Nikki Finke has an entertaining piece on the difficulties of casting THOR. Natalie Portman fans should avoid reading it, though.

SRS

WATCHMEN is the new BLADE RUNNER. (Maybe.)

And doesn’t its blue coloring indicate coldness? Wouldn’t that also indicate shrinkage? Man, that thing musta been huge!

Liked it even more upon second viewing.

I honestly don’t get all the negativity. Ackerman and Goode were fine, the altered ending worked (it was different only in detail), I didn’t even notice the giant blue dong after the first couple of shots, the sex scene was no more laughable than any other Hollywood sex scene, and so on.

Remember that Sam Hamm script that was circulating back in the early-mid 90s? Think about THAT. Think of just how badly Hollywood COULD’VE screwed this up.

For a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster, it’s probably the best Watchmen movie we could’ve hoped for.

Forget the haters. This was a great movie.

And if it’s “tanking” at the box office . . . well, that just means that no studio pinheads will be clamoring for a sequel. Thank God.

And WHAT is with all the hate thrown at poor Malin Ackerman? I thought she was great! In fact, she was one of the highlights of the movie for me! In a film so dark and brutal, she was about the only “light innocence” we had in the movie. I’m not sure WHY I thought of her character in that way, but that’s how she came across to me. I really thought she did a good job, and there seems to be so much dislike for her, on the net/in reviews. (And again, this is coming from a gay guy, so it wasn’t all about her “hotness” for me.)

ALSO (I swear I’m not crazy. Go, watch it again closely) does she not look like the spitting image of a John Romita Jr. drawing! When they do side shot closeups of her face during the movie - her nose, the shape of her face, and the cut of her wig. Man, I have to do a side by side comparison! It was like John Romita Jr. sketched her into the flick! I know I sound seriously insane, but it’s true! I’ll have to mock up a side by side…

Personally, I’ve found you can get a pretty good idea how a film will do by going to a noon showing on Friday and seeing how full the place is. If it’s packed, you’ve got a hit. If it’s half-full that’s normal. If it’s less than half-full, time to sweat.

Since when? Which alternate universe are you in where quality actually matters in the movie business?

“And what I saw in Watchmen was bad acting, uninteresting actors, half-bright direction and a story that was hard to follow”

Understandable, but I liked the actors and their performances and the director’s ability to tell the story and his directing choices and the story made more sense to me as a film than it did in TPB form.

“Naked Blue Penis didn’t rise to the occasion.”

There’s a difference between “wishing something negative” towards “Watchmen” and observing that it’s not the most transcendent movie-going experience of our lifetimes.

Besides, swap “Watchmen” with “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” in the preceeding sentence and tell me if the sentiment still holds.

and yeah, worldwide, it will be just fine.

Because it’s a money focused commerical business with clearly defined metrics for determining the success or failure of a film in relation to it’s budget+marketing spend?

I’m not saying they don’t have metrics — I’m saying the metrics are incomplete and represent a (sadly common) tendency to care more about being first than about being right.

Judging a whole weekend by Friday night is like calling the U.S. Presidential election based solely on the results from the eastern seaboard.

Already, by chapter 5, I can picture the average non comic reader movie-goer sitting in the theatre, Biggie Popcorn in one hand, Biggie Soda in the other, thinking (without visible thought balloons) : “What th’ ????”

Admittedly, I went into it expecting not to like it and wasn’t even going to see it at all until a couple of non-comic-reading friends strongarmed me into going. So maybe my view is tainted, but they both felt the same way. All three of us loved Dark Knight, for what it’s worth…

The target demographic for this film is the one hurting the most right now in this economy, also. Food is likely a higher priority than an overpriced film experience.

Also, just because something doesn’t meet your expectations doesn’t mean it’s underperforming. It’s making about as much as I expected it to–maybe slightly more–so does that mean it’s doing fantastically well? It’s a hard sell in a tough economy with an obvious lack of a “feel-good story” element. It’s lucky to be doing as well as it is.

As for (the Watchmen / Moore inspired) Lost, that statue is interesting. The funniest theory is that the statue is of Vincent the dog. Dogs have four legs. Vincent goes back in time and becomes a god. Ha. Though really, a better one was that it was an Egyptian god.

How to make sure you don’t make repeat money: Liken your viewers’ return viewings to a complicated rape-related situation from the movie.

Yeah, no.

Saturday’s take, higher than Friday’s, put the revenue drop compared to last weekend at 67 percent, rather than 78 percent.

Excluding the Thursday midnight and Friday 12:01 a.m. screenings from the weekend totals would have resulted in a 73 percent drop, rather than 78 percent, after Friday’s screenings.

Finke puts the cumulative ten-day revenue at $84 million, compared to a cost of $150 million.

SRS

Dingdingding!

Oh a lot, the material exists and they need that an audience will buy it.

It simply doesn’t matter. Warners overspent on the movie, not only in production, but in mis-marketing the film so that few outside of the select fanboy faithful even knew what is was. Overseas, the film is already reportedly tanking in most world markets on its FIRST weekend.

One also has to take into account that WB won’t be the only ones taking a financial hit if the movie’s merely a one-weekend wonder. Remember, they had to fight off Fox a few months ago to even release it, and Paramount also owns a piece of this expensive pie. DVD sales might recoup some of the box office losses; but then again, what kind of financial incentive will there be for WB to release a multi-disc “Director’s Cut” version?

KET