Gawker: defamer, robert zemeckis

It's Looking Not That Much Like Christmas for Carrey's Carol.

Richard Rushfield — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:09:08 EST

It's not the stocking stuffer Disney hoped for. After spending $180 million on the biggest 3D picture to date, looks like the Iger family might have to make make due with Hyundai's instead of Maserati's under their tree this year.

• "Moviegoers Stingy With Scrooge" is how boxofficemojo described a lower than hoped for $31 million opening for ' CG-animated 3D adaptation of the Dickens classic. Both Mojo and the LA Times point out that Zemickis last film, the similarly animated Polar Express opened in the same range but went on to gross $160 million domestic, with audiences continuing to chug in throughout the long holiday season. The LA Times however, recalls that "audiences embraced that movie like few others", which they strongly hint, will not be the case for the blah Carol. Mojo meanwhile, recalls that while Polar's opening was week, it was up against Pixar's The Incredibles, while Carol is up against...The Fourth Kind. [Box Office Mojo]

• Elsewhere at the box office, This is It, held on to the #2 slot, raking in another $14 million. The Men Who Stared at Goats did a decent $13.3 million. The big story however was early Oscar favorite Precious which grossed $1.8 million on only 18 screens, a mind-blowing $100,000 per screen. [Variety]

• The Prophet, the French thriller with tells "the story of an illiterate young Arab-Corsican man condemned to six years in prison" led the European film award nominations with six nods. [Variety]

• David Poland attempts to do the math on a NY Times piece and can't make it add up. A story this weekend contended that James Cameron's 3D goliath Avatar will cost half a billion dollars. Only problem, as Poland points out, adding up all the numbers mentioned in the piece still leaves one a hundred billion or so shy of that gargantuan figure. [The Hot Blog]

• Kenny Chesney will be the next victim of 3D concert film conversion. Sony plans to release Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D in April. [Hollywood Reporter]

• The GE/Comcast deal is now just inches away, just this close, with the two sides agreeing on a valuation on the NBC/Universal — Comcast joint venture. $30 billion is said to be the price tag. Vivendi, by the way, which still owns 20 percent of NBC/Universal still hasn't signed off. [Hollywood Reporter]

• The Wanda Sykes Show got off to a solid start for Fox, averaging a 2.2 rating, which is a 16 percent improvement over Mad TV which held the slot last year. [The Wrap]

Spoilers for the 'Forrest Gump' Sequel That 9/11 Snuffed Out

Kyle Buchanan — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:05:49 EST

Sad news: on a day that has already seen the ignominious shitcanning of Hollywood's best "cyborg dinosaurs rescue kidnapped children" franchise, word has emerged that screenwriter Eric Roth has quietly buried his unnecessary script for Forrest Gump 2 out by the old oak tree. While promoting The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Roth told Slashfilm that the sequel just didn't seem the same after 9/11 happened (what, those scenes of a digital Tom Hanks outrunning smoke and debris in Manhattan felt too soon?). The news reminded us that several years ago, we attended a talk where Roth revealed the Gump sequel's surprise twist, which he told us not to tell. Guess it doesn't matter now! Here's your before-the-jump SPOILER ALERT...

When Roth said the sequel would pick up two minutes after the original, just as Gump has dropped his son (Haley Joel Osment) off at the bus stop, one audience member asked how Roth planned to address Osment's leap in age. "Actually, I kill him off in the first ten pages," Roth blithely replied after a conspiratorial vow of secrecy. Cold! That school bus didn't look like a 1995 Saturn...

9/11 Killed the Forrest Gump Sequel [Slashfilm]

Mark Burnett And Donald Trump Won't Stop Believin'

Mark Graham — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 22:04:28 EST

· As we have detailed on these pages before, our hearts haven't really been with the Semi-Celebrity Apprentice since The Donald gave Gene Simmons the boot. However, because we are far too lazy to delete the Season Pass from our TiVos, we still find ourselves compelled to watch the show. Thank goodness, otherwise we would have missed the hilariously dated manner in which (spoiler alert!) Big Pussy found himself ejected from last week's show.
· Vulture presents their Top 10 list of inside jokes they'd like to see included in the potential Arrested Development movie.
· Hmmm. Robert Zemeckis' decision to insert Santa Claus into his adaptation of A Christmas Carol is makin' us thirsty. Even more than these pretzels.
· Slashfilm got not one, not two, not three but FOUR separate phone calls from Paramount lawyers today regarding the leakage of Crystal Skull pics.
· And finally, if you find yourself with a spare four minutes and twenty-four seconds, might we suggest spending it on Golden Fiddle? His tribute to the impossibly shiny-haired goddess Olivia Munn is, in a word, best.

Jim Carrey Scrooged

Mark — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 14:21:28 EDT

· Casting genius or casting insanity? You make the call*: Jim Carrey will play Scrooge and all three ghosts in a 3-D/motion-capture Robert Zemeckis reimagination of A Christmas Carol for Disney. [*And we bet we know what you're going to say!] [Variety]
· Some more details about Cloverfield, the supertopsecret Paramount/JJ Abrams project introduced to the world by means of a mysterious trailer playing before Transformers. [THR]
· After making meaningless Tuesday box office history, Transformers took in $29.1 million on Wednesday to claim a record of somewhat greater import: The Biggest Fourth of July Ever. [Variety]
· The folks at Nielsen continue to measure summer TV ratings, even on nights when virtually no one is watching. [THR]
· Paramount tries to save Angelina Jolie box office failure A Mighty Heart by cutting its number of screens in half, hoping that this will somehow help the movie build word-of-mouth and extend its run in some markets. [Variety]