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Disney Drags the Beach Blanket Out of the Attic and Gives It a Shake

June 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment

LOS ANGELES — Next month Disney Channel’s young viewers will be introduced to a movie genre — the beach party film — that hasn’t been popular since their grandparents were teenagers.

“Teen Beach Movie” has a kooky plot twist and will get a marketing push on par with the one Disney gave to the hugely successful “High School Musical” series. But will Disney’s efforts result in a franchise-spawning hit? Or will “Teen Beach Movie” and its surfing, singing, super-silly characters end up, well, high and dry?

“We will find out,” said a laughing Gary Marsh, president of Disney Channels Worldwide. “We’re certainly rolling the dice to some degree.”

The beach party film occupies a particularly dusty corner of the Hollywood curiosity cabinet. Movies like “Beach Blanket Bingo,” “Gidget” and “How to Stuff a Wild Bikini” surged from 1959 to the mid 1960s, driven by a postwar fascination with California and the growing power of young ticket buyers. But then the party abruptly ended as social change engulfed moviegoers, shifting their taste in films.

“With all of the social upheaval, these films became impossible to sell by about 1970,” explained Jeanine Basinger, the chairwoman of Wesleyan University’s film studies department. “The wholesome, innocent, endless summers became utterly unrelatable.”

Relatability is a paramount concern in children’s entertainment. But Disney Channel is betting that kids will see “Teen Beach Movie” as a fresh take on the musical format. Mr. Marsh has already served up break-into-song movies (“High School Musical” and its sequels) and performance-based films, including “Lemonade Mouth” and, to some degree, “Camp Rock.”

“I challenged everybody internally to find a different way to do a musical,” Mr. Marsh said. “I wanted a reinvention of the musical form.”

He got it and then some. In “Teen Beach Movie,” two modern adolescents are transported into “Wet Side Story,” an over-the-top 1962 tale of surfers versus bikers. The characters from the film within the film — Tanner, Butchy, Seacat, Cheechee, Giggles, Lugnut and Struts — welcome the interlopers.

But the modern visitors inadvertently change the plot. Complicating any hope of escape. (“Oh, bonkers!”)

Multiplex efforts to reinvent the beach party genre over the years have sputtered. The independent film “Monster Beach Party” gave it a whirl in 2009, but took in a grand total of $112,791 at the box office. “Summer Catch,” which tried to recapture the beach spirit without the singing, was a bust in 2001, costing $45 million to make and selling about $26 million in tickets, after adjusting for inflation.

The last full-on beach party film a big studio tried was “Back to the Beach,” a Paramount release in 1987 that took in a modest $27 million.

Disney Channel’s immediate goal with “Teen Beach Movie” is to win big ratings and sell DVDs. If the film strikes a cultural chord like “High School Musical,” which became a $1 billion franchise (including CDs, clothing lines, theme park extensions and local stage shows), all the better.

“Teen Beach Movie,” which will premiere on July 19, is a nod to Disney’s distant past: Annette Funicello, of course, started as a Mouseketeer before teaming with Frankie Avalon in 1963 for “Beach Party,” which led to several follow-up films, including “Beach Blanket Bingo” in 1965.

That tie-in is likely to be lost on Disney’s young viewers, but they may spot another connection: Garrett Clayton, who plays the heartthrob Tanner, a “mannequin with six rows of teeth,” in the words of one character, bears a striking resemblance to Zac Efron, who formed the gooey center of “High School Musical.” Ross Lynch and Maia Mitchell star as the modern teenagers.

Mr. Marsh thinks Disney Channel viewers ages 6 to 14 will be able to relate to “Teen Beach Movie,” partly because of its similarities to “Grease,” the enduringly popular 1978 musical about high school life in the ’50s. An important scene in “Teen Beach Movie” takes place at a slumber party, just as one in “Grease” does.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/business/media/disney-drags-the-beach-blanket-out-of-the-attic-and-gives-it-a-shake.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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‘Fast & Furious 6’ Opens as Huge Hit

May 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment

LOS ANGELES — Hollywood expected a box-office drag race to end them all for the Memorial Day weekend, with two huge-scale sequels, both in categories most popular with younger men, opening in rare direct competition. But it turned out to be no contest at all.

“Fast Furious 6” raced to a projected $122.2 million in ticket sales for the four-day period, easily enough claiming the No. 1 spot at North American movie theaters, while “The Hangover Part III” blew a tire and overheated, taking in a disappointing $63.8 million since its arrival on Thursday. Despite the collapse of “The Hangover” — Part II took in $135 million over its first five days in 2011 — it was still a very good weekend for studios and theater owners.

Analysts projected total sales in North America of $323 million for the holiday period. That would surpass the previous high mark for the same stretch, in 2004, when “Shrek 2,” “The Day After Tomorrow” and “Troy” contributed to $303.1 million in total sales after adjusting for inflation, according to Hollywood.com, which compiles box-office data.

“Star Trek Into Darkness” (Paramount) was projected to take third place for the weekend, with ticket sales of about $48 million, for a two-week domestic total of $156.8 million. A new animated movie, “Epic” (20th Century Fox), was expected to place fourth, taking in a solid $44 million; it cost Fox about $93 million to make. And “Iron Man 3” (Disney) is anticipated to add $24.6 million to its pockets, for a four-week total of $372.7 million.

The differing fortunes of “Fast Furious 6” (Universal) and “The Hangover Part III” (Warner Brothers) offer a window into movie franchise management in the social-media age. Ticket buyers — even the highly forgiving ones who power the summer blockbuster season — no longer appear willing to tolerate color-by-number sequels.

“The Hangover Part II” received poor reviews and word of mouth, but most critics truly hated Part III, as evidenced by its positive score of only 21 percent on the review-aggregation site RottenTomatoes.com. “Fast Five,” meanwhile, delighted a majority of critics and generated positive chatter on Twitter and Facebook; “Fast Furious 6” kept the quality going, receiving a 72 percent positive rating on RottenTomatoes.

“You cannot take anything for granted anymore,” said Nikki Rocco, Universal’s president for distribution about “Fast Furious 6.” “We never let up on this movie for one minute.”

Universal and a financing partner spent about $160 million to make “Fast Furious 6” and at least another $100 million to market it. The movie, which has a multiracial cast led by Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and Dwayne Johnson, was a smash among minority audiences; 32 percent of ticket buyers were Hispanic. Overseas, it was No. 1 in 59 countries, taking in $158 million, for a global total of $280.2 million.

“The Hangover Part III,” which cost Warner and Legendary Pictures about $103 million to make and was backed by a similarly costly marketing campaign, opened in three foreign countries over the weekend, taking in about $19.2 million. “The Hangover Part II” took in a total of $332.3 million overseas — an astounding amount for an R-rated comedy — and international ticket sales for “Part III” are also expected to be strong.

A Warner spokeswoman did not have an immediate comment about the movie’s North American performance.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/movies/fast-furious-6-opens-as-huge-hit.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Disney Gambles on Box-Office Wizardry of ‘Oz’

March 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment

On Friday, when this wizard and his hot air balloon land in theaters, the Walt Disney Company hopes ticket buyers won’t think the same thing.

No movie studio would have the nerve to remake “The Wizard of Oz,” the beloved 1939 musical ranked by the Library of Congress as the most-watched film in history. But “Oz the Great and Powerful,” a Disney-produced prequel, is nearly as intrepid. The company is betting that a new twist on a story moviegoers already love will result in a hit on par with “Alice in Wonderland,” which took in more than $1 billion in 2010.

It’s a breathtaking gamble. “Oz,” at turns goofy and dark (and not a musical), cost about $325 million to make and market, according to people who worked on the movie who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid conflict with Disney. Mr. Franco has never anchored a mainstream movie before. Because of copyright constraints Disney was not able to reproduce certain iconic imagery from the “The Wizard of Oz,” which is owned by Warner Brothers.

And audiences have already rallied around a “Wizard of Oz” prequel: “Wicked” has been a Broadway hit for nearly 10 years.

Disney’s marketers have not been cowed by the huge shadow cast by the original “Oz” — indeed, their ads for the new film invite comparisons to the classic. But the popularity of the original may ultimately represent the studio’s biggest challenge. Is there room for a new cinematic vision of Oz, as Disney believes? Or will movie audiences (and critics) be reluctant to embrace an Oz that does not look a certain way, have a certain tone and feature a certain set of slippers?

Hollywood is confronting issues like these with greater regularity. Studios, ever-desperate for source material that is both familiar and comfortable to consumers, have leaned more heavily toward sequels and prequels.

But nostalgic properties are tricky. There are liberties you can take and ones you cannot, producers say, and the lines are blurry.

Sean Bailey, Disney’s president of movie production, said in an interview that he was “cautiously optimistic” about the box-office prospects for “Oz the Great and Powerful,” which was loosely based on the novels of L. Frank Baum.

“Going in, we certainly talked a lot about these iconic books, the iconic movie and the iconic musical,” Mr. Bailey said. “We felt there was room for a new story. We felt this great land was worthy of exploration and that it could be creatively exciting.”

Mr. Bailey and Alan F. Horn, Disney’s new studio chairman, are under pressure to deliver a hit. “John Carter,” which opened a year ago, forced the company to take a $200 million write-down, one of the largest in movie history. Since “John Carter,” releases on the Disney label have included “The Odd Life of Timothy Green,” which took in a ho-hum $51.9 million, and “Frankenweenie,” a critical success but a box office failure, which sold just $35.3 million in tickets in North America.

Disney is betting that going big is the key to a turnaround — hiring marquee directors and stars with serious acting credentials for pictures with giant budgets. After “Oz” comes “The Lone Ranger,” a comedic Western starring Johnny Depp as Tonto. In July 2014 Disney plans to release “Maleficent,” starring Angelina Jolie as the evil sorceress from “Sleeping Beauty.”

Tackling such well-known material risks stepping on memories, however. Oz itself has proved difficult in that regard over the years. Audiences recoiled from “The Wiz,” a 1978 adaptation of the stage musical. The response to “Return to Oz,” a 1985 Disney effort that found Dorothy in an asylum, was equally dismal.

For “Oz the Great and Powerful,” directed by Sam Raimi, Batman offers one positive point of comparison; that character, which coincidentally first appeared in a 1939 comic book, has been successfully reincarnated at the multiplex for several generations, noted Bob Gazzale, president of the American Film Institute.

The 2005 remake “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is a more cautionary example. What seemed like a good idea on paper — Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka, with lots of digital imagery — was ultimately a disappointment, with a fey Mr. Depp and his computer-generated Oompa Loompas striking moviegoers as a tad creepy.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/business/media/disney-gambles-on-box-office-wizardry-of-oz.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Drop in Number of Fans Taken Out to the Ballgame

May 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment

On Sunday, the Indians won their 13th consecutive home game — a 5-4 victory over the Tigers in their last at-bat — giving them the best record in major leagues. Unfortunately, more than two-thirds of the seats at Cleveland’s Progressive Field were empty, underscoring the difficulty that some baseball teams, and in particular, the Indians, have had over the first month of the season in getting people to come to the ballpark.

Despite their resurgence after two seasons in which they failed to win even 70 games, the Indians have the lowest average attendance in baseball in 2011, with a figure of 14,275 people a game. The weather provides something of an excuse — at most of Cleveland’s home games in April, temperatures have been below 50 degrees. But season-ticket sales are at their lowest since the Indians moved into their current stadium in 1994, which speaks of other problems not so easily remedied.

“We’ve dealt with some extreme weather and a very low season-ticket base, and that creates challenges because there isn’t a sense of urgency to come to the ballpark,” said Mark Shapiro, the general manager of the Indians.

He said the club had started to have an uptick in advance ticket sales for some games and that local television ratings were very strong. Still, with a local economy that has not recovered and with skepticism that the team is for real and worth spending money on, it may be awhile before there is a real surge of ticket-buyers.

The Kansas City Royals face a similar challenge. They have the second-lowest attendance this season — 16,985 a game — even though they are right behind the Indians in second place in the American League Central and almost as much of a surprise as Cleveland is.

Over all, baseball attendance is 1.3 percent lower than at the same period last season, according to Baseball-Reference.com, and 20 of the sport’s 30 teams have drawn fewer fans.

One reason is the weather. It is has affected more areas than just Cleveland, with 17 games rained out through Sunday compared to two a year ago.

Then there are the Mets and the Los Angeles Dodgers, each embroiled in ownership problems that may be affecting their images. The Dodgers have drawn 14.5 percent fewer fans this season, and the Mets have had a decline of 15 percent. (The Yankees are also down, by 7.6 percent, but they have played more home games than anyone else, 18, and have been affected by the rainy weather.)

Attendance traditionally picks up in the summer when school is out and pennant races start to take shape. Teams also add more promotions when the weather improves. Whether that will help Major League Baseball reverse a three-year decline in attendance is unclear.

Still, several teams have had significant increases in attendance to offset some of the gloomier news elsewhere. Not surprisingly, the San Francisco Giants and the Texas Rangers, who faced off in the World Series in 2010, have had double-digit increases in ticket sales. And the Colorado Rockies, who are in first place, have sold 19.8 percent more tickets so far.

Doing even better are the Cincinnati Reds, who made it back to the postseason last year for the first time in 15 years. They have had a 21.3 percent increase in ticket sales and a 55 percent jump in ratings for its games televised on Fox Sports Ohio.

“What happened last year with Jay Bruce’s walk-off home run that clinched the division, then starting this season with Ramon Hernandez’s walk-off home run, has kept the momentum going for both our players and our fans,” said Michael Anderson, a team spokesman.

On the map, Cincinnati and Cleveland are 240 miles apart. At the turnstile, the gap seems to be a lot bigger, at least for now.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=81263488cd3e0d4cd80aacd4673f0b47

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