Ringer Spy Milaya sends along these scans from the latest issue of ‘8 Days Magazine’.
Category: Old Special Reports
Midnight screenings cast early B.O. spell
The bell has rung and “Rings” has come out swinging. Actual box office data for first-day ticket sales to New Line’s “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” won’t be available until today, but by Wednesday afternoon it was clear that any concerns the distrib might have nursed about soft opening-day biz were for naught.
“It’s safe to say that there is a huge groundswell out there that even we did not expect to find,” distrib prexy David Tuckerman said. “That’s clear from the excitement the exhibitors have shown, the reviews that we’ve seen and the fact that we’re on as many screens as we are during this play period.”
New Line, which bowed “Lord of the Rings” on a distrib-record 5,700 screens Wednesday, said many midnight screenings and other showtimes had sold out.
New Line also opened the film day-and-date in 13 foreign territories, which rang up box office to the tune of $11.6 million. Some of the biggest numbers came from Germany, with $3.5 million, and France, with $1.8 million.
That could portend boffo weekend box office for the effects-laden fantasy, which unspooled in 3,359 theaters in North America — many offering “Rings” on at least two screens.
On the other hand, only bigger-market venues booked midnight shows or even matinees for the nearly three-hour pic.
On Tuesday, distrib projected pic would gross at least $60 million in its first five days through Sunday (Daily Variety, Dec. 19).
Eye on overnights
“Our numbers are huge in Manhattan and all of the matinee cities,” Tuckerman said Wednesday. “But I think that tonight will tell us where we’re going to go this weekend. It’s almost a three-hour running time, so it’s hard to tell what it’s going to do in the smaller theaters and smaller towns with only one showtime.”
AMC Entertainment spokesman Rick King said the Kansas City, Mo.-based exhib skedded midnight shows in 59 theaters in various markets.
“We enjoyed exceptional attendance, including sellouts in some major markets and college towns,” King said.
Meanwhile, though nobody expects “Rings” to deliver anything like the recent $90.3 million record bow of Warner Bros.’ “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” it appears New Line is managing to one-up its corporate kin’s family fantasy in one way: ” ‘Harry didn’t do much in midnight screenings,” King noted.
AMC’s strongest midnight markets for “Rings” were San Jose, Calif.; Columbus, Ohio; Chicago; Dallas-Fort Worth; and San Antonio, he said.
Midnight madness
Brian Callaghan, marketing director at Chestnut Hill, Mass.-based General Cinemas, said exhibs are happy for any opportunity to mount midnight screenings. “It adds a whole set of showtimes that they normally don’t have.”
GC offered midnight “Rings” showtimes in 30 different locations, producing several sellouts.
Some exhibs argue that long running times don’t translate into more popcorn, candy and beverage sales per showtime. But Callaghan said he believes “Rings” will prove to be “a great concession movie.”
A significant number of patrons will show up early to secure seats, thus raising the prospects for double dipping at the concession stand, he argued.
Nothing Real, a compositing software provider to the digital content creation market, announces that WETA Digital, a New Zealand-based visual effects facility, is using its Shake software as the primary film compositing system to handle the enormous visual effects requirements for New Line Cinema’s and Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic The Lord of the Rings trilogy. WETA is producing all three films in the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Rings, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, simultaneously. To date, Shake has helped WETA tackle more than 1,000 compositing intensive effects shots on the projects.
WETA has installed more than 52 GUI and 100 render-only Shake software licenses since it began building its new state-of-the-art studio and model postproduction environment, nearly three years ago. Shake now serves as the cornerstone of the facility’s compositing pipeline.
“WETA‘s massive undertaking in bringing to cinematic life three of the world’s literary masterpieces, demanded, and continues to demand, technological innovation at every step of the postproduction process,” says Allen Edwards, president of Nothing Real. “Nothing Real is especially thrilled that they have selected Shake as a foundation application to support its digital post production pipeline and successfully create cutting-edge visual effects that will serve these hugely visual and epic stories.”
WETA faced a number of compositing challenges in the creation of more than 570 shots for the first film in the trilogy. The casting of actors of normal stature as hobbits and dwarves required the development of scale compositing techniques to seamlessly integrate them with the larger races on the screen. Thousands of CG elements, including crowds, creatures, environments, digital matte paintings, and digital stunt doubles were also created by WETA for integration by the 27 members of the compositing team. Motion control photography was used extensively on both the live action and miniature stages. A typical shot might depend on twin backgrounds, a digital matte object, multiple blue/greenscreen and CG smoke and creature elements, and miniatures. The most complex shot had over 300 input layers of various types, thousands of operations in the final compositing script, and was nearly 1500 frames in length.
“Integrating Shake facility-wide as our primary compositing system was mission-critical to our production efforts on these monumental projects.
Shake’s speed, flexibility, and scalability make it unquestionably the best compositing tool for complex imagery creation and manipulation,” says Jon Labrie, CTO at WETA. “Simply put, we couldn’t have completed The Fellowship of the Rings without it.
“The production-proven experience of Nothing Real’s development team coupled with its superior understanding of film compositing technology has been invaluable to our efforts to jointly develop and customize aspects of Shake to our particular production needs,” added Labrie. “Our relationship with Nothing Real remains essential as we move forward to complete the following two films.”
“Working closely with WETA and having access to ‘real-world feedback’ allows us to exchange ideas and information so that we can continue to deliver superior quality and innovative compositing technologies that helps our customers raise the standard by which special effects for high-end film applications are realized,” says Arnaud Hervas CFO at Nothing Real.
From: Miss Underhill
Just thought I’d tell you that LOTR is up for MORE nominations in various awards.
The 1st is the Broadcast Film Association Awards, LOTR is up for 4 : LOTR is up for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Song (May It Be), and Best Composer.
Next is the Golden Satelite Awards, LOTR is up for 10!!! : LOTR is up for Best Picture (Animated/Mixed Media), Actor in a supporting role – Drama (Ian McKellen), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Costume Design, Editing, Production Design, Original song (May It Be again), Sound and Visual Effects.
(Oscar…here we come, Elijah, can I come with you to the show? -Xo)
From: Heather
Here are the dates and times for the National Geographic show on MSNBC from the tvguide website
Sunday, Dec 23 8 PM
Monday, Dec 24 12 AM
Friday, Dec 28 9 PM
Saturday, Dec 29 1 AM
Sunday, Dec 30 6 PM
From: Jason
I have just listened to an interview with the CEO of New Zealand Tourism on Australia’s ABC Radio on the subject of the impact of the Lord of the Rings on NZ. The interview, conducted via telephone, went for about ten minutes and the interviewee (I’m sorry, his name eludes me presently) spoke quite frankly about how NZ fully intends to cash-in on the phenomenon stating that it was a unique opportunity for them.
“If NZ could do half as well as Australia did from the Crocodile Dundee franchise,” he said, “they would be extremely happy.” And reports so far, particularly from Europe, show that people are already keen to visit their country having only seen snippets of the movie(s).
He also spoke briefly about the Premiere tonight in Wellington, saying that the city was going Middle-earth mad. There was a buzz around the city and that many of the place/product names had been changed for the occasion, including streets and a major newspaper.