I’m going to make a prediction. At some point in the next two weeks, Rian Johnson will announce he’s stepping away from the Star Wars franchise to pursue, “exciting new original endeavors.” The Blu-Ray numbers have finally come in for the sequel to the trilogry threequel and it’s not good. In its first week, Last Jedi sold 1,940,241 Blu-Ray discs. Compare that to The Force Awakens’ first week, which sold 3,420,540 discs. For more reference, Rogue One sold 1,862,376 discs in its first week. Between this and Solo, Star Wars fans have spoken and they’ve spoken loudly. Time to get rid of Johnson. And it’s probably time to get rid of Kathleen Kennedy as well, as she was Johnson’s number 1 backer.
The box office numbers are in and Ocean’s 8 is the big winner with a 42 million dollar opening. It’s hard to say whether this is a success or a failure in the eyes of the studio. The Ghostbusters reboot made 46 million its opening weekend and everyone considered that a bomb. Then again, I don’t know what Ocean’s 8’s budget was. It didn’t need any special effects so it’s probably lower than Ghostbusters. But only the studio knows for sure.
The clear winner this weekend, though, is Hereditary. True, I didn’t like the script. But we’re talking about a movie that, a week ago, nobody had heard of. To build a marketing campaign in such a short amount of time and land the biggest opening ever for its company, A24, with 13.5 million, is a huge accomplishment. I’m still on the fence with A24. They do an amazing job finding filmmakers, but a horrible job developing screenplays. Clearly they allow the directors to do whatever they want and it’s costing them a pretty penny. There’s got to be a way to stay director-friendly but still have script input. You can’t last forever on 5-10 million dollar opening weekends. I’ve seen many prodcos fall by the wayside trying to make that strategy work.
A lot of people are confused why Blumhouse’s “Upgrade” hasn’t fared better (it currently sits at 9 million after two weeks). Everyone who sees the movie says it’s great. The reason it’s not doing better is because it doesn’t fall into any identifiable genre or movie-type. It’s not a horror film. It’s not an action film. It’s not a sci-film. It’s in that tweener territory and this is often where movies go to die. Every once in awhile a tweener will break through (Get Out was a “social horror film”). But usually these films die an ugly death. The average person sees the Upgrade trailer and says, “I’m not sure what that is.” So it shouldn’t be a surprise that they didn’t drive to the theater.
I saw a good movie last night, one that all aspiring screenwriters should check out. Thoroughbreds. It’s about two troubled teenage girls who decide to murder the older girl’s creepy step-father. There’s a few reasons I endorse checking this out. First, it’s great spec material. We’ve got a contained thriller situation (almost the entire movie takes place in a mansion). And we’ve got the threat of murder. Like I always say, a mundane idea can become an exciting idea with the simple addition of a dead body. Those two things alone give this potential to sell.
Also, these scripts are great practice for aspiring screenwriters. Since you have two characters driving 80% of the story, you have to be on top of your character and dialogue game. The writer here, Cory Finley, smartly made these characters polar opposites. One is preppy and social, the other alternative and sociopathic. Nothing shines a light on what’s unique about someone more than placing them in front of their opposite.
And he gave these girls history. They used to be best friends until the richer one drifted away. This was a double whammy when it came to dialogue. You have two polar opposites, which provided plenty of conflict to drive dialogue. AND you had the unsettled broken friendship, which provided an undercurrent of subtext between the two. This allowed the dialogue to shine even brighter.
But the script isn’t without its faults. Keeping the character count and locations low stresses the third act, where a few scenes leading up to the climax suck the energy out of the act since they didn’t need to be there. And Finley fell into that classic trap of movie-logicing his ending. (spoiler). The “disturbed” friend agrees to be roofie’d so that the rich friend can kill her father then plant the murder weapon in her friend’s hand to make it look like she did it. Uh-huh, I’m sure she’d do that. I see this SO OFTEN, where writers give up in the end because it’s hard to come up with a great ending. But you gotta fight it. A great ending is the best advertisement for your script. When a reader finishes a script on a great-ending high? The first thing they do is call someone and tell them “you have to read this.”
Has everyone recovered from Trailerpacalypse yet? A barrage of trailers hit the internet over a span of 48 hours and we’re all trying to figure out who the winner is. You have the new Halloween reboot. The third How to Train Your Dragon movie. A Star Is Born. Wreck-It Ralph 2. First Man. Bad Times at the El Royale. Bumblebee. The Girl in the Spider’s Web. Lego Movie 2. And Serenity. Luckily, I’m here to provide you with the definitive rankings of these illustrious trailers. Don’t bother arguing with me. I’m right.
1) Bumblebee – Nailed what Transformers should’ve always been. Loved it.
2) A Star Is Born – Surprisingly moving. Could Cooper be a director to watch out for?
3) Halloween – Once that classic score hit, I was putty in this trailer’s hands. Why don’t we get great score riffs like this anymore?
4) First Man – Apollo 13 for a new generation.
5) Serenity – Matthew McConaughey Matthew McConaugheyin. Slick and sexy. Anne Hathaway, you are my sunshine.
6) Bad Times at the El Royale – Weird, odd, tonally all over the place. But a spec script! (note: please send me this script if you have it.)
7) The Girl in the Spider’s Web – No Steig Larson? No problem!
8) How to Train Your Dragon 3 – A hidden blacklight dragon world? Nailed it! + sarcasm.
9) Wreck-It Ralph 2 – That princess sequence made me cringe. That’s the best they got?
10) Lego Movie 2 – Everything that was clever about the first movie is missing here.
Finally, share with the world your rare movie finds! See an obscure great movie on Netflix? Downloaded a tiny film on Itunes you assumed would be bad but turned out awesome? Find a killer TV show on Hulu that nobody knows about? Let us know in the comments so that we may enjoy the fruits of your labor.
