The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies
The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies |
- 'Texas Chainsaw' makes a killing at box office
- Schwarzenegger is back, Hollywood hopes he's still a star
- The Last Stand movie premiums and tickets
| 'Texas Chainsaw' makes a killing at box office Posted: 07 Jan 2013 12:54 AM PST HOLLYWOOD (Reuters) - The return of the bloody Texas Chainsaw franchise sliced up movie box office rivals with a surprise win over the weekend, grabbing an estimated US$23 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales. The new Texas Chainsaw 3D pulled past Quentin Tarantino Western Django Unchained, the second place film from Friday through Sunday with US$20 million. No. 3 movie The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey grabbed US$17.5 million. Going into the weekend, box office forecasters did not think the revival of the 40-year-old Texas Chainsaw franchise had enough buzz to top the holiday releases that are adding to their tallies during the month of January, a typically slow time for moviegoing. Marketing efforts for Texas Chainsaw paid off for distributor Lions Gate Entertainment, the studio behind the horror franchise. Lions Gate ran a social media campaign aimed at its core horror fan base - mostly young men and women - and ran promotions during AMC Networks' TV zombie hit The Walking Dead. The studio aimed for a broader audience with promotions during college football bowl games and other sports programs after Christmas. "The numbers were a little bit more than expected," said Richie Fay, the president of domestic distribution for Lions Gate Entertainment. "It is great to be No. 1. I think we held our own," he added. Lions Gate spent about $20 million to promote the movie, which was produced by Millennium Films. The movie revives a franchise that started four decades ago with the 1974 film about a serial killer named Leatherface. Since then, the seven Texas Chainsaw movies have pulled in US$175 million at North American (U.S. and Canadian) theaters, according to website Box Office Mojo. The films have generated US$416 million domestically. The new movie follows a woman who inherits a family home in the town of Newt, Texas, showing all of the blood and gore in 3D. The story picked up where the original left off and included cameos from original cast members. Texas Chainsaw was the only new nationwide release in North America (United States and Canada) over the weekend. The Hobbit, the first of three movies based on the fantasy novel by J.R.R. Tolkien, brought its total domestic sales to US$263.8 million since its December 14 debut. Django Unchained, released on Christmas Day, reached US$106.3 million. In fourth place for the weekend, musical Les Miserables earned US$16.1 million, bringing its domestic sales to US$103.6 million since its Christmas Day release. The No. 5 slot belonged to family comedy Parental Guidance, which grossed US$10.1 million. The Hobbit was distributed by Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros. studio. The Weinstein Co. released Django Unchained. Universal Studios, a unit of Comcast Corp distributed Les Miserables. Parental Guidance was released by 20th Century Fox, a unit of News Corp. |
| Schwarzenegger is back, Hollywood hopes he's still a star Posted: 06 Jan 2013 10:36 PM PST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - As he famously droned on-screen in his signature Terminator movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger is back. A year after leaving the California governor's office and becoming tabloid fodder for fathering a boy with his family's housekeeper and splitting with his wife, Maria Shriver, the 65-year old former bodybuilder will star in no less than three Hollywood movies over the next 12 months. None are likely to win Schwarzenegger an Oscar. Indeed, the movies, and Schwarzenegger's own fee, are low-budget compared with his global blockbusters of yore. But studio executives are betting that overseas fans especially will once again respond to a personality whose 24 films generated worldwide ticket sales of US$3.9 billion, according to boxoffice.com. "He is still a worldwide star who resonates with action audiences around the world," said Rob Friedman, the co-chairman of the Lionsgate motion picture group, which is scheduled to release his next two films. The Last Stand will open on January 18 in the United States, and The Tomb in September. Ten, the third film, is scheduled for release in January 2014 by Open Road Films, a joint venture of the AMC and Regal Theater chains. "When you have left the movie business for seven years, it's kind of a scary thing to come back because you don't know if you're accepted or not," Schwarzenegger said at a Saturday press event for The Last Stand. "There could be a whole new generation of action stars that come up in the meantime." The actor said he was "very pleasantly surprised" by what he called a "great reaction" to his cameo in the 2010 action film The Expendables, which featured fellow action stars Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham. The film grossed US$103.1 million in U.S. ticket sales and US$274.5 million worldwide. Since then, Schwarzenegger appeared in a second Expendables and says he will join a fifth installment of the Terminator if it is made. Comcast's Universal Pictures wants to "do a bunch" of new films based on the 30-year-old Conan The Barbarian movie, said Schwarzenegger, in which he would reprise his role as a barbarian. He added that Universal, after 10 years of prodding by Schwarzenegger, also wants to do a sequel to the 1988 comedy Twins, in which he and Danny DeVito played mismatched twins, to be called Triplets. Schwarzenegger no longer commands the US$25 million paychecks he cashed in his heyday and will get between US$8 and US$10 million for each of his next three films, according to two people with knowledge of his salary but who were not authorized to speak publicly about it. He also gets a percentage of the profits, according to one of the people. The new Schwarzenegger calculus banks on his films doing outsized business overseas while operating within budgets that are a fraction of the US$200 million cost of his last action film, the 2003 Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines. The budget for The Last Stand is estimated at US$50 million, according to movie resource site IMDB.com. "He has significant value outside the United States and Canada, where he is still revered by people who have grown up with him throughout the years," said Jere Hausfater, chief operating officer of film production company Aldamisa International, which hopes to do a film with Schwarzenegger in the future. What audiences will see is a aging star who isn't afraid of showing his drooping muscles and widening paunch, or of making fun of being past his prime. In the The Last Stand, a less than rock hard Schwarzenegger plays a retired Los Angeles policeman who becomes the sheriff of a small border town and is then called on to stop a violent drug lord from crossing. In Ten he plays an aging drug agent, and in The Tomb an older prison inmate. "We all go through the same dramas, we look at the mirror and say, what happened? You once had muscles and slowly they are deteriorating," said Schwarzenegger at The Last Stand press event. "The great thing in the movie is that they we're not trying to play me as the 35-year-old action hero but the one who is about to retire, and all of a sudden there is this challenge where he really needs to get his act together." The one-time muscle man compares his career metamorphosis to that of his friend Clint Eastwood, who transitioned from his Dirty Harry days to a wiser person whose not afraid to make fun of his slipping abilities in recent films like Trouble With The Curve. "That's called evolution," said Sylvester Stallone, who stars with Schwarzenegger as aging inmates in The Tomb. "There are no more wooly mammoths. Things change, but the one thing you cannot replace is charisma. Certain people have it, and will have it until the day they die." Schwarzenegger's infamy in fathering a son outside of his high-profile marriage to Shriver initially seemed to hurt his popular appeal. Within weeks of the disclosure, The Governator, a comic book that would feature his likeness, was canceled. Ultimately, though, moviegoers will be less interested in Schwarzenegger's political adventures and personal scandals than in what he puts on the screen, says Peter Sealey, founder of The Sausalito Group and a former Columbia Pictures president of marketing and distribution. "The movie-going audience really don't care about things like infidelity, DUIs," added publicist Howard Bragman, vice-chairman of the firm called Reputation. " T hey overlook a lot. Ultimately, it remains, how are the movies? Is he credible? Is he going to be a joke?" |
| The Last Stand movie premiums and tickets Posted: 06 Jan 2013 08:11 PM PST The leader of a drug cartel busts out of a courthouse and speeds to the Mexican border, where the only thing in his path is one Sheriff Ray Owens. Sommerton Junction is a sleepy border town where nothing really exciting happens, so when one of the FBI's most wanted drug kingpin escapes and heads towards Sommerton Junction, Sheriff Owen is tasked with stopping him. Catch The Last Stand starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jaimie Alexander, Rodrigo Santoro, Forest Whitaker and Johnny Knoxville in cinemas this 18 January 2013. Thanks to Nusantara Ederan Filem, we have movie premiums and tickets to give away. All you have to do is answer the questions below and follow the instructions given. 1. Name the actor who plays Sheriff Ray Owens. 2. In the movie, Sheriff Ray Owens used to work as a cop in this world-famous police department. What is it? a. The NYPD b. The LAPD c. The FBI d. The CIA Email your answers with your details (name, address, IC number and contact number) to ecentralcontest@gmail.com by 10 January 2013. Title the subject THE LAST STAND. Winners will be notified by email. Prizes to win: 1 X The Last Stand jacket + 1 pair of tickets 3 X The Last Stand female t-shirt + 1 pair of tickets 3 X The Last Stand male t-shirt + 1 pair of tickets 3 X The Last Stand travel bag + 1 pair of tickets 3 X The Last Stand travel adapter + 1 pair of tickets Rules & Regulations 1.The contest is open to all Malaysian residents residing in Malaysia only. 2.To qualify for a prize, contestants must include relevant personal details (full name, address, new IC number , contact number). Email your answers to ecentralcontest@gmail.com. 3.Contestants may only submit one entry each. Multiple entries will be disqualified. 4.One prize is allowed per contestant only. 5.Prizes are not exchangeable for cash and the organizer reserves the right to exchange the prize with that of a similar value without prior notice. 6.Staff of The Star Publications (Malaysia) Berhad, sponsors and their immediate families are not allowed to participate. 7.Judges decision is final and no correspondence will be entertained. 8.Judges will be from The Star Online. 9.For enquiries, please e-mail ecentralmy@gmail.com 10. I hereby expressly consent to the collection, collation, use and/or disclosure of all my personal data by Star Publications (M) Berhand for the purposes of The Last Stand Contest. 11. Special screening for this movie will be on 16 January 2013 (Wednesday) at TGV 1 Utama at 8.45pm 12. Winners will have to pick up their prizes as well as the tickets at our redemption table on the day of the screening. 13. Winners will be notified by email. |
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