Tag Archives: Million
What A Friday Brawl! ‘Moneyball’ Wins #1, ‘Lion King 3D’ #2, ‘Dolphin Tale’ #3, ‘Abduction’ #4, Killer Elite’ #5
FRIDAY 11 PM, 2ND UPDATE: Finally, I have some clarity following Rentrak hiccups during the day and early evening. Not to mention every studio’s confusion over the ordering of the Top 5 because of fierce fights going on at the North American box office throughout today. And, geez, I’m supposed to be on vacation:
1. My sources say Sony’s newcomer Moneyball has been rising as the night goes on for maybe the best baseball-themed opening ever. It’s definitely No. 1 Friday with approximately $6.8M from 2,993 theaters. (As a Sony exec told me, “$6 million would be great. $7 million amazing. $8 million would be a triumph.”) With a healthy adult bump tomorrow, it’s looking at a $20M weekend. That solid number helps keep Brad Pitt’s star wattage shining and his awards chances climbing because of this well-reviewed male-centric sports movie. Audiences really liked this pic: it received all A’s — male, female, young, old — from CinemaScore.
2. Even Disney is surprised that its Lion King 3D is in 2nd place tonight from 2,330 theaters which sold mostly higher priced tickets. But rival studios tell me it got a boost today from the rain back East for a $6.1M Friday, or an excellent holding -31% from its opening a week ago. With the normal kiddie matinee bump, that’s a $20M weekend as well. This re-release’s projected is $60M by Monday. Here’s my question: why is it that in all the promotional hype I’ve been sent by the studio about this pic, … Read More
Trailer: Joe Carnahan’s ‘The Grey’
Open Road has released a teaser trailer for The Grey, the Joe Carnahan-directed drama in which Liam Neeson leads a team of oil drillers whose plane crashes in the Alaskan wilds — right in the middle of a territorial pack of rogue wolves. Open Road acquired the film last month for around $8 million and a $25 million P&A commitment to launch early next year, with a possible platform release to put Neeson in the Oscar race. Here is the teaser:
What Do Tyler Perry, Jerry Bruckheimer, Steven Spielberg, Elton John And Simon Cowell Have In Common? $$$
Forbes has come out with its annual list of the highest-paid men in entertainment. Tyler Perry leads the pack this year with $130 million earned between May 2010 and May 2011, with five movies and two TV series to his credit over a two-year period. Here’s the Top 5: Perry, Jerry Bruckheimer ($113 million), Steven Spielberg ($107 million), Elton John ($100 million) and Simon Cowell ($90 million).
Conan the Barbarian No Match for The Help On Friday
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Soft Start For ABC Family's 'Lying Game'
ABC’s latest original drama, The Lying Game, was slow out of the gate on Monday, launching with 1.4 million viewers, holding onto 58% of its Secret Life of the American Teenager lead-in (2.4 million). That was lower than the soft opening of fellow rookie The Nine Lives of Chloe King, which drew 2.2 million in its June debut. It was also lower than other recent ABC Family premieres, including Pretty Little Liars and Make It Or Break It, which both opened with 2.5 million viewers. ABC Family’s benchmark this summer has been breakout hit Switched at Birth, which opened with 3.3 million viewers in June while breaking young demo ratings records for the network.
Also on Monday, Style’s new reality series Tia & Tamera leaped by double-digits in Week 2. The show’s second epiosde drew 920,000 viewers, up 22% from last week’s premiere to become the second most-watched telecast ever on the network. It also scored Style’
Shocker! Disney Halts Johnny Depp's 'The Lone Ranger'
EXCLUSIVE: In a stunning development, Disney has shut down production on The Lone Ranger, the Gore Verbinski-directed period Western that was to star Johnny Depp as Tonto and Armie Hammer as the title character. Jerry Bruckheimer is the producer and the script’s by Justin Haythe. I’m told this all just happened, and Disney pulled the plug because the budget, which I’ve heard the filmmakers were trying to reduce from $250 million–I’ve heard from insider that they’d gotten down to $232 million, but whatever the number, it wasn’t close to the $200 million that Disney wanted to spend. This had to be an incredibly tough call for Disney’s Rich Ross and Sean Bailey, but they have several huge live action bets on the table already. John Carter, the Andrew Stanton-directed adaptation of John Carter of Mars with Friday Night Lights’ Taylor Kitsch in the lead role, has a budget that has ballooned to north of $250 million because of extensive re-shoots [a studio insider said the number is lower], and The Great and Powerful Oz, the Sam Raimi-directed James Franco-starrer has a budget is hovering at $200 million. Lone Ranger wasn’t starting production until October, and and even though money has been spent as the picture is in pre-production (Depp is pay or play), but it was the easiest one on which to … Read More
Republican Presidential Debate Scores Big Ratings For Fox News Channel
There was something hotter than fried butter on a stick coming out of Iowa this week — Fox News Channel’s ratings for last night’s Republican Presidential Debate. The two-hour debate drew 5.1 million viewers, 1.4 million of them in the 25-54 demographic. It was by far the highest rated presidential debate this year — up 55% in viewers and 67% in 25-54 from the May 5 debate on FNC and up 158% in viewers and 178% in 25-54 compared to the May 13 debate on CNN. FNC obviously dominated the 9-11 PM primetime block last night. Here are the numbers:
P 2+
P 25-54
Network
Time
AA (000)
AA (000)
FOXN
9P -11P
5053
1432
CNN
9P -11P
667
233
MSNB
9P -11P
756
239
CNBC
9P -11P
102
27
HLN
9P -11P
560
158
MTV Cancels 'Hard Times Of RJ Berger'
It was the first of MTV’s new generation of scripted series. Now The Hard Times of RJ Berger has been canceled after 2 seasons, series co-creator Seth Grahame-Smith tweeted earlier today. The series, which Grahame-Smith co-created with David Katzenberg, launched with 2.8 million viewers last year when it aired after the MTV Movie Awards. Its second season premiere hit a series high of 3.1 million viewers airing behind Jersey Shore. But by the end of the second season run in May, the series’ viewership had dropped below 1 million. RJ Berger, which stars Paul Iacono as a well-endowed high-school student, is the second MTV scripted series to be canceled following the axing of Skins after one season. Teen Wolf has been renewed for a second season, and new comedy Awkward appears a lock for a second-season renewal after hitting a series high in persons 12-34 this week. Coming up is the premiere of Death Valley on August 29 and a post-Video Music Awards sneak of I Just Want My Pants Back, and the October launch of animated comedies Beavis and Butt-head and Good Vibes. The Inbetweeners is in production for a 2012 debut.
Bikini Clad Brooke Burke & Her Family Enjoy The Beach in St. Barts!
Photo Credit: Fame Pictures
Wow, this woman is about a month away from slamming into 40 (birthday: September 
& from the looks of things, she’s absolutely killing it in her bikini! Brooke, her husband David Charvet & their children were spotted hitting the diving board at a local beach in St. Barts.
It was recently disclosed that the couple are putting their Malibu home up for sale for a cool $12.5 million, so someone will be rolling in tons of cash—assuming somebody still has $12.5 mil to throw around following the global financial meltdown that’s going down right now. And, for the record, as I write this, the market is down around 435!!
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Spellings Mansion Sold
Share..Aaron Spelling‘s 57,000-square-foot tinsel town mansion listed for $150 million, closed for $85 million last Thursday that is 43% off the asking price, after being snapped up by the 22-year-old heiress to the Formula One racing fortune. Petra Ecclestone, son of British billionaire and Formula One racing boss Bernie Ecclestone, purchased the property. The seller, [...]
Dennis Hoppers estate bumps price of late actors home 25 percent to $6.5 million
The late Dennis Hopper’
Rachel Uchitel double crossed by Gloria Allred, has to return Tigers millions
This is the type of story that the term schadenfreude is made for, since it involves Rachel Uchitel being beaten at her own game. According to TMZ, Rachel was persuaded by her lawyer, Gloria Allred, to return the bulk of the $10 million package she extorted settlement Tiger Woods gave her in exchange for not [...]
Second-Season Order For 'Falling Skies'
TNT has ordered a second season of Falling Skies, the alien-invasion drama from Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks TV that premiered last month with 8 million total viewers, making it cable’s top series launch this year. The series, starring Noah Wyle, has averaged 6.4 million total viewers in its first three episodes and is attracting strong ratings in overseas territories. The network has ordered 10 episodes for Season 2, which is slated to air in summer 2012.
Transformers positively kills Larry Crowne at the box office, Julia Roberts who?
It was never a question of what movie would end up in the #1 position at the box office over the holiday weekend but only how high the numbers would go. In this case, Transformers: Dark of the Moon made $97.4 million for a five-day total of $162.1 million over the lengthy holiday weekend; in [...]
Game Maker Zynga Decides To Play The Market With $1B Public Stock Offering
Zynga, a computer game developer with close ties to DreamWorks Animation, today joined Pandora, LinkedIn, and Bankrate in the parade of companies looking to cash in on Wall Street’s fascination with all things tech. The maker of popular Facebook games including FarmVille and Mafia Wars said in an SEC filing that it wants to raise as much as $1 billion in a public stock offering. With the sale “we hope to enable Zynga to invest more in play than any company in history,” CEO Mark Pincus says in a note to potential shareholders. His board includes DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg. Last month the studio supported Zynga’s first in-game integration with an ad sponsor: Players building cities in the game CityVille could add drive-in movie theaters that played Kung Fu Panda 2.
Zynga says that it turned profitable last year: It had net income of $90.6 million, up from a $52.8 million loss in 2009, on revenues of $597.5 million, up 392%. But the company warns that it’s almost entirely dependant on Facebook which could change its terms with game developers at any time. Although Zynga didn’t disclose how many shares it wants to sell, it says that there will be three classes of common stock with different voting rights so current managers can continue to control the company.
Universal Makes First-Look Deal With Jason Blum Of 'Paranormal Activity' And 'Insidious'
EXCLUSIVE: Jason Blum will bring the studio into the low-budget but often high-gross world of genre films. Universal Pictures has made a 3-year first-look deal with Blum and his Blumhouse Productions which produced the Paranormal Activity franchise, and followed that up with Insidious, the James Wan-directed thriller that has already become one of the most profitable films of 2011. A sequel seems inevitable.
The original Paranormal Activity cost about $15,000 and grossed $193 million. The first sequel cost $3 million and grossed $177 million worldwide and the third film debuts Oct. 21. Insidious cost $1.5 million and grossed $81 million worldwide and is still rolling out. This guy is minting money. He’s producing the latest installment of the fright franchise Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes for Dimension Films, produced the Barry Levinson-directed eco-horror film The Bay, The River for ABC and the Jay Chandresakar-directed comedy Baby Makers. He is producing the Oren Peli-directed Area 51 for Paramount Pictures, as well as The Lords of Salem, with Rob Zombie directing. Blum’s also an exec producer on the John Hillcoat-directed The Wettest County in the World. This amounts to an aggressive move into the low-budget area for Universal, which, if anything, is known for spending generously on its slates.
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Paramount Near Deal To Provide Safe Harbor To Darren Aronofsky's 'Noah'
EXCLUSIVE: Paramount is moving closer to signing on for Noah, the big-ticket re-telling of the Noah’s Ark story that will be the next film from Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky. Deadline told you early this month that CAA was shopping the picture. Bidding came down to 20th Century Fox and Paramount, both of which were vying to partner with New Regency, which has been involved all the way through the process. Aronofsky wrote a script that is being rewritten by Gladiator scribe John Logan. Noah might only have gotten got a few pages in the Bible, but Aronofsky has turned it into a sprawling fantasy epic that will cost north of $100 million. Aronofsky dropped out of The Wolverine after his long-gestating Black Swan finally came together and grossed $315 million worldwide on a $12 million budget. What a time to mount a dream project, when you’ve just generated one of the most profitable movies in recent memory. This will take a few days to crystallize, but I’m convinced that Paramount will emerge as the partner on the picture. New Regency is closely aligned with Fox, but I believe the company will still play a role in the funding of the picture. More to come on this one.
'Wilfred' Most-Watched Comedy Series Premiere Ever For FX
FX’
Warner Bros Buys Nicholas Sparks' Upcoming Romance Novel 'The Best Of Me'
EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros has acquired The Best of Me, the next novel by Nicholas Sparks. No numbers were available, but I believe the deal is similar to the one that Relativity Media made to win an auction for Sparks’