Green Zone reteams director Paul Greengrass and actor Matt Damon who together churned out the last two Bourne hits, but box-office forecasters are predicting that the movie is not likely to produce anything like the blockbuster earnings of their previous collaborations. The Los Angeles Times's "Projector" column on Friday predicted that the movie "is on track to be the latest film about the Iraq war to disappoint at the box office." In all, four new films crowded the marquees this weekend, including Remember Me, starring Robert Pattinson, the heartthrob star of the Twilight movies, but none of them is expected even to come close to doing the kind of business that Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is expected to do. Friday's Hollywood Reporter said that Alice is likely to fall about 50 percent from last weekend, when it took in $116 million. Green Zone, by contrast, is expected to open with about $20-30 million, according to some forecasters; $15-16 million, according to others.

Source: Studio Briefing

Universal Studios may be attempting to market Green Zone as another thriller akin to the Bourne movies that director Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon made together, but reviewers make it clear that this thriller is filtered through politics -- and anti-Iraq War politics at that. Likewise, the critics' own point of view about the war comes into play in their judgment of the film's merits. Rarely have there been such widely divergent reviews. On the one hand, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gives the movie a four-star recommendation, concluding, "It's my belief that the nature of the neocon evildoing has by now become pretty clear. Others will disagree. The bottom line is: This is one hell of a thriller." One of those who disagrees is Kyle Smith, a film reviewer for the New York Post, who wrote an Op-Ed article in the newspaper earlier this week calling it a "$100-million slime job" filled with "vicious anti-American lies disguised as cheap entertainment." Green Zone, he concluded, "isn't cinema. It's slander ... one of the most egregiously anti-American movies ever released by a major studio." Oddly the "official" review of the movie appearing today (Friday) is written by Smith's colleague, Lou Lumenick, who concludes, "Politics aside and purely as a piece of genre moviemaking, Green Zone is a solid example of a political paranoia thriller." And Mick Lasalle in the San Francisco Chronicle remarks that the filmmakers "squeeze out a convincing narrative, one that's gripping and suspenseful." But Claudia Puig in USA Today disagrees. "It takes a complex and important story and renders it facile," she writes. And Liam Lacey in the Toronto Globe and Mail goes further, calling the movie "a crude paint-by-numbers fiction that keeps yelling about the importance of the truth while hurtling in the opposite direction."

Source: Studio Briefing

Rick Groen in the Toronto Globe and Mail sums up the attitude of a lot of critics to She's Out of My League: "Occasionally, along comes a picture so nearly good that you dearly wish it were better." League is one of those films, he implies. Or as Michael O'Sullivan puts it in the Washington Post: "The movie clearly aspires to rise to the smutty-but-sweet synergy of other, better films. But She's Out of My League can't touch them." The league that this film finds itself in is that genre of male-fantasy films in which the nerdy lead character -- in this case, he's played by Jay Baruchel -- discovers that the gorgeous object of his dreams -- played here by Alice Ever -- is actually smitten by him, too. "We may know exactly where Kirk and Molly are headed -- he can't get over his good fortune and she can't abide being put on a pedestal -- but the movie keeps upending our expectations and provoking laughs," writes Peter Howell in the Toronto Star. And Joy Tipping in the Dallas Morning News goes so far as to call it her favorite movie of the year. "Yes, it's got ... its share of gross-out jokes and a plot that, at least on first glance, reeks of unoriginality. ... But She's Out of My League also boasts elements not so typically found in this genre, from above-average acting across the board to an overlying sweetness that tempers even the lamest of icky jokes." Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times displays the identical reaction, bestowing props for entering this genre of films "with a disarming sentimentality and a certain decency along with the requisite raunch and repressed rage." Of course, several critics have seen this sort of movie before, many times before, and they're not in the market for a rehash. Claudia Puig in USA Today remarks that the movie is "short on clever humor and big on convention and formula." And Walter Addiego in the San Francisco Chronicle delivers the coup de grace: "It's pretty sad," he writes, "when one of a movie's best gags is that a character leads a Hall and Oates cover band."

Source: Studio Briefing

Our Family Wedding displays all the elements of one of those new-and-improved sitcoms, contrived to be edgy, that make it onto the broadcast schedule at the beginning of every season and are canceled around the sixth episode, critics suggest. "You almost miss the laugh track," Roger Ebert writes in the Chicago Sun-Times. He calls it "a pleasant but inconsequential comedy." The film even stars a couple of sitcom actors -- Ugly Betty's America Ferrera and Lance Gross of Tyler Perry's House of Payne. They deserve better than this, most critics agree. The movie, writes Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times, won't be the one "that proves Ferrera can make the transition to big-screen star." Gross comes off somewhat better. Wesley Morris writes in the Boston Globe that Gross "is charismatic, good-looking, and sexy in a way that's shocking lately for a man in a Hollywood movie. At some point, he gazes down at Ferrera, and, yes, there's love in his eyes. There's also real want in them, which a pitiful number of Gross's peers lack in the presence of a woman." Morris is one of the few critics who grants Our Family Wedding a passing grade. The rest would agree with Lou Lumenick in the New York Post who describes the movie as "a cringeworthy, unfunny example of a culture-clash romantic comedy." And John Anderson concludes in the Washington Post: "Our Family Wedding's premise is so thin that the film can't help but expire halfway through its more than 100 minutes. We get much more wedding than we need, and not nearly enough reasons to say ‘I do.'"

Source: Studio Briefing

Robert Pattinson's fans are not going to be pleased with what the critics are writing about their hero and about his latest movie -- not that their reviews will matter one iota when they head for the theaters this weekend. Most of the reviews for Remember Me can be summed up in two words: Forget it! Manohla Dargis in the New York Times calls it "absurdly contrived" and describes Pattinson as "a conceivably promising, certainly watchable actor in need of an immediate acting intervention." Kyle Smith in the New York Post compares Pattinson to the much maligned actor Hayden Christensen. "Ok," he continues, "Ok, he isn't that bad (who is?). But as a brooding Nyu student haunted by the suicide of his older brother, [he] is ingratiating when he's supposed to be tormented, vexed when he's supposed to be volcanic." Gary Thompson in the Philadelphia Daily News admits that while watching a scene late in the film "I laughed the hollow laugh of a cynical old movie critic during the eye-rolling final scene, which is certainly not meant to be funny. I apologize in advance to Twilight fans who find it tragic and profound." Peter Howell in the Toronto Star describes the scene as ranking high "amongst the most shameless jerkers of tears ever unleashed upon lachrymose teens." However, he adds, "Any movie that requires something this maudlin and exploitive to unblock the tear ducts prior to rolling the credits has failed in the intervening two hours or so to do anything worthy of emotion." And Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe calls the scenes "a shocking sucker punch cynically disguised as a plot twist."

Source: Studio Briefing

James Cameron has complained that Avatar got "stomped" by Alice in Wonderland because it had to give up the limited number of 3D theaters to make way for the new film. "The word we're getting back from exhibitors is we probably left a couple of hundred million dollars on the table as a result," he told USA Today. He said that 20th Century Fox is considering re-releasing the movie in the fall. "The question is, [is] the appetite still going to be there after the summer glut of movies? We're going to assess that. We're talking about maybe adding in additional footage and doing something creative." Today's (Friday) Hollywood Reporter quoted IMAX chief Richard Gelfond as saying at an investors conference in New York Thursday that Cameron has about 40 minutes of material that he had snipped out of the film, some or all of which could be restored for a director's cut. In his USA Today interview Cameron also disclosed that he's working on converting Titanic to 3D and plans to release it in 2012, the 100th anniversary of the disaster. He also expressed concerns that some studios may rush to convert other movies shot in 2D using "some automated process or some cost-effective process" that will make the movies "look like crap." He added, "If people put bad 3D in the marketplace they're going to hold back or even threaten the emerging [sic] of 3D. People will be confused by differences in quality."

Source: Studio Briefing

The Oscar-winning producers of The Cove may not have succeeded in halting the slaughter of dolphins in the village of Taiji, Japan, but they may have succeeded in halting the sale of whale meat at a fancy restaurant at Santa Monica airport. Days before they collected their Oscar, the producers carried out a sting at The Hump restaurant, where their hidden cameras and microphones allegedly caught whale meat being served to shills working for the filmmakers. On Thursday the sushi chef, Kiyoshiro Yamamoto and the owners of The Hump were charged with violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act. In a statement, U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr. said, "Someone should not be able to walk into a restaurant and order a plate of an endangered species."

Source: Studio Briefing

The Motion Picture Association of America, the trade organization for an industry whose financial statistics are perennially questioned, claimed on Wednesday that the worldwide box office took in a record $29.9 billion in 2009, up 7.6 percent over 2008. Domestic admissions, it said, increased 5.5 percent from the previous year. However, the Los Angeles Times pointed out today (Thursday) that the MPAA report was notable for what it did not include: any data about the average cost of producing and marketing motion pictures, particulars that had been included in the annual report until last year. In an interview with the Times, MPAA President Bob Pisano defended the omission, noting that there are vast differences in the budgets for a film like The Hurt Locker on the one hand and Avatar on the other. "I know it's fascinating to people, but it really doesn't tell you anything," Pisano said. [Likewise, there are no reliable data for the actual number of theater admissions, nor even for the average ticket price, which is based on data submitted by a limited "cross section" of theaters all over the country.]

Source: Studio Briefing

Hoping to become the first film about the Iraq war to become a box office hit, the Green Zone has encountered some roadside bombs that apparently went undetected as studio marketers prepared for its release on Friday. "We have made a genuine attempt to make a mainstream action thriller set in the real [Iraq] world," Matt Damon, its star, told Reuters. In an early review, Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune says that the film by Bourne director Paul Greenglass "becomes movie-er and more polemical as it goes." Last week, the New York Post film critic Kyle Smith, who often wears his political conservatism in his reviews, blasted the movie this way. "If I were the kind of excitable guy who believes in boycotts, I'd say 'Boycott NBC-Universal' for its appalling new anti-American flick, Green Zone.'" He called it "a $100 million slime job that conjures up a fantastically distorted leftist version of the war." In defense of the film, Patrick Goldstein in the Los Angeles Times maintained that some of Smith's arguments about the film are erroneous. "But when conservatives ridicule Hollywood movies for their politics, it's a rarity for anyone to let the facts get in the way of a good rant."

Source: Studio Briefing

Panasonic said on Wednesday that it had sold the first 3D home entertainment system, the Magnolia Home Theater, at a Best Buy store in New York City for $2,900, including a 50 inch Viera VT20 plasma 3D HDTV set, one pair of 3D active shutter lens glasses and a Panasonic BDT300 3D Blu-ray Disc player. In a news release Panasonic said that 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment was releasing Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the first 3D title for the system, which synchronizes the shutters on the viewer's glasses with the picture on the screen. Mary Daily, head of marketing for the studio's home entertainment division, was quoted in the Panasonic announcement as saying, "3D has invigorated the theater experience, and it will be the same for the living room. ... 3D will become a game changer for the home-entertainment industry. ... Blu-ray 3D uses the advanced quality to bring the movie theater 3D experience to your home."

Source: Studio Briefing

This year's Tribeca Film Festival, which was born out of the rubble of the 9/11 attacks on lower New York City, is planning to feature as a "work in progress" an as-yet-untitled documentary from director Alex Gibney about former New York Attorney General and Governor Elliot Spitzer, whose reputation and political career were left in rubble in 2008 when his name was revealed on the clients' list of a New York madam. The film is among 33 films selected for screening at the festival, which is due to run from April 21 (opening with DreamWorks Animation's Shrek Forever After in 3D) to May 2. Additional films are expected to be announced on March 15.

Source: Studio Briefing

Time Warner Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Bewkes acknowledged on Wednesday that film studios are pressing to reduce the window between theatrical and DVD releases partly because of the threat of piracy. As reported by Home Media magazine, Bewkes told an investors conference "People demand films earlier in their homes. And if you don't keep moving along with what consumers demand, they will steal the films." He also noted that studios and exhibitors are employing new technology to improve the experience of watching movies in theaters -- especially with giant-screen and 3D technology. "That experience is not going to be impinged upon by earlier home video opportunities as everybody might think," Bewkes said.

Source: Studio Briefing

Focusing new attention on the influence of advertisers on the content of trade journals, the producers of Iron Cross on Tuesday sued Variety, claiming that its sales representatives "induced" them to spend $400,000 on a "for your consideration" Oscar campaign for their movie, then published a "scathing ... inaccurate and hostile" review that "seriously undermined, if not completely destroyed" its Oscar chances. In the lawsuit, Calibra Pictures claims that the Variety representatives had assured them that Iron Cross, which starred the late Roy Scheider in his final film role, had a real chance of being included among the Oscar nominees, although none of them had actually seen the film -- and although the film lacked a distributor. (It still does.) The matter came to light last week when several websites reported that Variety had removed the review, by frequent freelance critic Robert Koehler, from its online archive following protests by Calibra but that it was still accessible via Google's cache. (Variety has since restored the review, saying that it was taken down to investigate accuracy issues.) The complaint seeks unspecified general and punitive damages and an injunction barring Variety from further commenting on the movie. In a column last week, Los Angeles Times columnist Patrick Goldstein remarked that "if filmmakers really think that a $400,000 ad buy can guarantee a good review, even in Variety, they're even more gullible than the people who went to see Valentine's Day because someone called it 'Hilarious!' in the blurb ads."

Source: Studio Briefing

The winners of this year's Oscar for best feature-length documentary took advantage of their trip to California to perform double-duty work at a high-class sushi restaurant in the Santa Monica airport last week, where they had heard that whale meat was being served to high-flying clientele who pay as much as $600 each for a meal of exotic sushi. As they had in a Japanese village, where they documented the annual dolphin slaughter for their documentary The Cove, the filmmakers, headed by director Louis Psihoyos, used hidden cameras and microphones at the Hump restaurant, where members of the crew placed whale meat in baggies, slipped it out of the restaurant, and then sent it to a lab for analysis. Scott Baker, associate director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University, who examined the samples, told the Los Angeles Times that they were from a Sei whale, which are found worldwide and are endangered. "I've been doing this for years," he told the newspaper. "I was pretty shocked." Two days before the Oscars, the Times said, federal officials raided the restaurant to collect evidence of violations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Source: Studio Briefing

Despite winning the Oscar for best film and best director Sunday night, Summit Entertainment officials have had little success trying to persuade movie chains to give it a second chance in their theaters, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Wednesday). The largest chain, Regal Theaters, won't show it at all, the newspaper said. Most cite a policy of not booking movies that have already been released on DVD. In its initial run, The Hurt Locker earned just $14.7 million domestically, the lowest gross for any best-film winner in Oscar history. On the other hand, the film is performing strongly on DVD, selling 780,000 DVDs and electronic downloads. In addition, it has counted 5.4 million rentals. In the U.K., the Press Association wire service reported today that in the first 24 hours after the Oscars, rentals of The Hurt Locker shot up 117 percent on the online DVD rental service Lovefilm.

Source: Studio Briefing

Executives of the Walt Disney Co. are taking steps to ensure that its upcoming animated film based on the Bros. Grimm fairy tale Rapunzel won't be rejected by boys as The Princess and the Frog apparently was. According to published reports, the study has changed the name to Tangled, which, the Los Angeles Times suggested today (Wednesday), is regarded as "less gender-specific." Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, told the Times that the title Rapunzel might lead people to "assume it's a fairy tale for girls, when it's not." The studio is also revamping its market campaign, the newspaper said, to highlight "swashbuckling action." Catmull suggested that the studio erred by titling its last hand-drawn animation release The Princess and the Frog. "Based upon the response from fans and critics, we believe it would have been higher if it wasn't prejudged by its title," Catmull said.

Source: Studio Briefing

Conservative lawmakers in Florida are pushing for a bill that would limit the films eligible for a new tax incentive bonus to those that support traditional family values. The bill's sponsor, Representative Stephen L. Precourt, an Orlando Republican, told The Palm Beach Post that he wanted to encourage the production of films in Florida that are akin to The Andy Griffith Show. Asked whether films that depict homosexual characters would be eligible for the bonus, Lucia Fishburne, the state's film commissioner, told the Post that she is waiting to be told what the definition of "nontraditional family values," as spelled out in the bill, really means. "I'm not going to define it," she said. "There are a lot of different traditional values out there." But John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, which supports the bill, told the newspaper that "traditional" means marriage between a man and a woman. He said he regards the bill as "a brilliant idea."

Source: Studio Briefing

Although some analysts had speculated that Disney's Alice in Wonderland's final weekend box-office total would fall below estimates if moviegoers stayed home to watch the Oscars, the film actually came in at around the estimated figure with $116.1 million. (It earned an additional $94 million overseas. where it booted 20th Century Fox's Avatar from its perch at the top of the foreign box office for the first time in 12 weeks.) Somewhat surprisingly, however, Avatar, the movie credited with increasing Oscar viewing, came in above estimates, with $8.12 million, to bring its 12-week domestic total to $720.61 million.

Source: Studio Briefing

Suggesting that its decision to put its content behind a pay wall is having little effect in boosting revenue, Daily Variety on Monday fired additional staff members including its chief Hollywood film critic, Todd McCarthy, and chief theater critic, David Rooney, who is based in New York. Speaking with TheWrap.com, McCarthy remarked, "It's sad. ... You can say it's the end, or you can say it's the end of the way it's always been done." However, editor Tim Gray maintained, "Today's changes won't be noticed by readers. Our goal is the same: To maintain, or improve, our quality coverage. ... It doesn't make economic sense to have full-time reviewers." He said that McCarthy and Rooney, along with film critic Derek Elley have been asked to contribute reviews as freelancers. McCarthy had worked at Daily Variety longer than any other editorial employee, having joined the trade publication in 1979. In his email message to the troops on Monday, Gray attempted to boost their spirits. "The economy will bounce back," he assured them. "Ignore the bloggers (who obviously are trying in vain to steal our readers and our advertisers), ignore the obits for Old Media, ignore the negatives and the craziness that this economy has created. The people in the Depression bounced back, and so will all of us who are going through this crisis. I cannot repeat this often enough: Variety is in profit, which means we're here to stay." But Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert tweeted on Monday: "Variety fires Todd McCarthy & I cancel my subscription. He was my reason 2 read the paper. Rip, schmucks."

Source: Studio Briefing

A New York woman is not at all pleased with the agreement between Netflix and Warner Bros. that will prevent Netflix subscribers from receiving DVDs of Warners' new releases until four weeks after they are available for sale or rent in stores. According to the New York Daily News, the woman, Susan Uman, filed suit on March 3, claiming that the arrangement between the online renter and the studio amounts to restraint of trade and that her monthly subscription to Netflix has depreciated since the deal. One of Uman's lawyers, Marian Rosner of Wolf Popper in Manhattan, told the newspaper, "It is Netflix subscribers who are harmed by this illegal conspiracy."

Source: Studio Briefing