The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies
The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies |
- Blake Lively finds eternal youth
- First look: Woody Allen’s ‘Magic In The Moonlight’
- Flipping over flops
| Blake Lively finds eternal youth Posted: The American actress has been cast in the title role of the romantic fantasy film The Age Of Adaline. Blake Lively is set to star in The Age Of Adaline, a movie that has been in the "in development" stages since 2010. The actress replaces Katherine Heigl, who was originally slated to headline the project before backing out two years ago. According to Deadline.com, the former Gossip Girl star will play a woman who mysteriously stopped ageing after an accident at age 29. After enjoying immortality for several decades, she begins to question her status when she finds true love. The actress will likely be joined on the set by Ellen Burstyn, who is in talks to replace Angela Lansbury in the role of the protagonist's daughter, who is in her 80s. Indie director Lee Toland Krieger will helm The Age Of Adaline, which is scheduled to begin principal photography next March. The young American filmmaker made a name for himself in recent years with The Vicious Kind (2009) and Celeste And Jesse Forever (2012). Blake Lively was recently seen in Oliver Stone's crime thriller Savages. — AFP Relaxnews |
| First look: Woody Allen’s ‘Magic In The Moonlight’ Posted: Director's film brings together the talent of Marcia Gay Harden and Emma Stone. Two promotional images have been released for the film shot in the South of France by the 77-year-old director earlier this year. The feature now also has an official title: Magic In The Moonlight. The film marks Woody Allen's return to France after Midnight In Paris (2011). Emma Stone and Colin Firth will headline the prolific filmmaker's eighth film set in Europe. While plot details have been kept under wraps until now, the period costumes and vintage cars in the stills suggest that the action will be set in the years following World War I. The cast of Magic In The Moonlight also features Marcia Gay Hadren, Jacki Weaver and Eileen Atkins. The film is slated for worldwide release before summer 2014 after premiering at a prestigious international film festival, such as Berlin in February or Cannes in May. For the time being, Woody Allen is basking in the success of Blue Jasmine. The comedy drama, starring Cate Blanchett and Sally Hawkins, has been warmly received by critics and moviegoers alike. – RelaxNews |
| Posted: Why surprises at the box office are becoming more common. THE numbers said Kick-Ass 2 was going to do just that. Before its theatrical release, audience tracking surveys estimated the superhero action-comedy could gross as much as US$25mil (RM79.5mil) in its opening weekend. Instead, the sequel took in only US$13mil (RM41.3mil), finishing far behind the civil rights drama Lee Daniels' The Butler and earning Kick-Ass 2 an instant reputation as a flop. For decades, tracking was used by studios to determine filmgoer interest ahead of a new movie's release and tell marketing executives where to spend their advertising dollars. Now trade publications, national dailies, blogs, TV newscasts and even drive-time radio shows share the once closely-held numbers with everyday moviegoers. Tracking establishes financial expectations for a new film as well as an A-list star's ability to "open" a movie. The estimates effectively declare a winner before the weekly box office battle begins.  But at a time when tracking's influence on a film's fate at the box office has never been greater, chronic inaccuracies have led industry observers and some studio chiefs to conclude that tracking may no longer be a dependable barometer. With a cluster of Oscar-worthy films now heading into theatres, the pre-release surveys are increasingly coming under attack. "Tracking is broken. There's no doubt about it," said Vincent Bruzzese, chief executive of the tracking firm Worldwide Motion Picture Group. "It's been asking the same questions since 1980. It isn't predictive anymore. And it doesn't cover the way consumers make choices anymore." This summer, several movies were damaged by inaccurate tracking. The Lone Ranger, The Wolverine and The Hangover Part III were said to have "underperformed" when they had openings at least US$10mil (RM32mil) below estimates. All went on to sputter domestically after bad word of mouth and earlier-than-expected exits from theatres. Even a hit film can fall victim to bad tracking. Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 opened at No 1 but is seen as having underperformed by grossing US$10mil less than estimates predicted. When movies exceed expectations, they generate positive buzz that can increase returns. Recently, Gravity took in US$55mil (RM174.9mil) — US$10mil more than the most optimistic pre-release surveys indicated it would earn. Man Of Steel, The Conjuring and Now You See Me earned much more than tracking predicted. "You can say, 'The testing was great'," said one respected studio marketer who, like other top executives interviewed for this story, declined to be identified for fear of jeopardising his industry standing. "But you know in your heart you don't believe in the testing anymore. And if you do, you're fooling yourself." Because of the sheer volume of movies being released — 660 last year — as well as seismic social media changes, tracking service executives say, pre-release audience awareness and anticipation have never been more difficult to gauge. This is especially true, experts say, for non-sequel films and films popular with minority moviegoers, who can be harder to survey because they are a statistically small and not reliably representative cross-sampling of respondents. Even with tracking's accuracy increasingly doubted, it's such a dominant part of the Hollywood conversation that none of its studio detractors interviewed for this article voiced willingness to give up the service. Studios receive tracking information over a three-week to two-month pre-release window. The estimates sample audience awareness, "definite interest" in seeing a movie and the proportion of respondents ranking the movie as their first choice, as well as projected breakdowns by gender and age. Firms crunch their polling results, comparing the movies with previous titles by genre and release window to yield an estimated opening-weekend gross. But because respondents must self-identify as moviegoers who see at least six films per year, a sizable population remains under-accounted. Especially difficult to predict is audience turnout for faith-based films and movies based on TV shows such as Sex And The City. Citing issues similar to those faced by election-year pollsters, some studio marketing executives privately fear that tracking's respondents are not only less diverse but have been over-polled, succumbing to a kind of survey fatigue. "The phone rings, you don't answer if you don't recognise the call. And nobody answers the land line anyway," a studio marketer said. "It's one of the real challenges." — Los Angeles Times / McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Movies To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 ulasan:
Catat Ulasan