The overall box office weekend was nothing to brag about, with titles falling in the top 10 having the second worst weekend of the year. The overall top 10 only took in just over $65.36 million of which the top two titles, Resident Evil: Retribution (3-D) and Finding Nemo (3-D) accounted for $38.6 million, meaning the bottom 8 only accounted for about $26.76 million - ouch. Though not in the top ten, but with far fewer theaters compared to their studio brethren, the real story goes to The Master, which set a per-screen average record of over $145K in its roll out. And Arbitrage placed in the top 12 with a $10,506 average in just under 200 theaters.
more »
Fittingly, Richard Gere's new Wall Street thriller Arbitrage had a screening this week hosted by The Wall Street Journal, Brioni, and high-end jeweler Piaget.
But the Peggy Siegal Company fete was hardly a frivolous bacchanal. Gere and his fellow stars Susan Sarandon and Brit Marling wondered out-loud why more investment bankers weren't in jail, and writer/director Nicholas Jarecki noted his goal was to turn a "paper crime into a blood crime".
more »
Billionaire Robert Miller (Richard Gere) is a cheat. He cheats on his wife (Susan Sarandon) with his mistress, and on his mistress (Laetitia Casta) with his job. And for his job as CEO of one of those mysteriously mighty hedge funds that control the world in Arbitrage, he'll cheat everybody: the IRS, his daughter and business partner (Brit Marling), the buddy who loaned him $412 million, and the fellow mogul Miller wants to acquire his company so he can, of course, spend time with his family, even though the idea confuses them. “I'm just trying to imagine what we would do?” laughs Marling.
more »
Richard Gere gets the golden line in this trailer for Sundance 2012's drama-thriller Arbitrage, the feature directorial debut from Nicholas Jarecki (The Outsider). "World events all revolve around five things, M-O-N-E-Y," he says, perhaps taking a cue from Wall Street's own philosophy courtesy of Gordon Gekko (though he preferred the more direct g-r-e-e-d).
more »
Sundance '11 darling Brit Marling is now a year and change removed from the stunning festival debut that made her one to watch thanks to two films she co-wrote, produced, and starred in: The moody sci-fi drama Another Earth, released last summer, and the mesmerizing Sound of My Voice. The latter film finally hits theaters this week, giving audiences a chance to see a different side of Marling: Earthy, enigmatic, dangerously charismatic, and -- as the leader of a cult amassing members in a basement in the Valley -- possibly from the future.
more »
"'It’s my least favorite thing. [...] People ask me about that movie, but I’ve forgotten it. That was a silly romantic comedy. [Arbitrage] is a much more serious movie that has some real cause and effect.' Incredibly, the grumpy star also claims his Pretty Woman character Edward Lewis helped contribute to the global financial crisis, as he glorified greedy and selfish Wall Street types. 'It made those guys seem dashing, which was so wrong,' Richard explains. 'Thankfully, today, we are all more skeptical of those guys.'" Except for hookers! Some things never change. [Woman's Day via Big Hollywood]
Park City did indeed turn out to be a robust marketplace this year, with buyers snapping up over two dozen features and docs out of Sundance 2012. Ranging from genre pleasers to indie charmers to potential future Oscar picks and beyond – and veering from critical fest duds to overwhelming crowd favorites – the class of Sundance ’12 is an intriguingly mixed-but-mostly-promising bag of films that will be dotting the cinematic landscape in the year or so to come. Here’s an updated comprehensive look at what sold and which films you should be looking forward to.
more »
Our Sundance bidding-war preview may have foreseen only part of the fervor around the John Hawkes/Helen Hunt drama The Surrogate, but how's this for compensation: As predicted, the Richard Gere/Susan Sarandon Wall Street thriller Arbitrage went to Roadside Attractions (with its partners at Lionsgate) for just over $2 million. Bam! That's not it for deals, either: Get the updated roster of Sundance pics -– and see which offerings earned raves, and which didn’t -- after the jump.
more »
No matter how many gifting suites, D-list "celebrities" and/or head-splitting parties the malevolent forces of modern commerce may stuff into the wintry idyll of Park City over the next week, we'll always have the movies. And as usual, "we" also means studios and distributors with money to burn and release slates to fill. Let the Sundance bidding wars begin!
more »
