Shock! "Saw" No. 4 set for release next Halloween
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Perhaps inevitably, the record-breaking box office launch of "Saw III" has inspired the film's distributor to order a fourth installment of the R-rated horror series.
According to final data issued Monday, the film earned $33.61 million during its first three days, a record for both Lionsgate and for the franchise, but off $700,000 from the three-day estimate the studio published Sunday.
"Saw III" received an overall grade of B from exit pollster CinemaScore. With a hefty per-screen average of $10,612, the film was best received by the under-25 crowd, which was divided pretty evenly male-female. "Saw III" stars Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith as serial killers. Another sequel is on tap for next Halloween.
In contrast, Focus Features' "Catch a Fire" was a huge disappointment, earning a meager $2.03 million for a 12th-place bow in the weekend's rankings.
It wasn't the only bomb. Newmarket Films' controversial mockumentary "Death of a President" earned just $281,778 from 143 screens for a per-screen average of $1,835. The indie firm had trouble booking theaters because some chains wanted nothing to do with a film that depicts the assassination of President Bush.
The best performer in the limited-release world was Paramount Vantage's "Babel," which bowed to $389,351 on seven screens for a per-screen average of $55,621. Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's R-rated drama, which stars Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael Garcia Bernal, will add 13 markets next weekend before going wide November 10.
The Weinstein Co. did well with its documentary "Shut Up and Sing," about the firestorm surrounding the Dixie Chicks after lead singer Natalie Maines insulted President Bush. Opening on four screens in New York and Los Angeles, the film boasted a per-screen average of $12,526 and a total of $50,103.
Elsewhere, Warner Bros.' "The Departed" held on at No. 2 for a third weekend, with $9.85 million, taking its total to $91.1 million. The previous week's champ, Disney's "The Prestige," had a little magic in its numbers, earning $9.57 million, bringing its 10-day total to $28.78 million.
Paramount Pictures' "Flags of Our Fathers" slid in its second week in release, down one to No. 4 with $6.35 million despite a boost in its theater count; it has earned $19.92 million after 10 days.
Sony Pictures also struggled with its ninth-ranked "Marie Antoinette," which suffered from weak word-of-mouth in its second weekend. Sofia Coppola's period saga earned $2.85 million, taking its 10-day haul to $9.75 million.
Sony's literary adaptation "Running With Scissors" rounded out the top 10, jumping 18 places in its second week after earning $2.53 million. The R-rated film from writer-director Ryan Murphy added 578 runs, up from eight during its first weekend. Its per-screen average of $4,320 was below expectations. According to exit pollster CinemaScore, the film generated a C+ with audiences. Audiences were drawn to the film's subject matter primarily, with women over 25 attending the film in the greatest numbers.
Bob Barker retiring after 50 years on TV
LOS ANGELES - Bob Barker is heading toward his last showcase, his final "Come on down." The silver-haired daytime-TV icon is retiring in June, he told The Associated Press Tuesday.
"I will be 83 years old on December 12," he said, "and I've decided to retire while I'm still young."
He'll hang up his microphone after 35 years as the host of "The Price Is Right" and 50 years overall in television.
Though he has been considering retirement for "at least 10 years," Barker said he has so much fun doing the show that he hasn't been able to leave.
"I've gone on and on and on to this ancient age because I've enjoyed it," he said. "I've thoroughly enjoyed it and I'm going to miss it."
Reaching dual milestones, 50 years on television and 35 with "Price," made this an "appropriate" time to retire, Barker said. Besides, hosting the daily CBS program — in which contestants chosen from the crowd "come on down" to compete for "showcases" that include trips, appliances and new cars — is "demanding physically and mentally," he said.
"I'm just reaching the age where the constant effort to be there and do the show physically is a lot for me," he said. "I might be able to do the show another year, but better (to leave) a year too soon than a year too late."
Leslie Moonves, president and CEO of CBS Corporation, said Barker has left an enduring mark on the network, calling his contribution and loyalty "immeasurable."
"We knew this day would come, but that doesn't make it any easier," Moonves said in a statement. "Bob Barker is a daytime legend, an entertainment icon and one of the most beloved television personalities of our time."
Barker began his national television career in 1956 as the host of "Truth or Consequences." He first appeared on "Price" on Sept. 4, 1972 and has been the face of the show ever since.
A CBS prime-time special celebrating the show's longevity and Barker's five decades on TV was already under way, a network spokesman said.
To kick off his retirement, Barker said he will "sit down for maybe a couple of weeks and find out what it feels like to be bored." Then he plans to spend time working with animal-rights causes, including his own DJ&T Foundation, founded in memory of his late wife, Dorothy Jo, and mother, Matilda.
He said he'd take on a movie role if the right one came along, but filmmakers, take note: "I refuse to do nude scenes. These Hollywood producers want to capitalize on my obvious sexuality, but I don't want to be just another beautiful body."
Freemantle Media, which owns "Price," has been looking for Barker's replacement for "two or three years," Barker said. And he has some advice for whoever takes the job: learn the show's 80 games backwards and forward.
"The games have to be just like riding a bicycle," Barker said. "Then he will be relaxed enough to have fun with the audience, to get the laughs with his contestants and make the show more than just straight games, to make it a lot of fun."
As for his fans, Barker said he "doesn't have the words" to express his gratitude.
"From the bottom of my heart, I thank the television viewers, because they have made it possible for me to earn a living for 50 years doing something that I thoroughly enjoy. They have invited me into their homes daily for a half a century."
But when it comes to saying his final TV goodbye, Barker said he'll do it the same way he does each day on "Price": "Help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered."
Concertgoer throws drink at Streisand
SUNRISE, Fla. - The funny girl wasn't laughing. Barbra Streisand had a drink lobbed at her Monday after a mid-concert skit poking fun at President Bush.
Streisand's publicist, Dick Guttman, said a paper cup filled with some sort of liquid was thrown on stage but apparently did not hit Streisand during her second performance in this Fort Lauderdale suburb.
Streisand's manager, Martin Erlichman, said she shrugged off the incident and responded to the angry audience member by saying: "It's a free country and they're entitled to express their opinion."
It's at least the third time the skit, which includes a George W. Bush impersonator, has angered Streisand's audience. A heckler targeted her at the Philadelphia opening of her 20-city comeback tour, Guttman said, and Streisand made headlines with her response to a jeerer at Madison Square Garden last month.
Erlichman said Streisand, 64, believed the skit was in good fun and noted impersonator Steve Bridges, who wrote it, is a Republican.
"This skit has been so massively covered by media, it's impossible that it still could come as a surprise to any of the Bush admirers who bought tickets," Erlichman said.
Despite the controversy, Erlichman said the skit would remain a part of the tour.
"It stays in the show except for the few performances where Steve has a conflicting commitment," Erlichman said.
Streisand, an outspoken liberal, is touring the country after a 12-year absence from the stage, offering fans a repertoire of her four decades of hits.
Lights out for drama Studio 60?
By the time you read this it probably will be official. Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip will be cancelled by NBC.
Getting pulled this Monday night to test low-rated rookie Friday Night Lights in the time slot was the kiss of death. The season's most hyped (and expensive) drama crashed and burned because of high expectations and low ratings, always a killer combo.
Studio 60 started out last month with some 14 million U.S. viewers but has slid to fewer than 8 million.
What went wrong? A brilliant pilot was followed by five uneven episodes. While there were flashes of style and wit, the sketch-show-within-a-show at the core of this series never for a second seemed funny. Aside from Matthew Perry, who was brilliant, not all the cast members clicked (although Steven Weber as a pissy network boss worked for me). And while critics raved about Aaron Sorkin's clever dialogue, the inner workings of a TV show was probably just not that interesting to the average viewer,
For those of you who loved it, like I did, wait for the DVD.
The news comes as another blow to CTV which has gone 0-for-this-fall. Of their four rookie dramas, one is cancelled (Smith), one is probably cancelled (Studio 60) and the other two are faltering (Justice, The Nine). Of their five new comedies, two are cancelled (Happy Hour, Twenty Good Years), one is postponed (Knights Of Prosperity) and two are bombing (30 Rock, The Class). Even worse, one of their mid-season shows, Waterfront, has been cancelled even before it premieres.
Meanwhile, three of the highest-rated new shows south of the border -- Heroes, Shark and Brothers & Sisters -- are all on Global. CHUM also has two of the U.S. Top 5: Jericho and Ugly Betty. All five have won full-season orders.
Conan goes bare-bones
Move over, Nichol Richie, Posh Spice and that skinny Olsen twin -- Conan O'Brien is going "skelevision."
Tonight's special Halloween episode of Late Night With Conan O'Brien (12:35 a.m. EST) will be performed entirely with skeletons.
It is one of those crazy ideas that usually cracks people up in a writer's room and then never sees the light of day -- except on O'Brien's up-for-anything little show.
Over the past 13 seasons, O'Brien and company have never shied away from turning Late Night inside out. They seem to do this as much to keep themselves keen as to shake up their audience. As O'Brien told me a couple of years ago when he took his show to Toronto, "From the beginning we always tried to make this show where it's not safe to turn it off."
There have been some pretty out-there examples over the years. One Late Night episode was done entirely in claymation, like an old, extended Mr. Bill cartoon from Saturday Night Live. Another was retooled as an infomercial, with O'Brien in a really loud sweater pitching the 10th anniversary DVD of the series.
Then there was the time they broadcast an entire show from one of those Circle Line ferries that rings Manhattan. During New York's 2003 blackout, they did a last-minute, 15-minute version of the show using nothing but reserve power.
Other late-night talk shows have thought outside the box in the past. Diehard Letterman fans will recall the time he broadcast an entire hour in Spanish, or the time the entire screen slowly rotated 360 degrees over the course of the hour (people who tuned in halfway through saw an upside-down Peter Ustinov). TV repair shops were flooded with calls.
After 50 years, so much of late night is the same old same old -- the desk, the band, the monologue -- that shows such as Letterman and O'Brien have to shake things up just to keep everybody honest. Torontonians will recall the week-long O'Brien orgy that hit this city early in 2004. O'Brien recently rocked Chicago with a similar road trip. Then there was that wacky, hour-long travelogue to Finland to meet look-a-like Finnish president Tarja Halonen,
REAL EPISODE
But skeletons? "This may be the finest hour of television NBC has ever produced ... with skeletons," O'Brien said in a press statement. He didn't say, "It takes guts to do a show with skeletons," so I'll say it for him.
The idea is to take an episode from last May, which featured guests Larry King, Omar Epps (House) and actress and pole-dancing workout instructor Sheila Kelley, and re-do the visuals with skeleton puppets. Toronto-born Will Arnett (Arrested Development) will also be "skeletized" with O'Brien in the opening "In The Year 2000" bit.
While no preview screener was made available to press, the stills from the show (surrounding this story) look pretty damn funny. Check out King's red suspenders on his skeleton. If anything, the CNN host looks healthier than usual.
O'Brien's skeleton, of course, is sporting a big red wig. The purple tie is a classy touch.
Will this get old in about two minutes? Taking stupid to its ridiculous conclusion has always been part of O'Brien's charm.
After 2,000-plus hours, O'Brien has to do something while he waits to take over Jay Leno's hosting duties on The Tonight Show (scheduled to occur in 2009).
"Most nights, you're looking for anything," O'Brien confided to the Sun in 2004. "Someone told me that Johnny Carson once broke into a card trick spontaneously on the air. In the commercial break, the guest said, 'Wow, that was really cool.' And Johnny said, 'When you have a job like this, you eventually use everything you've got.'"
Everything, right down to the bare bones.
Canadian cities star as themselves in new movies
TORONTO (Hollywood Reporter) - Canadians have long been used to seeing their cities on the big screen as backdrops for Hollywood shoots here.
But with U.S. production in Canada on the wane, Canadian cities increasingly get to play themselves in homegrown theatrical dramas and comedies.
Paul Fox's "Everything's Gone Green," for example, features Vancouver as Vancouver, which sits well with local screenwriter Douglas Coupland.
"So many shoots are always going on in Vancouver. You'll see four or five in a row, and every time you die inside, as we're never Vancouver. Instead, we're Portland, Los Angeles or Seattle," Coupland says.
He recalls the Vancouver street he lives on doubling in 1999 for a location in Colorado for the thriller "Double Jeopardy," starring Tommy Lee Jones and Ashley Judd.
"It was out of control," Coupland says of his hometown disguising itself for Hollywood's benefit. In "Everything's Gone Green," Coupland's ode to Vancouver, the screenwriter uses the city's sea-to-sky beauty and expensive property market to drive the motivation of characters.
"That helped establish what the characters do, and the embryo of the city itself -- real estate, grow-ops, pyramid schemes and the post-industrial economy -- anything where you don't make anything tangible," he explains.
At the other end of the country, Atlantic Canada is disguising itself less and less as New England. Halifax, for example, plays itself in two goofball comedies: the Ivan Reitman-produced "Trailer Park Boys: The Movie" and David Gonnella's "A Bug and a Bag of Weed," which used the city's South Center Mall and Q Billiards Hall as locations.
Erik Canuel's buddy movie "Bon Cop, Bad Cop," which in early October became the highest-grossing Canadian movie of all time, even used its Toronto and Montreal backdrops to generate laughs. That includes a murder investigation opened after a body is found draped over a highway sign on the border dividing Quebec and Ontario.
And Ross Weber's "Mount Pleasant" features a derelict, drug-ridden Vancouver neighborhood in which the journey of three separate couples from varying backgrounds intersect when a little girl is accidentally pricked by a poisoned discarded needle.
U.S. production here continues to slide as the rising Canadian dollar makes it too expensive for U.S. producers, who are turning to cheaper foreign locales or just decide to stay in Hollywood. Canadian provinces are fighting back by offering more financial incentives.