Posted on 04/26/2011 12:48:34 PM PDT by Beaten Valve
My esteemed colleague Kyle Smith may not qualify as a box-office Nostradamus ("I smell a hit,'' he once wrote of "An American Carol'') but he was certainly on the mark in predicting that "Atlas Shrugged -- Part One'' would flop in his Sunday column a couple of weeks ago.
After a middling performance during its opening weekend that was hyped in some quarters (i.e., The Hollywood Reporter), the per-screen average for this amateurish Ayn Rand adaptation (even Kyle could only muster 2.5 stars' worth of enthusiam for the movie, though he liked its message) plunged to an alarming $1,890 from $5,640 during its opening frame. Overall, the weekend's take was a scant $879,000 -- a whopping 48 percent drop despite adding 166 locations. Which certainly suggest they're running out of audience quick.
That means that at some locations, distributor Rocky Mountain Pictures will be writing checks to theaters to cover the difference between receipts and operating expenses. The only way they're likely to get the 1,000 screens the producers say they want next weekend is to rent them. And, as Kyle put it at his personal blog, "Whether the sequels get made is purely a matter of how much desire the producers have for losing money.''
Surely rubbing salt in the producers' wounds is the performance of Robert Redford's left-leaning "The Conspirator,'' which also added screens in its second weekend and managed a decent hold and a $2,696 per location average. Its current cumulative gross is $6.9 million vs. a hair over $3 million for "Atlas Shrugged.''
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I'll buy the DVD when it comes out.
I liked it. Not great acting but gets the point across very well. Waiting for the 2nd part!
The success of this movie probably won’t depend on public viewings, but what was negotiated on the back-end for cable, Netflix, DVD, international distribution, etc.
I rarely go to movies any more.
I wait for it to get on the net or cable.
DVD sales is where the money will be made. If they did the job it’s reported they did, this film will be shared with a lot of folks in DVD.
I liked the movie too.
Marsden in his opening scene as James Taggart was obviously saying his lines without really believing it.
Marsden surprised me, though. He got a lot better as the movie progressed.
I guess atheist materialism doesn’t sell as well as the producers hoped.
Sure, it's under different ownership now, but this rag and its executives (Villard and company) were largely responsible for the creation of the overly racist scam known as the NAACP. During the Schiff years, the Post was a decidely leftist organ. A long and sordid heritage of opposition to Conservative Capitalism isn't ready dropped no matter whose name is curently on the masthead. Murdoch should have killed the paper, purged everyone and relaunched it under a different name.
agreeed. and in tough economic times in Obamas America, it is more cost efficient to purchase/rent the movie and have a viewing party and ensuing discussions.
You know movies scenes are not usually shot in sequence, right? Then again, with this movie...
That’s because MOST workers are busy WORKING....and going Galt.....
We might not get part 2 if part 1 doesn’t do well. :-(
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER-—
Despite its “awful” marketing plan, as one distribution exec calls it, the movie earned a $5,640 per-theater average opening: “Things have turned for us,” producer Harmon Kaslow tells THR.
This and the NYT article doesn’t square, or am I missing something?
If the movie is like the bombastic novel, then no wonder!
Thanks for reminding me, I’d forgotten about that.
It could very well be they had to go with the scene the way it was, due to budget constraints.
Copyright restrictions apply downthread every bit as much as in the main article box, thanks.
Check out Rotten Tomatoes:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/atlas_shrugged_part_i/
Rotten Tomatoes has a 6%/85% split.
6% of critics like the movie, 85% of theater audiences like the movie.
Uh.....white folks don’t go to the movies much anymore. Tired of getting jumped.
I was concerned about this, but the flick does not seem to say much about God at all, so it’s really an agnostic materialism. There are philosophies better than this, but there are also philosophies much worse.
That is an interesting question. If you went Galt, would you want to go for a picture about going Galt?
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