The Reject Report: How Golden is My Weekend?

Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on December 7, 2007

Well, we all know what’s going to be Number One at the box office this weekend: THE GOLDEN COMPASS. Why even bother with a Reject Report this week, then? I’ve made my prediction, we can all go home! Really, this prediction stuff is getting to be too easy, what with one wide release every week. It’s not like I have the Midas touch when it comes to predicting movies, either. (Midas. Get it?!)

Just so you know— I know there are other movies out there, too. You are probably wondering why I regularly ignore a whole bunch of movies at THE REJECT REPORT that other people keep on talking about. Well, it’s because they aren’t in a lot of theaters, so they aren’t going to be in the running for the box office title or even Top Ten finishes. For example, take the movie Juno. It’s getting a lot of buzz and press. There are even reviews of that movie here on this web site! But there are only seven freaking screens showing this movie in the whole United States, based on Box Office Mojo. So why bother wasting my time, then, on a movie that isn’t going to be in the Top Ten and probably won’t be at a theater near you. It won’t be at a theater near ME, that’s for sure!

That’s why I usually don’t bother mentioning movies like Juno — because it ain’t a contender. Once it goes wide and has a shot at making some bucks, then I’ll bother to mention it.

Anyway, on to the latest, and only, major wide release:

The Golden Compass stars Nicole Kidman, Dakota Blue Richards and Daniel Craig in a fantasy movie filled with polar bears, wicked witches and talking animals. It’s set in this fantasy world run by this regimented mind-control dictatorship known as the Magesterium. It’s about this girl named Lyra who travels to the far North to rescue her friend from the forces of evil. In doing so she tries to escapes the villain of the movie Marisa Coulter (played by Kidman) and is joined in her travels by an armored polar bear (voiced by Ian McKellen). The movie is based on the first of Philip Pullman’s novels and definitely should have a Lord of the Rings type feel to it.

The problem is: it may NOT be another Lord of the Rings in the box office department. Already the critics have no idea whether they like or hate the movie. I would guess that the business will be good, though, so I say $40 million will be the take for this movie, and it will be your new Number One by a big margin. It will be in some 3,523 theaters this weekend.

So my predicted order of finish this weekend is as follows:

And that’s all for now. See you at the end of this weekend as we go through the final totals here at THE REJECT REPORT.

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