Killer Films | SpoutBlog

007 Makes $70.4 Million. Trade Roughage 11/17/08

By Christopher Campbell posted 1 year ago

Despite critical disappointment with the latest Bond installment, Quantum of Solace had the franchise’s best opening ever, by a lot. The previous installment, Casino Royale, debuted with only $40.8 million, and Bond’s former best opener, Die Another Day, debuted with $47 million. Quantum’s take was $70.4 million, which was unfortunately $400,000 too high for a really good headline. As for the other significant UK/USA co-production, Slumdog Millionaire earned a smashing weekend per-screen average of $35,000 and has grossed $418,000 since Wednesday.

Meanwhile Quantum is on track to become Bond’s highest-grossing film internationally, as it’s so far made more than $251 million overseas.
Can Todd Haynes please make a sci-fi film now? By selling half their stake to a venture capital fund, Killer Films is looking to produce films with bigger budgets, though I’m guessing Killer staple Haynes will probably remain a part of its “smaller indie movies” output.
How on Earth does Guillermo Del Toro have time for another screenwriting gig? His latest project is a dark, stop-motion Pinocchio for the Jim Henson Co. Hopefully it won’t look anywhere near as creepy as Steve Barron’s 1996 version.
Aaron Eckhart is finally going to be an action hero in Battle: Los Angeles, in which he’ll play a Marine platoon leader fighting off an alien invasion.

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Hollywood

HIgh School Musical Schools For Record. Trade Roughage 10/27/08

By Karina Longworth posted 1 year ago

High School Musical 3 had the biggest opening weekend of any musical, ever, grossing $42 million to leapfrog over Saw V’s respectable-for-an-effing-fivequel $30 million. What the latter number will mean for Lionsgate’s reported turn away from genre film is anyone’s guess, but when Saw V grosses another $2 million, that franchise will surpass Friday the 13th as the highest grossing horror franchise in history. Also, Changeling had a ridiculously high per screen average, which might indicate that it’ll be able to hold on through Oscar season despite extremely mixed reviews.
Richard Linklater and Todd Haynes will participate in a conversation on indie filmmaking at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival. The festival, which will go forward next year under the direction of Janet Pierson for the first time, will also welcome Stanley Kubrick’s brother-in-law/producer Jan Harlan and IMDb founder Col Needham.
Christine Vachon’s Killer Films will produce its first big-budget action movie, a medieval period pic called William the Conqueror.

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Hollywood, Indies

Foxy Box Office. Trade Roughage 10/20/08

By Christopher Campbell posted 1 year ago

Fox was the bread in a Chihuahua sandwich this weekend, as estimates place the studio’s two new releases at #1 and #3 on the box office chart. 20th Century Fox’s Max Payne made $18 million while Fox Searchlight’s The Secret Life of Bees earned just over $11 million, which was very, very close to Beverly Hills Chihuahua’s second-placing $11.2 million. Coming in fourth place, which in terms of the sandwich metaphor makes it a pickle, was Oliver Stone’s W. with a close $10.6 million. The discarded turkey, meanwhile, was Sex Drive, which placed ninth with only $3.6 million.
Not enough of a turkey, however, that the Sex Drive writing-directing team of John Morris and Sean Anders couldn’t make a deal for their next project, a college comedy about an accidental father.
Citing creative differences, Hugh Grant has exited the movie biz-set romantic comedy Lost for Words, which would have seen him play opposite Ziyi Zhang as an actor who falls for his director despite a language barrier. Now hopes of a life-imitates-art romance between Grant and Danish director Susanne Bier have been shattered.
Killer Films is producing a movie involving the 1944 meeting of Beat poets Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Jack Keroac. Too bad David Cross, who hilariously portrayed Ginsberg in Killer’s I’m Not There is probably too old to reprise the role.
I’m still waiting for the day a remake of Troop Beverly Hills is announced, but for now the similar-sounding Tough Cookies will just have to suffice. The family film will be about a deadbeat dad who leads an unconventional group of girl scouts, who compete against snobbish rivals at the National Scout Rally.