How appropriate: Your Labor Day holiday is on track to be owned by The Help, a movie about domestic workers. The female-driven, '60s-set lit adaptation has been dominating the charts for three weekends in a row, plowing through the end-of-summer competition left and right, and you know what? Not even sharks and astronauts and spies can slow down the Help train. The pic's on track for The Blind Side-esque awards buzz and an estimated $121M cume by the end of the four-day weekend. Is it crazy to imagine franchise potential here? Drop your The Help 2 sequel pitches below on your way to those Labor Day BBQs!
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When they work, found footage films are testaments to the power of a limited perspective. Features like The Blair Witch Project, REC and Cloverfield get juice out of the fact that we're not able to see or know more than the characters on screen. They use a gloss of the intentionally clumsy -- jittery camerawork, lower quality footage, mundane dialogue -- to allow a story to invade from an unexpected angle. They require cleverness in concept and, more importantly, in construction, particularly when the found footage flick in question is of the horror genre, as so many of them are; there's no easier way to lose your audience than to make them wonder why, when such frightening things are allegedly happening, your characters are still bothering to roll tape. On the plus side, they're a way to hide your monster (or witch, or demon, or alien) from view for longer than is usually allowed a more standard film -- and the monster we imagine is usually much scarier than the one we finally see on screen.
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As you fire up the grill and wax philosophical about the meaning of Labor Day this long holiday weekend (i.e. it means no work on Monday!), take a moment to think about the underdogs struggling to do battle at the box office. Killer sharks, astronauts, even the mighty Helen Mirren -- none of this week's new releases may have the power to unseat the chick-lit segregation drama The Help, which could well sweep all comers under the rug with another #1 weekend showing. Bet you never envisioned the summer blockbuster season would end this way, did ya?
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When the Weinstein Co. first announced their Apollo 18 project last year, they sent out a press release stating that Russian producer Timur Bekmambetov had discovered actual Apollo 18 footage that would be incorporated in their "documentary." Just three hours later, the studio retracted the release with a new one that curiously did not mention the footage. But then they released a trailer for Apollo 18 that opened by claiming "the following is the recovered footage from Apollo 18." Confusing much? On the eve of the film's release, NASA is finally coming forward to talk about Apollo 18.
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Looks like The Weinstein Co. has discovered a new release date for the Timur Bekmambetov-produced "found footage" moon landing pic Apollo 18. (In the immortal words of Bob Weinstein, "Found, baby!") The bad news is that the mystery project, originally slated to open next month, is moving aaaaall the way from April 22 to Jan. 6, 2012. Yeesh. A last-minute nine month delay doesn't bode terribly well for any film, but then again, so little is known about Apollo 18 just yet that maybe it doesn't matter much. At least this gives the Weinsteins plenty of time to add ReleaseQuest™: Apollo 18 to their slate of upcoming video game adaptations. [Deadline]
