Word: emmerich
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...Movies Have to Be Pringles? That's the gambler's fun of the movie business. Roll the dice once and you get a Paranormal Activity ($15,000 budget, $150 million worldwide gross). And if you've really got the nerve, follow the example of Roland Emmerich, the master of cheesy disaster movies (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow). He offered studios a take-it-or-leave-it deal on his world-ending 2012. Some turned it down; Sony bought it, on Emmerich's terms. In less than two months the picture has earned nearly $750 million worldwide, and Emmerich stands...
...ancient Mayan calendar supposedly predicted a worldwide calamity for the year 2012, but few box-office analysts foresaw that Roland Emmerich's cheesy a-popcorn-alypse thriller would earn $65 million at the domestic box office in its first three days. Budgeted at way over $200 million, 2012 outgrossed the rest of the top 10 and earned as much in its first three days as last week's $200 million-plus epic, Disney's A Christmas Carol, did in its first 10 days. (Read "2012: End-of-World Disaster Porn...
That's pretty impressive, considering that 2012 is not a sequel or a brand name and that its stars (John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover, Woody Harrelson) are associated more with indie fare than with blockbusters. All Emmerich had to work with was a vaguely ominous future date - think 1984, 2001 - and his confidence that he could get people into theaters by telling them they're all gonna die. He's done it before. A past master of disaster, the German director devastated the planet in Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow; he wasted New York City in Godzilla...
...picture also took in a burly $160 million internationally in its first five days. That's imposing but, for Emmerich, not surprising. With the exception of The Patriot, his American Revolution drama, the director's big pictures have amassed nearly two-thirds of their theatrical revenue in foreign countries. Moviegoers are no more sophisticated overseas, and Emmerich plays to the universal demands for mega-hits: throw little people into a giant disaster, put all the major information in pictures, not dialogue, and make sure that stuff blows up great. With 2012 seemingly headed for a $500 million worldwide take (which...
...that category, Emmerich has new competition from Lee Daniels, whose Precious has stormed the specialty box office after winning raves at festivals from Sundance to Cannes. Last week the indie drama - about a Harlem teenager who is illiterate, morbidly obese and pregnant for a second time by her abusive father - broke records in a very limited opening; this week it took in $6.1 million at just 174 theaters for a wowie-zowie $35,000 per screen. That's how Paranormal Activity started out. Fervently promoted by Tyler Perry (who brought the movie to his distributor, Lionsgate) and Oprah Winfrey, with...