Word: hollywood
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...still in midsummer, yet there's only one ginormous action adventure (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra) awaiting release, and not a cartoon hero or a dinosaur - or a cartoon dinosaur - in sight. Suddenly it's the time of real people learning how to cope with recognizable problems. The Hollywood kind of problems - the ones that can be solved in under two hours. (See the 100 best movies of all time...
...half-billion-dollar mark in its first 19 days. And that mighty Moloch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - second in a possibly infinite series of testosterone-fueled toy stories - is at the three-quarters-of-a-billion mark after 26 days. Numbers like those are the main reason Hollywood's slavish adherence to remaking its biggest hits won't change anytime soon. (See pictures of the cast of Harry Potter growing up through the years...
Half-Blood Prince didn't come near Revenge of the Fallen's opening $200 million bonanza. But in North America, at least, HP6 may have been seen by nearly as many people; they're just not paying as much to see it. As Nikki Finke notes on her Deadline Hollywood Daily blog: "HP6 with a PG rating is selling more discounted kiddie tickets. And it had virtually no biz from higher priced IMAX theaters: just 3 venues compared to TF2's 169." Not that the moneymen care about the number of tickets sold. Bucks, not bodies, determine box-office winners...
...Days of Summer had a boffo opening, earning $31,000 per screen for an $838,000 total in a limited opening. Those numbers stoked hopes at Fox Searchlight for a hit of Junoesque proportions: $143 million in North America. But they won't change the business model for Hollywood, which drools over the thought of finding another series of books it can spin into even more movies than the eight Harry Potters. Well, the Old Testament has, by some counts, 46 books, including some internal sequels (1 Kings, 2 Kings). Granted, down around Obadiah, the opportunities for special effects...
...Beyond its longevity records and the billions it has amassed in box-office and DVD revenues, the Harry Potter series is a proud, mammoth act of commercial, communal filmmaking. It's Hollywood at its finest, though the setting, accent, ensemble cast and most of the creative team are - as with the James Bond films - distinctly English...