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My, what mediocre reviews you have.

Kim Hollis: Red Riding Hood, the latest glossed up fairy tale adaptation, opened to $14 million. Do you think this is a better performance than Beastly, or is it just a similar performance from a major studio in Warner Bros (as opposed to CBS Films)?

Matthew Huntley: I'd say it's a worse performance than Beastly, not least because it has bigger names, a bigger budget ($42 million compared to Beastly's $10 million) and because Warner Bros. is a major powerhouse studio compared to CBS. Perhaps Red Riding Hood needed to promote its male leads and the movie's love triangle more in order to attract a greater female viewership (you know, make it as much like Twilight as possible, because obviously the "from the director of Twilight" tag line wasn't enough). As I'll also mention my review, I'm glad this movie didn't open big, because I would hate to think it gives Hollywood justification to start a new trend of adapting every classic fairy tale to the big screen, especially when they're as amateurish as Red Riding Hood.





Brett Beach: If the basis is a comparison to Beastly being from an upstart studio (and maybe the hopes of WB execs that this could conceivably gross even one third of what Twilight did), then this is staggeringly underwhelming. In the context of this weekend, Red Riding Hood is the cheapest of the three budgets by far so I am inclined to cut it a little slack - mainly because Gary Oldman apparently saves the film with a scenery-chewing and completely inappropriate performance - even if it stands to have huge drops after this and finish with not much more than Beastly.

Matt, from what I understand, Hollywood is already feeling justified and has all sorts of delightful fairy tales coming our way soon including two Snow Whites, so all we can hope for is some happily ever afters.

Joshua Pasch: This performance is far more underwhelming than that of Beastly. In fact, though I didn't weigh in for MMQB last week, I'm inclined to say that Beastly's performance was above expectations (given CBS film's track record for having trouble opening a film over $12 million during opening weekend). Meanwhile Red Riding Hood had far greater built-in appeal. It has a more popular/attractive lead, a seasoned vet actor for street credibility, a Twilight association, a big studio behind it, and in my opinion, an inherently cooler story. That all of those advantages led only to a $4 million increase in opening weekend is astonishing.

As for Hollywood's trend of modernizing or remaking classic fairytales, I actually don't mind it one bit. That Beastly and Red Riding Hood are particularly bad attempts at doing so is a fault to those creative teams, not to the premise behind the films. I'll say its even one Hollywoods somewhat more inspired attempts and recycling content that the know is appealing. I'd liken it to the re-imaginings of Shakespeare's plays as modern, often teen, movies; O, 10 Things I Hate About You, and She's The Man all have redeeming qualities - that's all I hope for in the next batch of fairytale re-imaginings.

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