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Archive for January 26th, 2009

Monday, January 26th, 2009

MONDAY JANUARY 26, 2009

BOX OFFICE

Weekend Estimate

January 23-25, 2009 (*millions)

FILM GROSS

1 Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009) $21.5M

2 Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009) $20.7M

3 Gran Torino (2008) $16M

4 Hotel for Dogs (2009) $12.4M

5 Slumdog Millionaire (2008) $10.6M

6 My Bloody Valentine (2009) $10.1M

7 Inkheart (2008) $7.72M

8 Bride Wars (2009) $7M

9 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) $6M

10 Notorious (2009) $5.7M

SAG AWARDS

When it came to the two top acting film acting prizes, the 15th annual SAG Awards took a different route than the recent Golden Globe Awards, handing trophies to Sean Penn for playing activist Harvey Milk in “Milk” and Meryl Streep for her performance as a fiercely certain nun in “Doubt.” As for the supporting roles, it joined the gathering consensus by remembering Heath Ledger for his villianous turn in “The Dark Knight” and Kate Winslet for her appearance as a German woman harboring secrets in “The Reader.” Just like at the Gold Globes and the Emmys, it was a clean sweep for NBC’s “30 Rock” and HBO’s “John Adams” in the comedy series and longform categories, and a top drama series honor for AMC’s “Mad Men.” The individual drama series awards went to other award show darlings, Hugh Laurie of Fox’s “House” and Sally Field of ABC’s “Brothers & Sisters,” respectively.

PROJECT UPDATES

Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Bruno” is going to be fashionably late. The Universal film will now open July 10 instead of May 15. July slot became unexpectedly available last week when Sony announced it was pushing back the release of Roland Emmerich’s actioner “2012″ to Nov. 13. “Bruno” won’t have the runway to itself in its new date. Cohen’s pic will go up against 20th Century Fox comedy “I Love You, Beth Cooper,” directed by Chris Columbus.

ACQUISITIONS/FESTIVAL NEWS

Anchor Bay has bought North American and Australian rights to David Mackenzie’s comedy “Spread” starring Ashton Kutcher for around $3.5 million. Pic preemed this week at the Sundance Film Festival. Kutcher stars as a Hollywood Hills womanizer who meets his match in a local waitress. Anne Heche also stars. Kutcher, Peter Morgan, and Jason Goldberg produced through their Katalyst Films shingle.

Sony Pictures Classics will handle the domestic theatrical release of sci-fi thriller “Moon.” Pic, which has its first public screening at the Sundance Film Festival tonight, had been prebought last year by Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisition Group. “Moon” features the voice of Kevin Spacey and stars Sam Rockwell as an astronaut who is assigned to a three-year mission to mine energy source Helium 3 on the moon. Pic is the feature directorial debut of British commercials helmer Duncan Jones. Script was penned Nathan Parker from a story by Jones.

Boutique distributor Arthouse Films has picked up worldwide rights to “Art & Copy,” a nonfiction look at the development of Madison Avenue that played the just-wrapped Sundance Film Festival. Described as the real “Mad Men,” Doug Pray’s film looks at the creative revolution of the 1960′s that helped birth the current culture of advertising. Arthouse, the David Koh-led outfit which has distribbed docus such as art-collection exploration “Herb & Dorothy,” will give the film a theatrical run in the U.S. and handle all worldwide sales.

BUSINESS NEWS

NBC Universal has struck an exclusive deal with American Airlines to take over the carrier’s in-flight entertainment service. Pact, which spans two years (with option for a third), includes four 90-minute programs each month and begins March 1. As part of the arrangement, dubbed “NBC Universal on American,” the airlines has parted ways with CBS. The Eye net had programmed American’s in-flight service (“CBS Eye on American”) for more than 10 years; before that, ABC held the contract.

INDUSTRY MOVES

Legendary Pictures has hired production exec Alex Garcia as senior VP of creative affairs. Garcia has worked for eight years with director Bryan Singer, including the last five as VP of production of the helmer’s Bad Hat Harry Prods. During his tenure, Garcia oversaw the production of “Superman Returns,” “Trick ‘r Treat,” “Valkyrie,” Sci Fi Channel miniseries “The Triangle” and the first three seasons of the Fox TV series “House.” “Superman Returns” and “Trick ‘r Treat” were produced in partnership with Legendary. Garcia will focus on development of Legendary’s homegrown projects, including “Paradise Lost,” “Warcraft” and “The Mountain.” He’ll report to chief creative officer Jon Jashni.

STRIKE NEWS/LABOR ISSUES

SAG and AFTRA’s national board announced Sunday an agreement to negotiate jointly on their new broadcast commercials pacts. The decision essentially resurrects — strictly for the commercials talks — the labor organizations’ traditional Phase One collective bargaining relationship that was abandoned for their respective negotiations on their primary film and TV contracts with studios and networks. AFTRA has accepted its own new terms for its next film and TV pact, while SAG has been caught in a protracted standoff in its contract talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers. In their Sunday announcement, SAG and AFTRA said the AFL-CIO had helped them set guidelines for resurrecting Phase One for the commercials talks. Basically, the two labor groups promised to play nice with each other and sidestep the kind of jurisdiction squabbling that derailed joint bargaining on their film and TV pacts.

WEBSITE TO WATCH

http://www.veoh.com/

This popular video portal has just released a new version of its browser plug-in that promises to help make video a more useful component to what you search for on the web. The Veoh Video Compass, currently available for Firefox 3 and IE7, but coming soon for Safari and Chrome, is a nifty bit of engineering. It pulls up videos from the vast library of clips and episodes Veoh indexes when you type in a query on top search engines including Google, Yahoo!, MSNLive, YouTube, eBay and Ask.com. Videos that reside on Veoh.com seem to be listed first, but they include offerings from YouTube, Hulu, CBS, ABC, TheWb.com, etc. There’s also a recommendation engine that comes into play to suggest videos of related topics based on the classic Amazon formula (those who liked A also viewed B.) All search data Veoh collects will be poured back into the recommendation engine to make it smarter and potentially create a powerful contextual ad engine for the company. (Ads will be served as overlays beneath the video, both of which can be viewed directly on the page.) To top it all off, Veoh also unveiled a redesign, accessible from a link in the top right corner of the homepage. The boring video checkerboard has been replaced by extensive genre-based navigations and a cool featured video bar that rotates like a bar of Toblerone. But clearly it’s the recommendation engine – deployed both on the Video Compass and on the new site itself – that stands to become the secret sauce for Veoh. Discovery tools are the spice of life on the web.