Craig's MovieBlog

Lesson #1 - Don't Write a Screenplay for an Animated Blockbuster

Whoa - did you know that writers of animated films get absolutely nothing when it comes to their films being sold to TV, video, and DVD?  The LA Times enlightens us...

"Writers of live-action features get royalties when their work is repackaged and sold. But writers of animation don't. Their 'ancillary profit participation,' as it's known, is paid in multiples of zero."

That seems a bit criminal when you consider that 3 of the top 7 box office films of the year so far are animated movies (Cars, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Over the Hedge).

Though they claim not to have ditched animation, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, whose credits include Aladdin and The Road to El Dorado, haven't written an animation screenplay since Shrek, in 2001, for which they earned an Oscar nomination. And who can blame them? Their script for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which has just broken into the top 10-grossing films of all time, is likely to net them each at least an extra $1 million when the film explodes onto the video market. That money never would have materialized if they had written, say, Shrek the Third instead.

Big Box Office Roundup - Memorial Day Weekend 2006

Didn’t any of you stay home this weekend?  Even if you didn’t go to see X-Men: The Last Stand ($122.9 million), you certainly went to see The Da Vinci Code ($42.4 million) or Over the Hedge ($35.3 million).  According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, the top 12 movies this week grossed $187.6 million, the highest EVER for any weekend.  Clearly the big winner this weekend were studio executives and babysitters taking care of your kids while you went out.

Let’s start with the behemoth that is X-Men: The Last Stand.  By taking in $120.1 million for the four-day weekend and $103.1 million for the three-day weekend, it has garnered its fair share of records: The biggest Memorial Day weekend ever (Shrek 2 is now in 2nd with $95.6 million).

5th biggest four-day weekend ever:

	Title	Opening
1	Revenge of the Sith	$158,449,700
2	Spider-Man 2	$130,456,123
3	The Matrix Reloaded	$129,282,716
4	Spider-Man	$125,878,901
5	X-Men: The Last Stand	$120,125,000

4th biggest three-day opening weekend ever:

	Title	Weekend
1	Spider-Man	$114,844,116
2	Revenge of the Sith	$108,435,841
3	Shrek 2	$108,037,878
4	X-Men: The Last Stand	$103,125,000

4th biggest three-day opening ever (not just weekends):

	Title	Opening
1	Revenge of the Sith	$124,237,232
2	Spider-Man	$114,844,116
3	The Matrix Reloaded	$103,227,933
4	X-Men: The Last Stand	$103,125,000

2nd biggest single day and 2nd biggest opening day ever:

	Title	Daily Gross
1	Revenge of the Sith	$50,013,859
2	X-Men: The Last Stand	$45,500,000

Biggest Friday ever:

	Title	Friday Gross
1	X-Men: The Last Stand	$45,500,000
2	Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire	$40,118,363
3	Spider-Man	$39,406,872

10th biggest Saturday ever at $32.1 million.  Shrek 2 leads with $44.8 million.

8th biggest Sunday ever at $25.5 million.  Shrek 2 leads with $34.9 million.

6th biggest Monday ever at $17.0 million.  Spider-Man 2 leads with $27.7 million.

But besides X-Men, there was other news to report.  First of all, The Da Vinci Code did tremendously here in the States (another $42.4 million, bringing it to $144.9 million and 2nd for 2006) but it did even better overseas, losing very little business this week compared to its opening last week.  It’s about to break the $500 million mark for its worldwide total, and that’s just after being open for only 11 days.  Only 42 films have ever broken that mark in their entire run.

Secondly, Al Gore’s PowerPoint presentation on global warming which became a movie, An Inconvenient Truth, took in the highest average per screen total ever for a documentary, at $70,505 per screen in four theaters for a total of $365,787.  As a comparison, Fahrenheit 9/11 made $23.9 million opening weekend, on 868 screens, for an average of $27,558 per screen.

Finally, I want to get back to the big movies of the weekend for a moment.  Day by day, X-Men dropped and dropped, while Da Vinci and Over the Hedge held relatively steady.  While X-Men definitely won the weekend, and won each day of the weekend, check out this comparative chart that I threw together: