Monday Morning Quarterback Part III

By BOP Staff

August 24, 2011

This is what 'goodwill' looks like.

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One day, people may rent this movie on DVD. Or watch it streaming. Or on the pay channels.

Kim Hollis: One Day, the Anne Hathaway project from An Education director Lone Scherfig, opened to $5.1 million and did about as well as the other three new releases in terms of per location average. What do you take from this result?

Brett Beach: And here we have the "'anti-The Help": An adaptation of a best-selling novel that opens to as dreadful reviews as two of the other three openers this weekend, sent out into a moderate amount of theaters by a smaller studio (instead of Disney). If The Help wasn't dominating discussions, raising debates and working its way up to #1, this may have opened in the $9 to $10 million mark. I have a feeling this is going to be a small film with only so-so word-of-mouth that does not grow perceptibly and will probably peter out at around $20 million. I was excited all summer to see this until I saw the trailer for the first time three weeks ago, and read the mostly scathing critical reaction.

Reagen Sulewski: Adding on to Brett's point, it didn't help (again, sorry) that there was virtually no ad support for this that I saw - which seems insane when they've got the next Catwoman in their film, and possibly the next Sandra Bullock to boot. To me, this seemed more like something that was being given a token North American release, with the bulk of the support expected to come from UK audiences. For all the American stars you can throw in a film, if they're speaking in a British accent, it's really tough to get US audiences to care.




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Max Braden: One Day offered an Anne Hathaway film without the titillation of Love and Other Drugs, the popcorn commercialism of Bride Wars, the Oscar bait of Rachel Getting Married, and the dressing of Becoming Jane. So, we're supposed to rush to see her use a pointless accent on a guy we don't recognize in some unrequited romance plot? Great, here's my 11 dollars! I imagine the people who saw this were couples in denial of their impending breakups. The trio of movies this weekend - Conan, Fright Night, and One Day - really seemed to succeed only with the most diehard audiences.

Edwin Davies: As a Brit, I can say that the idea that One Day is receiving at best a token release in the U.S. is pretty accurate, because over here the ads for it have been pretty omnipresent for weeks and weeks now. The book's been something of a phenomenon here, and there has been a lot of anticipation building for its release in the last couple of months. Whether or not that translates into a big success is still yet to be seen, but the fact that this was released in late August suggests that the studio had no faith in it as an Oscar contender and considers the U.S. box office to be a sideshow to what it will do elsewhere. Even so, its budget of $15 million is pretty modest, so even if it peters out in the low teens it won't be the biggest loss in the world.


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