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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Congrats of some fashion are in order to William Brent Bell, whose universally reviled yet spectacularly successful The Devil Inside has today yielded news of his not-very-anticipated follow-up. Written by David Cohen, The Vatican is said to be a "conspiracy-driven thriller [...] that uses some found-footage techniques like The Devil Inside did"; Warner Bros. is reportedly fast-tracking the project. Good to know! I'll ready the riot police. [Deadline]
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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This just in from Nikki Finke: Paramount's cheap wannabe found footage hit The Devil Inside -- which drew reports of audible grumbles and boos as the credits rolled at sneak screenings in Los Angeles and New York last night -- has already made back double its acquisition costs. "The Devil Inside acquired for $1M opened with $2M midnights from 1,400 theaters. It goes wide into 2,300 theaters today," Finke writes at Deadline, adding that "the genre film plays very young and very ethnic so it will probably be frontloaded." Nice. Very young and very ethnic. If the pic turns into a Paranormal Activity-esque hit, you know who to blame. [Deadline, @STYDnews, Moviefone]
The characters who manned the cameras in The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield weren't pros, providing an excuse for the shakiness and dizzy-making whip pans. Michael (Ionut Grama), the guy who's supposed to be shooting the faux documentary The Devil Inside, is a filmmaker, so the fact that he can't seem to keep anything in focus and frames shots so awkwardly is bewildering. Does this guy actually have a faux filmography, or is this his faux debut? And why does he mount cameras in multiple locations around his subject Isabella Rossi's (Fernanda Andrade) car when he's always with her anyway -- does he imagine himself the Abbas Kiarostami of exorcism exposés?
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