O, that’s going to hurt. But the box office drops actually weren’t that bad this week. Here are the numbers.

1. What Happens in Vegas
Saturday and Sunday: $9,292,335 million
Monday and Tuesday: $2,759,458 million
Drop: 70%

2. Iron Man
Saturday and Sunday: $23,179,757 million
Monday and Tuesday: $5,292,110 million
Drop: 77%

3. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Saturday and Sunday: $35,637,062 million
Monday and Tuesday: $7,978,137 million
Drop: 78%

Continue reading The post-weekend box office drop

Did Angelina Jolie and Jack Black hide all the money in their bellies? What is happening? No big sales at the Sundance Film Festival. Nothing at the Tribeca Film Festival either. And now Cannes isn’t even able to sell the pictures? Sony Classics’ Michael Barker blames the films. “I’m trying to find a year when we left without buying a film. If we ever did it was a long time ago. There are no gems in the market,” Barker said.

Charlie Kaufman’s ‘Synecdoche, New York’ is still available too. As is Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Che,’ which screened yesterday (Wednesday) evening. Most North American distributers don’t want to shell out $10 million for the Spanish feature. They think it’s difficult to market, also because it’s four hours of film split into two movies.

Nobody wants to take risks at the moment. “I think there have been some really beautiful films, but none of them are particularly suited to us. It’s really, really hard in such a cluttered marketplace,” one acquisitor noted.

With a couple of days left, it will be interesting to see which pictures still manage to sell.

Our friends at Slashfilm have some new production stills of ‘Changeling,’ Clint Eastwood’s Cannes competition film. The movie is written by ‘Babylon 5′ creator J. Michael Straczynski, about a woman who gets her kidnapped son back. But as it turns out, he’s not really her son after all.

The mystery will be in theaters November 7.