Fantasy Moguls’ Steve Mason is predicting a $152 million, six-day total for Transformers, but I”ve been told of a lower projection (composed by a competing studio) of $149,851,000. Dreamamount will undoubtedly claim $150 million and change if the actual final figure is anywhere close to that.
The best Transformers earning day so far has been the $29 million and change it took in last Wednesday. It did $22,201,000 yesterday, which was $2 million higher than Thursday’s total but $7 million below Wednesday’s.
Ratatouille‘s weekend projection is $30,878,000 — a good hold. Live Free or Die Hard will take in roughly $17,500,000 for the weekend. License to Wed wll end up with $10,5000,000 for the weekend…a cume of $17.8 or $17.9 million for six days (having opened Tuesday).
Evan Almighty will have a three-day tally of $8,719,000 by Sunday night. Figure a cume of $80 or $90 million. It lost 490 theatres this past week, which is unusual for a big studio film in its third week of play. 1408 will take it $7,091,000 for weekend. Knocked Up — $5,226,000. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer — $4,140,000. Ocean’s 13 — $3,668,000.
Sicko added 280 theatres but is down 24% from last weekend. It will probably earn between $25 and 30 million by the end of the run.

Two things wrong with Stuart Gordon‘s House of Re-Animator idea, which is about Herbert West bringing Dick Cheney and George Bush back to life with one of his green-liquid injections inside the White House. One, he’s a little late. The movie should be coming out, at the latest, sometime early next year, and Gordon doesn’t even have the financing together. And two, a Bush White House Reanimator movie won’t be worth much in terms of home video revenues because it’ll be totally dated as of January 20, 2009. It should have actually come out last year, or in ’05. Otherwise, it sounds hilarious.

“Walking out of a movie means something,” writes Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips. “It means a filmmaker has crossed a personal line in the sand. We ‘ankle,” as the show business publication Variety likes to put it, for different reasons. A walkout’s significance depends largely on the pace of the exit (fleeing in revulsion versus schlumping out, bored beyond recognition) in relation to the crimes up on screen.” I’ll never forgot being bawled out by three or four journos at the Westwood Bruin for walking out on Eight-Legged Freaks. As if I’d done something wrong. Who, today, would stand up for Eight Legged Freaks? Hell, who remembers Eight Legged Freaks?

Transformers will “certainly” make more than $150 million by Sunday night, I’ve been told. This is too depressing to write about at any length. If I could have clapped my hands and turned Transformers into a box-office bust, I would have clapped my hands and said “yeah.” I have this image of a 1500-foot tall statue of Micheal Bay striding Hollywood Blvd. like the Colossus of Rhodes, and then the statue suddenly coming alive with people screaming and cars crashing down below. And then Bay hearing the commotion and looking down and grinning, and then putting his hands on his hips and throwing his head back and going, “Hoo-haw-haw-haw-haw-haw!” — just like the big genie in Alexander Korda‘s The Thief of Baghdad.

A trailer for Ang Lee‘s Lust Caution (Focus Features, 9.28), a World War II espionage thriller featuring tasteful hot nude scenes featuring Chinese film star Tang Wei. The Focus copywriter says that Tony Leung (In the Mood for Love) plays Mr. Yee, “a powerful political figure in 1940s Shanghai.” with whom Tang Wei “gets swept up in a dangerous game of emotional intrigue.”

What the copywriter meant to say is that she does a Mata Hari on the guy, having an affair with him as part of a plan to either get information or set him up for a hit….or both. And that things get a little complicated by the fact that she falls in love with him. Ang Lee is a great cinematic painter and we all know it’s the singer not the song, but my God this could be the plot of a Sydney Sheldon novel.

No telling how good Ben Affleck‘s Gone Baby Gone (Miramax, 10.19) may be, but the trailer is very well cut — a solid indication of a pro-level thing. You can sort of tell that Casey Affleck gives a sharp, convincing performance as a Boston-area private dick. Morgan Freeman appears to be doing his excellent usual usual; ditto Michele Monaghan. It feels like this could be Mystic River and then some. You can’t trust feelings and intimations, of course. The proof will be in the pudding, which I presume will be served at the Toronto Film Festival.

A guy in the pipeline of producer J.J. Abrams, currently vacationing in Maine, informs that Cloverfield, the sea-monster movie, will open on 1.18.08.
Abrams is “very active on this one, as he plans to be on all Bad Robot projects,” he says. “The only things he’s been involved with which he hasn’t really had any creative role were What About Brian and Six Degrees — both shows that existed before Bad Robot really opened for business (meaning, when he put the team together).
“Cloverfield is an idea Abrams had over a year ago, which he then sold to Paramount. The point-of-view thing (Handicam) is the whole movie. Scenes from the trailer are in the film. Abrams got a really talented guy (Drew Goddard) to write (they’d worked together on Alias and, presently, Lost), and Matt Reeves to direct (they co-created Felicity and he’s pretty damn genius-level).
“Bad Robot and Paramount will be announcing the real title shortly.”

Paul Giamatti frame capture from the Shoot ‘Em Up trailer. (Thanks to Jason K. Heiser for providing the art.)

This Shoot ‘Em Up trailer has re-sold me. I was into this film eons ago, but the ardor faded when no trailer turned up for months and months and then when I heard about the extra shooting. Now I’m into it all over again because of Paul Giamatti‘s crazy-villain performance, which looks wonderful. It also seems to slightly de-emphasize the absurdist John Woo gun-ballet aspects.

I tried digging into the bootleg trailer for J.J. Abrams’ new hair-raiser called Cloverfield, attached to Transformers in theatres but captured by video cameras and posted online. It’s ostensiby “about a creature from the sea that attacks Manhattan” and sends, in the final shot, what looks like the head of the Statue of LIberty rolling and thumping down a street.
The trailer was forcibly removed from YouTube sometime this afternoon (Paramount legal takes credit for tha action in a posted statement in red letters). I wrote a guy who’s in the loop for a little inside-baseball reporting, but so far it’s been nada enchilada. Here’s another link.

The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil has posted mp3 files of chats with Rescue Dawn director Werner Herzog and star Christian Bale.

The only way that Sex and the City movie will emerge with any depth or distinction is if director-writer Michael Patrick King (i.e., the long-running HBO show’s exec producer) makes it into a kind of Susanne Bier movie, or one that might have been directed by Lars von Trier.

It would have to be about serious female nerve-core stuff. Something tough, brutally honest — the kind of woman’s film in which the actresses are frequently shown without makeup and the chatty-girly dialogue isn’t overdone. Not conventionally “entertaining” in any way, shape or form. In short, a film that would need to risk angering fans of the show.
Another way to go would be to shoot it without any sex scenes whatsoever. A third way would be to make it as provocatively sexual as In The Realm of The Senses.
I’m just saying the obvious, which is that movies have to stand tall above TV — they have to take the higher, more refined road. I doubt very much doubt if King has the balls or the power to try any of these three options. With New Line Cinema close to a deal to finance and distribute, you can bet your life savings and your life insurance policy that the film will will pander to the schmoes. Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon will all reprise their roles.