BOX OFFICE ANALYSIS

According to Box Office Mojo, this weekend’s box office is up 26% over last year, which is great news.

1. Underworld Awakening: $25.4m — No one’s ever accused me of being too highbrow to enjoy vampire/werewolf flicks, especially dumb ones, but this is a franchise I could never get into. All camera moves, hyper-editing, and atmosphere. This is a good opening weekend for the fourth in this franchise and for the return of star Kate Beckinsale, who took the last film off.

2. Red Tails: $19.1m – George Lucas should be very happy. If my twitter feed is any indication, people are enjoying this old-fashioned crowd-pleaser.

3. Contraband: $12.2m – After two weeks, Mark Wahlberg’s smuggling actioner has already pulled in $46 million. This is not high-concept driven, and it’s not even a very good movie (saw it last weekend). Maybe it’s time to add Wahlberg to the short-list of those who can actually open a film these days. Good for him.

4. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: $10.5m – Disaster. People are going to blame the reviews, but the film stars Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, which means it should be critic-proof. This is Hanks’ second flop after “Larry Crowne,” and I think it’s time for Mr. Hanks to start wondering if his indefensible comments about WWII might have come home to roost.

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Over and over and over we keep reading about how Hollywood’s holiday box office was some sort of silver lining in an otherwise dark cloud. But once again, the context-challenged entertainment media only tells us half the story. Here’s a sampling:

Box Office Mojo:

Based on studio estimates, the four-day weekend will end up at over $201 million, or up around 10 percent from the same four-day period last year.

DHD:

Let’s party hearty with the end-of-holiday box office for end-of-year 2011. Or let’s not (and say we did.)… [S]ources tell me this final weekend will definitely be up over last year.

Los Angeles Times:

Most films sold more tickets over the New Year’s holiday than the Christmas holiday, with family films benefiting from the biggest bumps. Overall, the weekend was up 10% compared with the same period in 2010.

Cinema Blend:

Sales were up considerably from last weekend’s Christmas holiday and the new year is off to a solid start.

Except…

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Hollywood is like a child, a spoiled child you can’t help loving but desperately want to see do and be better. Hollywood can be cruel and petulant, small and bigoted, hateful and depraved. But every once in a while you see what it COULD be — the talent, the charm, and the ability to inspire and create joy. So we keep coming back to them in the hope that if and when Hollywood ever grows up, they will be what they could be — what they once were, so many years ago.

Today, our spoiled child is in trouble and with only the best of intentions I’m going to see if I can’t take the sting out of the boo-boo with the best advice I can offer.

1. Hollywood Needs Movie Stars, Not Brands

You can trace most of Hollywood’s problems back to the death of the movie star. At first, the industry was thrilled with this development. No movie star meant no big payday, no ego, and none of the baggage too many stahs carry with them. The industry also found that, at least for a while, they could get away with this. Audiences were still packing theatres to see pre-packaged brands developed from high concepts, comic books, novels, and television shows. Sequels, remakes, and prequels were still sure-fire. Who needs to pay Tom Cruise $30 million to run around with CGI’d dinosaurs when just as many people will pay to see Jeff Goldblum do the same?

This was all well and good until the “brands” ran out. Now Hollywood is down to “The Green Lantern” and board games like “Battleship.”

Movie stars, on the other hand, are the most reliable brands out there. People come to see them and if you have enough of them and if you keep developing them, the inventory is limitless. From the 1920s straight through to right around 1990, if you built it with movie stars, audiences would come. Hollywood didn’t need to rely on “brands” because they built pictures around their stars.

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AP:

A solid summer lineup helped studios catch up to 2010, but ticket sales flattened again in the fall and have remained sluggish right into what was expected to be a terrific holiday season.

The result: projected domestic revenues for the year of $10.15 billion, down 4 percent from 2010’s, according to box-office tracker Hollywood.com. Taking higher ticket prices into account, movie attendance is off even more, with an estimated 1.275 billion tickets sold, a 4.8 percent decline and the smallest movie audience since 1995, when admissions totaled 1.26 billion.

“There were a lot of high-profile movies that just ended up being a little less than were hoped for,” said Chris Aronson, head of distribution for 20th Century Fox, whose sequel “ Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked” has been part of an under-achieving lineup of family films for the holidays. “The fall was pretty dismal. There just weren’t any real breakaway, wide-appeal films.” …

Hollywood is left right where it was 12 months ago, finishing the year quietly and looking ahead to a promising lineup to turn its fortunes around next year.

Even more so than 2011’s schedule once looked, the 2012 film list looks colossal. Among the highlights: the superhero tales “The Dark Knight Rises,” ”The Amazing Spider-Man” and “The Avengers“; the latest in the animated franchises “Ice Age” and “Madagascar,” along with “Brave,” the new adventure from animation master Pixar; Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones’ “Men in Black 3“; Daniel Craig’s new James Bond thriller “Skyfall”; Johnny Depp’s vampire story “Dark Shadows”; Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus,” a cousin to his sci-fi classic “Alien“; and Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” the first in a two-part prequel to his “Lord of the Rings” films.

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DO 2012’s NEW RELEASES PROMISE A BOX OFFICE COMEBACK?

In the New York Times story I wrote about earlier today, there was this quote:

The good news for Hollywood is that the first quarter of 2012 looks much stronger than the same period this year, when studios had little to generate audience excitement.

Warner has two sequels — “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” and “Wrath of the Titans,” while Sony has a prominent remake in “21 Jump Street.” Disney will re-release “Beauty and the Beast” in 3-D, followed by Fox’s 3-D re-release of “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace.” And Lionsgate will weigh in with its highly anticipated “The Hunger Games.”

So two re-releases, a sequel to a flop (“Journey 2″), and another remake of an ’80s television show rank as reasons for Hollywood to be optimistic?

The link in the title looks at the box office slate for the first three months of 2012. Take a look. Anything excite you?

What most struck me about those thirty or so titles was an almost complete lack of movie stars.

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1. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol: $26.5M — The only real bright spot, the only unqualified hit of the season. Cruise’s 4th outing with impossible missions should exceed the take of the last one. You can’t ask for more than that.

2. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows: $17.8M — There’s been some spin claiming Robert Downey Jr’s. sequel rebounded a bit this weekend, but that’s grading on a curve. After ten days in release, the first film was sitting at $138m. Compare that to part two, which has brought in about half that ($76m).

3. Alvin and the Chipminks: Chipwrecked: $13.3M — After ten days “Alvin 2″ was cleaning up with $133m, compared to “Chipwrecked,” which sits at $50m.

4. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: $13.3M — Two observations: First off, who in their right mind would want to see such a downer during the holidays? Second, it appears as though fans of the book were perfectly satisfied with the perfectly satisfying 2009 version.

5. Adventures of Tintin: $9.1M — The number that matters with this one is the $250m already made overseas. American audiences aren’t  familiar with Tintin. However, you would  think a better job would’ve been done to market to the U.S. But after decades of only marketing known brands, I’m not sure the studios have the brainpower to introduce new concepts and characters. Those are muscles no one’s bothered to flex in a long time. For that reason alone, a lot of money was left on the table. We’re talking Steven Spielberg for crying out loud.

6. We Bought a Zoo: $7.8M — Matt Damon is not a star AND he works overtime to alienate 60% of his potential customers.

7.  New Year’s Eve: $3M – Guess we won’t be seeing “Arbor Day.”

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According to the New York Times, even with upwards of 40 blockbusters released in 3D (meaning much higher ticket prices), box office revenues in North America dropped 4.5% this year. In worse news, overall attendance dropped 5.3%, which means that over the last two years attendance has dropped a whopping 11%. When you lose over 10% of your customers in just two years, something is horribly wrong. When you combine that with plummeting DVD sales, you have an existential problem.

Director Roland Emmerich at his London home

The Times blames much of the problem on the economy, but as anemic as it’s been, the economy has improved some since 2008 and 2009, while attendance and revenues have not. In other words, that’s a stupid excuse. But at least it’s a new excuse. After years of blaming Redbox and piracy, you have to give Hollywood’s media friends credit for coming up with a new way to avoid admitting the obvious: People don’t like Hollywood or their product very much.

Movies are a cyclical business and analysts say that 2010 benefited mightily from holdover sales for “Avatar,” which was released late in 2009 and became one of the most popular movies of all time. A decline of hundreds of millions of dollars is not catastrophic when weighed against the size of the industry. Over all, North American ticket revenue for 2011 is projected to be about $10.1 billion, according to Hollywood.com, which compiles box-office data.

That is only a 4.5 percent falloff from 2010. But studio executives are alarmed by the downturn nonetheless, in part because the real picture is worse than the raw revenue numbers suggest.

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The Hollywood Reporter has given 2011 up to the Grinch, despite a strong opening for Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, closing a stretch of weak box office performances for big budget productions.

YouTube

From the article:

Hopes are dimming that Hollywood can completely close the gap in domestic box office revenues by the New Year, even though the long Christmas weekend should best last year…

With 2012 fast approaching, Hollywood is now reisgned to the fact that it probably won’t be able to close the gap in domestic box office revenues, even as international grosses surge. One veteran studio executive believes domestic revenues will come in at $10.1 billion, a 3 percent dip from 2010.

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JAMES GARNER’S DAUGHTER OPENS TRIBUTE SITE TO HER AWESOME FATHER

The Mighty James Garner’s daughter, Gigi Garner (a successful talent manager in her own right), has opened a tribute website to her father. She seems to be updating it fairly regularly with a number of terrific family photos and excerpts from Garners’ new memoir “The Garner Files,” which I loved and reviewed here.

Please check the site out.

Anyone who’s been reading me for any amount of time (or who has seen my Twitter wallpaper), knows of my all-consuming affection for all things James Garner, most especially “The Rockford Files.” You can imagine how much this tweet meant to me.

Tell me how it gets any better than that. You can’t, because it doesn’t.

The only bad news is that if this photo on Ms. Garner’s site displays the actor’s real signature, that means I got robbed on Ebay.

Cue my well-rehearsed of-course-I-got-swindled-again Rockford face.

FINALLY: AN HONEST ASSESSMENT OF HOLLYWOOD’S BOX OFFICE BLUES

With all of Hollywood and most of their sycophant entertainment media blaming box office and DVD woes on everything but bad product, this is the rare break from that absurd narrative:

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By this time next week, six new tentpoles will have opened wide: “Tintin,” “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” “We Bought a Zoo,” “The Darkest Hour,” “War Horse,” and “Mission Impossible 4.”

It seems as though, despite good weather and plenty of titles to choose from, people just don’t feel like going to the movies. That means there will be some casualties next week — more than one, I suspect.

But then again, people did come out in droves for “MI:4.” Why that one and not the others?

1. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows: $40M – The original opened with $62M and went on to gross $209M domestically. No one found it a classic, but the energetic direction combined with the chemistry between stars Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law certainly made for a good time. What kept people away from a highly anticipated sequel? When I think of the marketing campaign, all I remember is Holmes running in slo-mo through a forest while being shot at. Maybe the focus should’ve been on the arrival of Holmes’ arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty.

2. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked: $23.5M — Fox was lucky to get two blockbusters out of what never seemed to be a very appealing franchise.

3. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol: $13M — The “Dark Knight Rises” prologue was screened on only around 10% of the 425 screens that hauled in a remarkable $30k per. So don’t let Tom Cruise haters spin this into something’s it’s not. Cruise is still a star, and better still, the star of a franchise that has yet to disappoint. We’ll learn a lot more next weekend when the fourquel goes into wide release, but the only excitement I’m hearing around any upcoming new release stops here.

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This weekend was supposed to turn all that bad box office news around for Hollywood,  but both saviors that went into wide release yesterday are not only trailing their predecessors (as you’ll see below), they are falling well below expectations. “Entertainment Weekly” predicted “Sherlock 2″ and “Chipwrecked” would open to $54 million and $30 million respectively, which is low compared to some others.  If these numbers hold, the silver bullet Hollywood assumed would solve all their problems suddenly won’t look all that silver.

If these two franchises, these two titles, these two pieces of product can’t put butts in seats — what can?

And how do you blame Redbox and piracy on this one?

DHD:

Sources are starting to send me more numbers for today. Both Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (Warner Bros) as well as Alvin And The Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (Fox) are badly trailing their previous installments. (Sherlock 1/$62.3M vs Sherlock 2/$42.4M and Alvin 2/$48.8M vs Alvin 3/$25.8M.) The Robert Downey Jr-starring and Guy Ritchie-directed Sherlock 2 includes $1.25M from 1,650 midnight shows. It’s early yet but audiences seem to be rejecting sequels and threequels. Of course, the movie studios point out that both the last Sherlock and Alvin opened either on Christmas or after kids were already out of school. Execs are hoping to make up the difference before year’s end. But more pics will open, too, creating clutter. So if this weekend’s low grosses continue, then the domestic box office slump may very well ruin Christmas for Hollywood.

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Hollywood’s a little shell-shocked this morning. Not only was this the worst weekend of the year, it was worse than the post-September 11th Christmas season. The year-to-date news isn’t much better either. With only a few weeks left in 2011, revenues are down a total of 4% over last year. “Sherlock Holmes 2,” “MI:4,” and “Chipmunks 3,” “Tintin,” and “War Horse,”  should help, but they will have to keep up with “True Grit” ($171M), “Little Fockers” ($148), and “Tron Legacy” ($172M).

On paper, this year’s closers might look more formidable, but who knows anymore? No one predicted the bottom falling out of the sequels to “Valentine’s Day” and “Happy Feet.”

Here are the numbers:

1. New Year’s Eve: $13.7M — This is director Garry Marshall’s sequel to his “Valentine’s Day,” which opened in 2010 to a mammoth $56M. The concept seemed fool-proof: place a ton of stars around a beloved holiday and knit them together with a loosely plotted romantic comedy.

There are, however, five very good reasons “New Years Eve” flopped.

1. After his breakup with Demi Moore, women aren’t finding Ashton Kutcher all that adorable anymore, though you have to wonder what they saw in the marginally-talented metrosexual in the first place.

2. The sequel is populated with a whole lot more celebrities than stars.

3. “Valentine’s Day” wasn’t a big hit. Granted, the opening was  spectacular, but so was the subsequent drop off. In the end, it only ended up grossing $110M. Which brings me to…

4. “Valentine’s Day” was awful. Hollywood might have been able to put a dozen famous faces in the trailer to fool enough people into 3600 theatres on opening weekend, but after word got out, it crashed and became an advertisement for why no one should see the sequel.

5. Even if “New Year’s Eve” starred someone people care about like Halle Berry or Robert DeNiro, they also know from their “Valentine’s Day” experience that other than Kutcher, everyone else only shows up for a few scenes.

2. The Sitter: $10M — Jonah Hill is nothing close to a star and what made Hollywood think they could release an R-rated comedy into the middle of the Christmas season? Especially one with a trailer proud of the fact that the comedy revolves around a babysitter stripping young kids of their innocence? “Adventures in Babysitting” and “Uncle Buck” this ain’t.

3. Breaking Dawn Part 1: $7.9M — With a total haul of $260M, there’s no doubt this is a hit. However, with the closing chapter set for release next year, “Breaking Dawn” is not keeping pace with its predecessor. Summit Entertainment might be disappointed, but that’s what you call a luxury problem.

4. The Muppets: $7M — Kermit and company had enough problems without the left-wing entertainment media piling on. More about that here.

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BOX OFFICE ANALYSIS:

The box office slump hit pretty hard over the holiday weekend. While retail sales everywhere else skyrocketed to record numbers, Hollywood took a 12% hit when compared to this time last year. It’s going to be difficult to predict how some of these films ultimately do. Now that we’re in the holiday season, something like “Hugo” that looks like a bust could have surprising legs straight through to Christmas and actually end up doing pretty well.

The upcoming competition doesn’t look overwhelming, especially for films aimed at kids. “Hugo,” “The Muppets,” and  ”Arthur Christmas” have the field pretty much to themselves until December 16 when the third “Alvin and the Chipmunks” opens.

1. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1: $62.3M — Keeping pretty close pace with its predecessor. With a $110M budget and a total take of $221M in just 10 days, the break-even is probably close to $300M, which is what “Eclipse” did domestically. Another $400M poured in from overseas. These movies are money-making machines.

2. The Muppets: $42.2M — Word of mouth almost assures this will have legs through Christmas. Everyone seems to love it.

3. Happy Feet Two: $18.4M — With a total take of $44M over 10 days, this is a genuine flop. Again, I think the politics of the previous entry turned off a lot of parents. People enjoyed “Happy Feet;” I know I did, but the liberal eco-messaging diminished the fun and left a bad taste. Especially off-putting is how that messaging was aimed at children. Hollywood used to teach universal values to our kids. Honesty, bravery, and loyalty were the themes of the day. Now it’s divisive issues like global warming and gay marriage. Hollywood overstepped on this one and 600 people lost their jobs.

4. Arthur Christmas $17M: — This has to be a disappointment. Because it’s the only offering this season with “Christmas” in the title, that might help as the season rolls on, but the overall concept seemed tired to me. How many movies are out there that promise to show us how Santa is able to deliver all those toys in just one night? Hollywood has to remember that home video is a reality. They might not have been born when it was released, but everyone over the age of eight has already seen “The Santa Clause.”

5. Hugo: $15.4M — Scorsese’s 3D entry had a terrific per screen take of $12,000, but that’s a wee bit less than the “Muppets” and far less than “Breaking Dawn” in its second week. There’s talk that the epic will expand closer to Christmas, but by then it will have to compete with Spielberg’s “Tintin.” Reportedly, the film cost well over $100M to produce.

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BOX OFFICE ANALYSIS

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1: $140M —  There might be vampires and werewolves, but the real appeal comes from those old-fashioned romantic notions Hollywood’s all but ignored for decades.

Happy Feet Two: $22M — Why would the first one be such a smash and this one flop? My guess is the political preaching in the first. Parents were either caught off guard or willing to go to that well once, but the thought of a second helping was off-putting. And judging by Kyle Smith’s review, they chose wisely. Hollywood attempting to wedge themselves between a parent’s influence on their child is unforgivable and the worst kind of sucker punch.

Immortals: $12.M – With a total take of just $53M and all the competition swinging into action this holiday weekend, things could look better.

Jack and Jill: $12M — This might be the first Sandler comedy not to reach $100M.

Puss In Boots: $10.7M — $122M gross after four weeks in release is probably not what DreamWorks had hoped for. The holiday weekend might give it a lift.

Tower Heist: $7M — Only $53M after three weeks with that cast is a disaster.  The trailer was awfully appealing to me, which is why I never predict these numbers in advance.

J. Edgar: $5.9M — Dead in the water.

A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas: $2.9M — One of those movies Hollywood makes for themselves that makes a little money but does the more important work of pushing their values out into the popular culture. An awful lot of effort to make a few million dollars.

50 REASONS WHY THE ‘GREEN LANTERN’ MOVIE SUCKED

Because I turned this abysmal piece of crap off after an hour or so, I can only say that numbers 1 through 24 are spot on.

Friday night I was in a Friday night kind of mood for something brainless. That’s my only excuse for picking this up from Redbox. Godawful doesn’t begin to describe it. Martin Campbell, an otherwise terrific action director, must have had the script shoved down his throat and about 200 producers giving him notes.

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Johnny Depp is pretty sure Middle America’s stupid, but I don’t know of anyone in Middle America stupid enough to squander $45 million plus the cost of advertising to adapt an unpublished Hunter S. Thompson novel after “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”  (also a Thompson adaptation) failed to hit $11 million at the box office.

Via Fox Nation:

“The Rum Diary” is currently doing mediocre at the box office, but Depp says the money issue doesn’t matter to him.

“No, God no, no,” the actor explains. “It’s always a crapshoot, and really if you have that in your head while you’re making a movie the process would become something very different. No, I couldn’t give a rat’s arse really, not really.”

Depp has a long-term view of the film, saying, “I believe that this film, regardless of what it makes in, you know, Wichita, Kan., this week — which is probably about $13 — it doesn’t make any difference. I believe that this film will have a shelf life. I think it will stick around and people will watch it and enjoy it.”

[...]

“It’s something that will be more appreciated over here, I think. Because it’s — well, I think it’s an intelligent film — and a lot of times, outside the big cities in the states, they don’t want that,” Depp said.

And with that statement, Johnny Depp proves himself to be an ignorant bigot so bitter towards Middle America he doesn’t even understand how the American box office works.

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Box Office Analysis:

1. Puss In Boots $33M – With a total of take $75.5 after two weeks on a $130M budget, DreamWorks is probably feeling better after what looked like a weak opening. Still, this will have to make somewhere close to $300M to break even, and that’s a long ways off.

2. Tower Heist: $25.1M — If that cast (Eddie Murphy, Ben Stiller, Matthew Broderick, Dave Chappelle, Tea Leoni, and Casey Affleck) can’t open a high-concept comedy/thriller this close to the holidays, no wonder Hollywood is worrying about… everything. This was supposed to be a no-brainer.

3. Harold and Kumar 3D: $13M — Opened below its predecessor, which means that this is likely the last big screen entry into what was never a hugely popular but still profitable franchise.

4. Paranormal Activity 3: $8.5M — A five million dollar budgeted creeper has already made $95 million without a single “bankable” star.

7. Real Steel: $3.4M – Only $79M after 5 weeks.

8. The Rum Diary $3M — Did Hollywood really think all the stoners who get high to their ”Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas” DVDs would turn this $45M film into a hit?

10. Moneyball: $1.9M — Everyone who saw this loves it, the reviews are through the roof, and it’s going to top out at right around $70M. Maybe there really is a disturbance in the box office force.

11. The Three Musketeers: $1.7M — $75M budget plus $18M take in two weeks equals disaster.

In other box office news: Foreign Box Office: ‘Tintin’ Takes No. 1 Spot for Second Straight Weekend to Jump $100 Mil

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BOX OFFICE ANALYSIS

IMDB:

Blame the unseasonably snowy weather in the East. Blame the World Series. Blame Halloween parties. Blame the economy. Box office analysts were doing a little of each to explain the lousy weekend that saw blah openings for three new movies and mostly insipid performances from everything else. The No. 1 film, as expected, turned out to be Paramount/DreamWorks Animation’s Puss in Boots, but its $34-million take fell below most pundits’ predictions of $35-40 million. Twentieth Century Fox’s In Time, starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Siegfried, debuted with $12 million — at the low end of predictions. But FilmDistrict’s The Rum Diary, starring Johnny Depp, tanked with just $5 million — about half what it was expected to earn.

It’s striking that Johnny Depp couldn’t open “Rum Diary” to anything above $5 million.

FOR HOME ENTERTAINMENT RELEASES, A RARE BRIGHT SPOT

LAT:

“Hollywood’s troubled home entertainment business is moving in an unaccustomed direction: Up.

[…]

“In part, the increase reflects a surge in Blu-ray sales, which are expected to reach $1.23 billion for the first three quarters, up from about $1 billion for the same period a year earlier. That puts them on a par with video store rentals, which have been falling, and on-demand revenue, which has grown more slowly.”

CW LEADS WAY INTO AGE OF STREAMING

DHD:

“Within the last couple of weeks, the network was part of two major online distribution deals that take major steps towards resolving both issues. First came the 4-year pact CW’s co-parent companies CBS and Warner Bros. signed with Netflix for streaming previous seasons of the network’s current series. The deal, which analysts estimate could bring CBS and Warner Bros. as much as $1 billion, would help make up for lost syndication revenue because of the serialized nature of the shows. Additionally, the pact doesn’t prevent the studios from pursuing cable syndication deals in the future (not that such deals appear likely.) Then came the Friday’s deal with Hulu, this time made by the CW itself. It will have the episodes of network’s current seasons stream on the Fox-NBC-ABC-owned online hub — right away for subscribers with limited commercials and free for everyone 8 days after the episode’s original airing on the CW with full commercial load.”

Right now, at least with Netflix, it’s extremely difficult to fast-forward through anything, so this would be true if they were to add commercials. If you watch Crackle Streaming, you cannot zip through the commercials. Moreover, if you look at online videos, you are FORCED to suffer through a commercial if it loads prior to the video you want to view.

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QWIKSTER DUMPED, DVD RENTALS TO STAY AT NETFLIX

Netflix’s market value has dropped 60% since these debacles began, which just so happens to be the exact same percentage as their recent price increase (today’s announcement helped some).

This is a weak move on the company’s part, nothing more than a band-aid on a fatal mistake. Not having to deal with Qwikster might make things more convenient for customers, but Netflix has still, in effect, split their subscriptions into two distinct services–streaming and by-mail delivery–and therefore given their customer base yet another reason to stop renting DVDs.

Moreover, all they can do now to retain customer loyalty is to make the streaming service better with a stronger library, which also gives us another reason to cancel the by-mail service.

In just a few dumb moves, Netflix has hastened the end of DVD and the extinction of a large part of their own business.  Look no further for proof of this than the email I received this morning:

We’re constantly improving our streaming selection. We’ve recently added hundreds of movies from Paramount, Sony, Universal, Fox, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, MGM and Miramax. Plus, in the last couple of weeks alone, we’ve added over 3,500 TV episodes from ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, USA, E!, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, ABC Family, Discovery Channel, TLC, SyFy, A&E, History, and PBS.

Thanks again for confirming my decision to drop the by-mail service!

If I were Netflix, I would immediately combine streaming and by-mail again for somewhere around $10.99 and call it the “We’re So Damn Sorry We Could Die Of Embarrassmentz’ package.

BOX OFFICE ANALYSIS

1. Real Steel — $27.3M: This seems about right.

2. Ides of March — $10.4M: This got dropped into 2200 theatres and everything was done to make it not look “political” or “liberal,” which can mean only two things when analyzing the box office. Either George Clooney’s not the movie star All The Right People are telling us he is, or the American people don’t trust Hollywood when it comes to anything political.

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BOX OFFICE ANALYSIS 

1. Dolphin Tale: $14.3M – Family films rule. Shallow nihilism and conformity posing as “edginess” do not. Yet Hollywood keeps right on making them. Yes, someone somewhere is currently squandering millions of dollars on “Margot At the Wedding 2: Narcissism Is a Virtue.” They might not call it that, but you get the idea.

2. Moneyball: $12.5M – More proof the adult drama is not dead, just a certain kind of adult drama — like, say, “Margot At the Wedding 3: I Hate the parents Who Gave Me Everything.”

3. The Lion King: $11M – Never in a million years did I expect this kind of haul and I’m sure the studio would’ve been happy with half this. In fact, they probably chose to go with a re-release mainly as a way to gin up publicity and anticipation for tomorrow’s Blu-ray release.  But this is a fantastic film released late enough so that many of those who enjoyed the experience with their parents can now pass it on to their own children. Disney = magic.

4. 50/50 $8.9M – One of those neither fish nor fowl flicks people probably had a hard time grasping. Is it a comedy? Is it a tragedy? Is it a drama? I think the casting of Seth Rogen really threw people off. He’s only been associated with raunch-fests and junk like “Green Hornet,” so the fit was odd and the whole “cancer” thing certainly would’ve turned off his following to whatever degree he has one.

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1. The Lion King (3D) $22M – Somewhere I read that this was supposed to be a two-weekend re-release, but I can’t imagine the studio will pull it with this kind of cash coming in.  

2. Moneyball $20.6M – Brad Pitt’s star power is receiving a lot of credit for this very respectable opening and I’m not going to argue with that, but the “Moneyball” trailer is one of the best I’ve seen in years. The baseball pic looked enormously appealing and judging from the reviews, delivered as advertised. 

3. Dolphin Tale $20.2M – This would be an impressive opening without having to compete against “The Lion King.” Considering that kind of competition for the family buck, this is a phenomenal start. Appealing family movies will always be the best bang for the buck.

4. Abduction $11.2M – Shirtless “Twilight” star Taylor Lautner’s solo debut as an action star is being described as a box office disappointment, but I’m not so sure. The trailer was pretty cheesy looking and this opening is right up there with other B-level action pics. In other words, what brought in $11.2M was Lautner — not the concept or glowing vampires or anything else. This 19 year-old has an audience.

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