Welcome to the second part of my look at the duplicity that is the Hollywood we know and love (or love to hate in some cases).   Yesterday I delved into the mainstream films, such as Transformers, which get little to no recognition by the Academy.  These are movies that represent the very monetary foundation of which Hollywood is built.

Today I’m going to slide the other way and talk about the performance side of Hollywood.  Films with limited budgets, little to no marketing and have to fight tooth-and-nail in some instances for distribution as well as theater screens.  They are the darlings of Hollywood, praised for often dramatic portrayal of characters and deeply emotional stories.  Yet, even with all the attention they receive when nominated for an Oscar, only a select group of viewers end up seeing these films.

In contrast to their mainstream counterparts, performance films have always been the underdog.  It starts from the very point the script is completed all the way to getting onto the screen.  It’s the latter which ultimately proves the most critical because without theaters to show it, what good is a movie?

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This was a big week for news, especially of the comic book movie variety. Surprisingly, even with all that coming out we still have even more items worth talking about on the radar. Batman beats Superman…again, a Star Wars character makes a bid for a mascot job, MGM is still looking for money, Brian De Palma may get paranormal and what cities will Michael Bay reign destruction upon next?

Batman trumps Superman on the auction block

Looks like Batman wasn’t content with beating Superman at the box office, he had to do it at an auction as well. The 1939 first appearance of The Dark Knight sold for a whopping $1,075,500. This beats Superman’s first appearance in comics which sold for 1 million. Sorry, Supes…but, hey, you did land an awesome writer for your upcoming reboot.

Blockbuster struggles to remain relevant in the digital age

Video rental store Blockbuster continues an uphill battle to compete against digital alternatives.  The brick-and-mortar business reported a “$435 million in the fourth quarter, compared with $360 million in red ink in the year-ago frame. Revenue dropped 18% to $1.1 billion.” As companies like Netflix and Redbox continue to steal market share some believe Blockbuster has some merit left:

“The drying up of retail competition from the ongoing closures of most Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video stores; major studios aren’t making their new releases immediately available to Redbox; and Warner Bros. will begin a 28-delay before giving Netflix access to new-release DVDs.”

Personally, I don’t see a rebound at this point and beyond the legit competition Blockbuster still has piracy to content with. Is this the end? We’ll see.

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Even though some people may think the video rental giant is on it last legs due to competition from companies like Netflix, they still rent a heck of a lot of movies. So many, in fact, they make a list of the top rentals and we’ve got that list from last week to share with you today, direct from the official press release. Check it out.

Topping the Hit List of “Top 10 Rented DVD Titles” for the week ending Jan. 3 is Paranormal Activity. This release media includes an alternative ending not seen in theatrical version.

BLOCKBUSTER Hit List

Top 10 Renting DVD Titles at U.S. BLOCKBUSTER stores for the week ending Jan. 3, 2009:
1. Paranormal Activity
2. The Hangover
3. District 9
4. Inglorious Basterds
5. All About Steve
6. A Perfect Getaway
7. Jennifer’s Body
8. Public Enemies
9. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
10. 500 Days of Summer

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Avatar is getting a lot of fanfare at the moment. As it passes the $700 Million mark, people can’t help but wonder if it will go on to beat The Dark Knight’s billion dollar box office take. However, as huge as Avatar is, I still maintain there was a much better film about aliens this year, District 9 (which, incidentally made it onto Chris’ Best Films of 2009 list).

With only an estimated $30 Million budget, District 9 made over $200 million worldwide.  Sure, that doesn’t hold a candle to Avatar’s current numbers, but keep in mind James Cameron’s epic cost well over $250 Million. Probably more when you factor in marketing expenses. Given that, District 9 could be considered just as successful.

One might think that with such success District 9 director Neill Blomkamp would be eager to take on a film the likes of  Avatar. His stance is quite the opposite, however.  Speaking with the L.A. Times, Blomkamp expressed little to no interest in high budget filmmaking, citing reluctance to bend to studio demands:

“That’s exactly right and that’s precisely the reason I don’t want to do high-budget films. I’ve said no already to doing the Hollywood movie thing with big budgets. And that is the exact reason.”

The “exact reason” Blomkamp is speaking of is the recent trend of studios emulating other films instead embracing original content:

“We seem to be in a place now where filmmakers make films based on other films because that’s where the stimuli and influence comes from…And that’s my goal, really, is not to draw from other films in terms of the overall inspiration and stimuli. You can in terms of design and tone and stuff, certainly, but not in terms of the idea and the genesis of that idea.”

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With the unbridled success of this fall’s Paranormal Activity, it seemed a sure thing that director Oren Peli’s next project would be an instant pickup for the studio, and that theory has proven to be true. According to Variety, Paramount recently bought the distribution rights for Peli’s Area 51, which reportedly again utilizes Paranormal Activity’s “handicam” style of shooting. According to the trade:

“51, which completed principal photography three weeks ago, was fully financed by Incentive and the Aramid Entertainment Fund. Latter is a co-financing partner of Par’s slate on films that include the ‘Transformers’ films.

The film employs the ‘found footage’ narrative structure that Peli used in ‘Paranormal Activity’ to tell the story of three teens whose curiosity leads them to the notorious Area 51 portion of Nellis Air Force Base in the Nevada desert.”

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Sure, technically Jim Carrey and company won the weekend with the 3D animated adventure A Christmas Carol, but the real reason everyone’s talking about this weekend’s box office is because of another movie’s totals.

Remember a few weeks ago when I was talking about how unbelievable it was that Paranormal Activity had a per screen average of $44,000? Well a little indie called Precious came in and mopped the floor with those totals. Precious played in just 18 theaters and grossed $1.8 million. Folks, that’s a $100,000 per screen average. To put that in perspective, if A Christmas Carol had the same per screen average, it would have grossed over $360 million (instead of $31 million).

This indicates a high degree of interest in the movie, and this weekend’s total will only add to that. Additionally, some people have been throwing around the “O” word, as in Oscar.  It received a standing ovation at Cannes, and an audience award at Sundance. It will slowly be rolling out over the next few weeks, and is definitely one to keep an eye on.

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The real story from the box office this weekend is the non-story of This Is It. Sure, it won the weekend with $21.3 million, but there were some crazy estimates thrown around last week. I know I wasn’t the only person entertaining the notion that this movie would open above $70 million, especially after seeing all the hysterics from frenzied fans on opening day and sold out venues.

So, I have been scratching my head trying to figure out why the movie was a relative dud here in the U.S. Worldwide, it was a smashing success and made over $100 million. Although, I heard more than one estimate say that it could open in the $200-250 million range, and it made less than half that.

Do you think that because Michael Jackson lived here in the States, and we were exposed to more of the controversial aspects of his life? Perhaps fans in Japan, Germany and Australia had a more pristine memory of the King of Pop. At any rate, I was pretty blown away by the movie’s fairly low numbers. This was supposed to be one of the biggest events of the year.

Paranormal Activity enjoyed Halloween weekend, and took in another $16.5 million. It only dropped 22% from last weekend. It stands at a cumulative total of $84.8 million and is all but guaranteed to pass $100 million during its domestic run.

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Not in the mood to throw on a costume and run around from bar to party to candy-giving front door this year? Why not sit at home with a stack of haunting flicks to get your Halloween jollies off, or better yet, hit the theaters IN COSTUME!

Over the past month, we’ve put together quite a compilation of horror reviews for you to pick and choose what to watch during your Halloweekend, and why not start tonight, on All Hallow’s Eve?

Take a look at our list of Horror Reviews below, from things like Zombieland, which you can currently see in the theaters, to movies like Dance of the Dead, which you could run out and grab at any DVD outlet. Put together your favorite scary movie queue from these titles for a guaranteed haunting Halloween marathon!

In Theaters:

• Paranormal Activity

• Zombieland

• The Stepfather

• Saw VI

• House of the Devil

On DVD:

• The Hills Run Red

• Trick R’ Treat

• Dance of The Dead

• Dark Floors

• Evil Dead 2

• Child’s Play

• Friday The 13th

There is a lot of speculation on why Paranormal Activity is one of the highest per-screen grossing films of all time. Many people believe that it’s due to the viral marketing campaign that swept the nation overnight, but the fact is, we live in a very superstitious world right now. Some of the most popular books and television series’ are about vampires and hunting ghosts, so why wouldn’t everyone in the country rush out to see an alleged first-hand account of a haunting.

With that in mind, one of the major reasons why people keep going back to the film is it’s haunting ending. It could give a grown man chills, seeing that final shot. That wasn’t the original ending, and was due to Paramount’s prediction of how audiences would react.

The original ending, which you can see in full after the jump, is far less exciting or scary. Granted, it gives the two main characters closure and leaves the audience with an actual ending, but that’s not always what horror fans are in it for. If you haven’t seen the film, I don’t recommend watching the clip. But if you have, see how things were originally supposed to go down after the jump.

Paranormal Activity can still be seen in theaters nationwide.

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This week on The Flickcast, Chris and Matt jump in after a week off with a whole bunch of new topics including the new Doc Savage movie, written and directed by Shane Black, the performance of Paranormal Activity and Saw VI, the reboot of Short Circuit, horror films in general and much more.

The guys also make some great picks this week including Matt’s pick of teen horror zombiefest Dance of the Dead and Chris’ pick of the 1979 horror classic Phantasm, featuring Angus Scrimm as “The Tall Man.”

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques or offers of sponsorship, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter and at Facebook, MySpace or via email.

Thanks for listening.

When it comes to horror,  for the last several years October has been monopolized by the persistent and prolific offerings of a one Saw series. Jigsaw might be smarting a bit this Monday, because he was decidedly trounced by “the little demon that could,” otherwise known as Paranormal Activity.

Based on early estimates from Box Office Mojo,  Paranormal Activity finally claimed the top spot at the box office in its fifth week of release.  This makes it only the second movie this decade to do so after that many weeks in release, the other being Gran Torrino (2008).   Scaring up another $22M, the film played on 1,956 screens and brought its cumulative total up to $62.4M.

Despite playing on over 1,000 more screens than Paranormal, Saw VI brought in only $14.8M for second place.  This is the worst opening weekend for the franchise since the original Saw.

Where the Wild Things Are had a fairly steep dropoff of 55.9% from its opening week, which indicates few repeat attendees, and less than stellar word of mouth.  Still, it made $14.4 bringing its cumulative total to $53.9M for its first two weeks.

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As predicted, Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are seemingly dominated the Box Office with $32.4M.  It played on a whopping 3,700+ screens, including IMAX screens, for a per-screen average of $8,693.  Sounds decent, but figure in the reported budget of $100M, and it looks like it may be a bit of a climb for the movie to be profitable, at least while in theaters.

The ultra-violent thriller Law Abiding Citizen boasted a very respectable $21.25M, and a $7,353 per screen average, which actually shows it performing very close to WTWTA.  It played in substantially fewer screens (2,890), and if  WTWTA had not had the benefit of IMAX prices, this would have been a much closer race.

The unstoppable juggernaut that is Paranormal Activity continued its trajectory scooping up another $20.1M on only 760 screens!  That puts its per screen average at more than $26,000, nearly three times what WTWTA averaged.  Pretty impressive.  It will expand further next weekend.

Couples Retreat dropped off 47.7%, but still made $17.9M, bringing its total to $63.3M over two weeks.

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