive sport of Wheelchair Rugby, a violent version of the British sport played by quadriplegics in armored wheelchairs. The documentary follows Team USA’s conflict with its main rival Team Canada, now coached by USA’s former star player. It will have a nationwide rollout after its release in New York and Los Angeles this weekend. MY REVIEW Cronicas is John Leguizamo's first Spanish-language film, in which he plays an Ecuadorian journalist in search of a serial killer. Produced by Guillermo Del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron, it also opens in New York and Los Angeles. MY REVIEW

The third film opening in New York and L.A.is THE BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY (Sony Pictures Classics), a drama about Binh (Damien Nguyen), the illegitimate Vietnamese son of a U.S. Army veteran, on his long and hard journey to America to try to find his father, played by Nick Nolte. The stirring drama by Norwegian filmmaker Hans Petter Moland also stars Bai Ling. MY REVIEW

Legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman’s last film, SARABAND (Sony Pictures Classics) is about the reunion of two lovers after thirty years. It played at last year’s New York Film Festival and opens in New York and Los Angeles. STEVE AND SKY (Lifesize Entertainment) is a Belgian romantic comedy by filmmaker Felix van Groeningen about the stormy relationship between an ex-convict and a prostitute. It opens at New York’s Quad Cinema.

Copyright 2005 Edward Douglas