Titanic Wars

When Titanic overtook Star Wars as the all time box office champ, George Lucas took out this ad in Variety (art by Ian McCaig, thanks beatrizm). Now that James Cameron's latest blockbuster Avatar has become the highest-grossing film of all time (yes, yes higher ticket prices, etc.) will he take out an ad re-proclaiming his King of the World status? In any case it is one epic graphic. (reddit via @thehartley)

Update: Here are  the Top 10 movies of all time, by number of tickets sold, via The Hollywood Reporter. Avatar currently comes in at #26 with 76,421,000 tickets sold, at least as of Jan. 26.

1 "Gone With the Wind" (1939) 202,044,600
2 "Star Wars" (1977) 178,119,600
3 "The Sound of Music" (1965) 142,415,400
4 "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) 141,854,300
5 "The Ten Commandments" (1956) 131,000,000
6 "Titanic" (1997) 128,345,900
7 "Jaws" (1975) 128,078,800
8 "Doctor Zhivago" (1965) 124,135,500
9 "The Exorcist" (1973) 110,568,700
10 "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937) 109,000,000

Previously on Popped Culture...
Team Avatar: Pandora Police
Fool's Gold
It's The Pictures That Got Small

Fool's Gold

Woe be unto the Pirates of the Caribbean, whose swashbucklers only managed to pull in $142.1 million over the past four days. While the third installment of the Disney franchise did set a Memorial Day record, over three days it earned less than last summer’s Dead Man’s Chest and brought in less than Spider-Man 3. Only in Hollywood can making well over $100 million in a weekend be seen as a failure.

Pirates has already made $401 million worldwide, which makes it exceedingly hard to swallow studio complaints that piracy is hurting the industry. It makes me want to go out and buy a copy for $2 at a street corner, out of spite.

Of course skewed Hollywood economics are nothing new. What truly bothers me is how the entertainment press has bought into it. Why are box office stories given such huge play? Why am I reading about what how much cash studio bosses are rolling in every week? That is a business story and there is a whole other section for that

I understand that people are interested in what’s No. 1 at the box office (like that’s a good way to choose what film to see), but why is the box office tally the measuring stick? TV ratings measure audience; music charts tally the number of albums sold; bestsellers’ lists track bestsellers. All of these lists are based on audience popularity, which is how movies should be gauged. Why not use ticket sales as the new measure, which would allow year-to-year comparisons that wouldn’t be affected by the ever-inflating ticket prices. Leave the money to the accountants.

It's The Pictures That Got Small

There are no 20-something acting superstars these days, and The New York Times blames it on the actors.

Using the career arc of Orlando Bloom, Sharon Waxman argues that today's stars can't open a film and are unable to fill box office coffers. Bloom rose to prominence as the elf Legolas in The Lord of the Rings trilogy before moving on to Troy, Kingdom of Heaven and Elizabethtown.

Stardom came easier to the young only a decade or two ago. At 23, Tom Cruise grasped it with the release of Top Gun in 1986, and flaunted it two years later by turning a vehicle as slight as Cocktail into a major hit. Julia Roberts was a superstar at 22, after the success of Pretty Woman in 1990, and Leonardo DiCaprio was just 23 when Titanic turned him into an international screen presence in 1997.

All quickly rose into Hollywood's top salary tier - the ranks of the $20 million actor, or thereabouts - and achieved bankable status with nervous executives who were willing to make a costly film because these actors were in it.

There are just so many problems with this argument that I just don't know where to begin. Firstly, this smacks of the same excuses for this summer's box office drop off. It's because of DVDs, video games, an ancient curse, etc., etc., anything to take the spotlight off the awful films that were released.

Look at the movies referenced as star makers: Top Gun, Pretty Woman and Titanic. All three are in the Top 100 box office earners, with Titanic leading the list. Hardly a fair comparison to Kingdom of Heaven now, is it? I remember when Titanic was playing and nobody was saying, 'Hey, let's go see that Leo DiCaprio flick.' The argument seems to be that if there had been anyone else in the lead role of these movies, they would have been forgotten about.

The right casting can add to a great film, but no actor can save drek. It wasn't Orlando Bloom that sunk Kingdom of Heaven. Maybe it was a film about a Middle Eastern crusade when the U.S was invading an actual Middle Eastern nation that put people off. Of course if Russell Crowe was in it, it would have been huge. Sure, just look at Cinderella Man.

It's not the stars that got small, it's the pictures.

Is Bomb Spelt K-O-N-G?

Only in Hollywood would making $146 million over five days be seen as a failure. But that's exactly what the makers of King Kong are facing after their debut this weekend.

I try not to get sucked into the false economies of major moviemaking and it's spread into entertainment journalism, but when I see headlines like "Hollywood moguls beat their chests as Kong takes a dive," I just can't help myself.

The budget for the film was kingly on its own - a whopping $207 million -- but it has already recouped close to three quarters of that worldwide after its first weekend. Now box office often, almost inevitably, drops the following weekend as new films open and the massive multiplexes have satiated the publics pent up desire to see the film.

But Kong's three hour running time, which has been cited as one of the reasons for the "low" numbers, is a reason that the movie could keep growing, as those who couldn't make one of the showings last week head to the theatres on the good word of mouth. And who decided that three hours is too long for a movie anyway? Seems more of an economic decision than an artistic one. I think there should be more, while a few should probably have a half hour or more edited out of it. Either way, it should be based on the content, not how many screenings can be squeezed into an evening.

As a film fan, that all I really care about. Is the flick any good? I'll leave the rest to the economists and the statistic obsessed.