Good news, everyone! 2012 has been a pretty great year for the film industry. Ticket sales were up worldwide by 5% over 2011, and a record box office haul of $10 billion means plenty of celebrating at studio holiday parties. Of course, Biggie wasn't lying when he preached the harsh truth that with mo' money comes mo' problems, and so it is that while bootleg film watching didn't quite rival ticket sales, with hundreds of millions of illegal downloads piracy is nothing to sneeze at.
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After years of foisting dashed-off 3-D — and its inflated ticket prices — on movie audiences, studios may have found their most reliable ally yet in shoring up box office: IMAX. And not just the punch and potential of the brand's own 3-D, either, but good old conventional 2-D as well.
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A slightly above-average weekend at the box office abated further talks of a moviegoing slump (for now), with a proven star and a buffed-out Disney classic teaming up in the top two. Mission: Impossible continued its formidable hold, meanwhile, barely suppressing a certain Joyful Noise. Your Weekend Receipts are here.
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There was good news and bad news at the movies over the weekend, where the first big box office frame of the new year showed a nice bounce from the sluggishness afflicting the end of 2011. The bad news? The comeback was led by the film equivalent of a dirty diaper. Let's have a look.
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According to the Phuket Gazette, Bourne Legacy star Jeremy Renner was maybe-sorta (okay not really) involved in an insane-sounding bar brawl this week in Thailand in which an associate was attacked and stabbed by a host of bar employees. Oh, I'm sorry: Bar employees wielding knives and a freaking homemade battle axe. But fear not! It seems Renner, most recently seen in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol and currently in Thailand shooting his Bourne flick, hightailed it out and escaped unscathed. Wish we could say the same about his reported acquaintance, one Vorasit Issara, who took injuries to his stomach and neck in the melee. [Phuket Gazette, ETonline]
Post-yuletide holiday crowds flocked to the same trio of sequels that dominated the Christmas box office -- Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked -- while Summit newcomer The Darkest Hour limped into theaters waaaay under the radar. Meanwhile, Tom Cruise will be ringing in the new year with a number 1 box office finish, made all the sweeter by projections that Ghost Protocol will overtake the $134 million domestic take of the series' last installment by Monday. Dive into your Friday Box Office!
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'Twas the weekend of Christmas, and all through the house, many studio executives had good reason to grouse... Ugh, sorry about that -- it's the egg nog. In fairness, the holiday frame actually signaled a nice rebound from previous weekends (which, when considering the utter horror show this month's been, isn't saying so much, but still). Who got what they wanted for Christmas, and who did Santa all but skip? Your Weekend Receipts are here.
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A slumpy month at the box office showed little sign of abating on Friday, when the holdovers Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked fought off a trio of high-octane newcomers -- including the abysmally performing We Bought a Zoo -- to lead the early holiday-weekend competition. Your Friday Box Office is here.
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Grab your grain of salt! A new report states that an unidentified PR firm was so worried that fans would not turn out for Tom Cruise's arrival in India this past Saturday for the Mumbai Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol premiere, that they paid approximately 200 people $3 each to show up and scream for the actor when he walked out of the local airport gate. The paid extras were also given a buffet lunch. "Tom kaun? I don't know who he is or what he does," one hired fan told First Post's Bollywood division. "We were told to come here by 1pm today and wait for a foreign VIP to come out of the airport gate and scream and shout when he came." [Movies.com via FirstPost.com]
Recent reports of Tom Cruise unleashing some sweet moves in a dance-off at the posh wedding of his Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol producer David Ellison, prompted speculative mental images of Risky Business-era Tom Cruise cutting loose on the dance floor. (Or, nightmare visions of Cruise busting out some Les Grossman-style swag. Make it stop!) Well, today brings video evidence beyond our mildest/wildest expectations. Did Cruise just do the worm??
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After scoring a critical and commercial hit with his directorial debut, 2009's Zombieland, director Ruben Fleischer decided to make the relatively humble crime comedy 30 Minutes or Less (in theaters Friday) as his follow-up, rather than take on some huge Hollywood work-for-hire gig like Mission: Impossible 4, which he was once in the running to direct. And as he tells Cinema Blend, when he watched the first trailer for the Brad Bird-helmed spy sequel, he knew he'd made the right decision.
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Pixar watchers and action fans alike were waiting to see what Oscar-winning animation veteran Brad Bird might do with the reins to the Mission: Impossible franchise, and the first wave of promo materials offers an answer: Pretty much what anyone would do with a slick, globe-trotting, high-octane Tom Cruise vehicle. Can we find greater detail in the first batch of stills from Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol?
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