The Reject Report Owns the Night, Not to mention George Clooney

Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on October 12, 2007

Welcome again to yet another thrilling Reject Report, with what is shaping up to be the first of a long line of weekends where we see quality movies at the box office fighting for position. We have the Goerge Clooney effort Michael Clayton going wide, and with We Own the Night, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, The Final Season, Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married and a whole bunch of flicks coming up, it’s shaping up to be a very tight battle Too close to call, in fact.

Anyway here we go, and we begin with two movies going wide this week.

Michael Clayton opened last week in very limited release, and this week goes out to 2,400-plus theaters all over America. This is another George Clooney serious-type movie where he tries to right wrongs and so on. Here, Clooney plays a bigshot corporate lawyer, a fixer as it were, for one of these big firms. He’s doing all this dirty work at the behest of one of the partners, played by Sydney Pollack (the famous director). When another angst-ridden attorney shakes things up by sabotaging a case, it forces Clayton to thoroughly re-examine his work. It’s basically the story of the four worst days of this guy’s life at this miserable, unethical corporate law job.

It’s gotten great reviews, something like 88% at Rotten Tomatoes, so I think there will be good box office. But after last week there is no way I am picking this to get more than $15 million. I’ve learned my lesson after picking The Heartbreak Kid to make $26 mil. Besides, nobody’s going to the theaters.

Across the Universe is expanding to 700 cinemas this week and I thought I would mention that this Beatles-themed musical, with Evan Rachel Wood and all these folks singing these tunes in it, is in a lot of cities now. It’s been doing great business in its run, that I do know. So I am picking $3.7 mil for this movie.

Now onto the new releases.

We Own the Night stars Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg and directed by James Gray, and it played at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. Phoenix plays Bobby Green, club manager of a Russian-owned nightclub circa 1988, and he finds himself caught in the middle of this drug war that is going on. Unbeknownst to the shady people he now hangs around with, his brother (Wahlberg) and his father (Robert Duvall) are both NYPD cops, and Phoenix soon has to decide which side of the coming drug war he wants to be on. The movie also stars Eva Mendes as his girlfriend Amanda.

Interesting stuff, featuring a cast of stars. But first place? Tough call. For now I will put it down for $15 mil, same as Michael Clayton, and I’ll make a final prediction later on. It’s playing in over 2,000 cinemas.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age is the sequel to the original movie Elizabeth that starred Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush. These two are back again for the sequel, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. In this movie Queen Elizabeth I is trying to secure absolute power, preparing to go to war against the Spanish Armada, and falling for Sir Walter Raleigh, all in one movie. This is the second of what will likely be a trilogy for this series. I think we’re looking at about $11 mil.

The Final Season is, from what I gather, trying to be one of those small-town-team-faces-uphill-struggle-and-wins type of stories. It’s the true story of Norway, Iowa’s final season of high school baseball with a team trying to win a 20th state championship with a first-year coach and with the high school about to close. Riveting stuff.

Here’s the problem, though. All the real baseball-movie fans aren’t going to be at the theaters. Instead they will be at HOME watching baseball on TV! The playoffs are on! So I don’t see this one making more than $4 million dollars.

And finally, Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married is the movie adaptation of the stage play of the same name. It’s exactly what it sounds like, with people trying to navigate the minefield that is marriage. This movie is set at a winter retreat with four married couples on vacation, and things get interesting when this hot girl shows up to stir up trouble. Tyler Perry is of course in it, and so is Janet Jackson and a few other people. Perry also wrote and directed it and a lot of it was shot up at Whistler, B.C., Canada.

Looking at the trailer I have a hard time believing this thing will do better than $9 million. Quite frankly, this is a movie aimed for adults, and adults just aren’t going to movies these days, it seems. But keep in mind, this guy Perry also made Diary of a Mad Black Woman, and that was a huge hit!!! So this movie could surprise some people. Including me.

There are of course other movies out there in limited release. A lot of people have talked about, Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution , is only in 77 theaters. So that flick won’t be in the top ten.

Anyway, now that I have thought it over, I’ve decided to add an extra $100,000 to the total for We Own the Night, so that’s your projected winner, by a hair:

You know, you could hire a chimpanzee to make predictions this week and end up in the ballpark. This really is a difficult week to predict and anything can happen. You know what? In other weeks I’d make predictions and end up looking like an idiot. But this is the first week since I started doing this column where I fully EXPECT to end the weekend looking like an idiot. I truly believe my predictions will all end up being junk. So I sure hope you aren’t betting any money on the movies. Given my prediction rate of the last two weeks, what we’ll probably see happening is The Game Plan finishing in first place with $10 or $11 million dollars or something like that.

We’ll see you again at the end of the weekend to find out the real box office numbers, because really, I have no clue who’s going to finish first.

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