Barring a Texas Rangers-esque collapse today and tomorrow, America’s favorite spun-off Spanish feline with a sword will scamper away with the weekend’s box-office crown: Puss in Boots easily knocked off Paranormal Activity 3 , which slid some 70 percent off last Friday’s blistering pace. In other news, Justin Timberlake and Johnny Depp opened soft and Anonymous had a Bard time (sorry) on around 250 screens. Your Friday Box Office is here.
Industry experts say franchise succeeds by giving moviegoers what they want. By Eric Ditzian Photo: Paramount The “Saw” franchise is no more. The “Scream” series didn’t exactly take off when it was relaunched earlier this year. Recent reboots of “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “Halloween” and other classics haven’t sustained consistent and lucrative runs at the box office. After its record-setting opening weekend, “Paranormal Activity” now stands as the undisputed horror-franchise champion. The stats for “Paranormal Activity 3″ are staggering. The sequel’s $54 million haul is not only the biggest fall opening ever, but the largest ever for a pure horror movie, according to Box Office Mojo . It averaged an impressive $16,266 per screen, a 29 percent rise over ” PA3 ,” reports Gitesh Pandya of Box Office Guru , bringing the franchise’s worldwide gross to $450 million “while the combined production costs have amounted to a puny $8 million.” All this box-office growth comes against the backdrop of a Hollywood reality. “Typically, when films reach the threequel stage, momentum wanes,” said Jeff Bock, box-office analyst for Exhibitor Relations. “What Paramount has done so expertly with this series is stay true to the original grassroots feel of the first. They didn’t try to reinvent the wheel with each successive installment. They didn’t recast, reboot and retool their original formula. The creators of ‘PA’ and the studio know exactly what they have with ‘PA,’ and they are dishing out exactly what fans are craving: cheap thrills.” That “Paranormal” has even reached this point is a feat in and of itself. “The Blair Witch Project,” the found-footage horror flick to which “Paranormal” is always compared, turned from a Sundance sleeper to a $250 million blockbuster in 1999. But a year later, the sequel bombed at the multiplex, grossing just 19 percent of the original. “PA2,” by contrast, opened with $41.5 million a year after the first film caught on with the public, breaking the R-rated midnight record then held by “Watchmen” ($4.6 million). This time around, filmmakers continued to heed the lesson of “Blair Witch”: They didn’t mess with success. “Paramount could have taken the third film and added CGI creatures or something. They didn’t. Fans respond to that,” said Phil Contrino, editor of Boxoffice.com , adding that “Paranormal” diverges from many other horror franchises in one key way: “Less truly can be more when it comes to this genre. I think a lot of moviegoers are turned off by excessive gore. These films have a very strong understanding of one simple truth about horror: If you allow your audience to use their imagination, it’ll be scarier than anything you can put onscreen. That’s why the ‘Paranormal Activity’ franchise feels like a breath of fresh air.” There’s a lesson here for other franchises — not just horror ones — a lesson “The Hangover” kept in mind for its $581 million-grossing sequel earlier this year. “Give the audience what they want,” Bock said. “They liked it the first time, so don’t tweak it too much. Advance the story, but don’t reinvent the wheel. Sometimes less is more, and audiences are very peculiar when it comes to big changes in film series that they like. Whether you agree with it or not, the general public wants the same thing, just a little different.” Now we await the inevitable announcement of “Paranormal Activity 4,” wondering if the series can continue to stay true to its storytelling roots while also inventing fresh scares and unexpected ways of capturing the found-footage action. That’s a fine line to keep on walking Halloween after Halloween. “The brilliance of this franchise isn’t just that it’s made on the cheap, but that they slowly and methodically answer questions that explore and expand the mythology of the series,” Bock said. “The fact of the matter is, ‘PA’ will succeed wildly until a new brand of horror show is deemed worthy. The haunting will never end until something else goes bump in the dark and captures audiences’ imagination.” Check out everything we’ve got on “Paranormal Activity 3.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Videos ‘Paranormal Activity 3’ Is ‘Beyond Scary’
Who’da thunk it? As much as most of us probably laughed when we heard that a “Paranormal Activity 3″ was coming to a theater near us, thousands spent their money to check it out this weekend, making it a record-breaking film. Paramount’s threequel/prequel will have to settle with merely being the second- biggest horror debut ever, the eighth-biggest R-rated opening, and the top October launch. Tragic, I know. The $5 million film grossed a massive $54 million this weekend, which is a 35% jump from Paranormal Activity 2′s $40.6 million opening this time last year. The film had a massively front loaded weekend, the ninth-biggest on record, with a mere 2.06x weekend multiplier. Still, that was better than the 2.01x weekend multiplier for Paranormal Activity 2 last year (the sixth-smallest such multiplier). The picture played 53% under-25 and 54% female. Considering the film pulled just in $1.7 million more at midnight, the $26 million opening day (around $6 million more than Paranormal Activity 2′s $20.6 million Friday) and $14 million jump in total opening weekend compared to the last film, there is a clear growth in this series. Which probably means there will be a “Paranormal Activity 4″… The first film opened very slowly, with massive per-screen averages leading up to a pre-Halloween wide release that grossed $21 million against the opening weekend of the comparatively under performing Saw VI ($14 million). Paranormal Activity ended up with $109 million, while the sequel opened with a massive $40 million weekend but ended with just $84 million (a meager 2.1x weekend-to-final gross multiplier). Even if the third picture manages equally poor legs, it will still end up with $113 million. Whether or not the series has peaked with the third installment like Saw III, this uber-cheap franchise has been a licence to print money for the last three years and should continue to be so for the next few Halloweens. Paramount has scored a studio’s dream – blockbuster grosses on a franchise with minuscule costs. It’s already done $26 million worldwide, giving the film a massive (for a cheap horror film) $80 million worldwide debut. Come what may, they will be milking this series until the audience stops caring. Did you catch “Paranormal Activity 3″ this weekend? If not, does the movie’s opening weekend success make you wanna see it now? Source
L.A. Reid – the man behind Rihanna, Usher and Mariah Carey’s careers – recently admitted he could’ve taken credit for Lady Gaga’s success too, but was having a bad day when he decided to drop her – only months after originally signing her to Island Def Jam. Of course, Gaga went on to sign with Interscope and L.A. moved to Epic Records, but here’s what he had to say about what could have been: “One day, this artist came to my office. She played piano, she had on white go-go boots, thigh-high boots. She sat down at the piano and she played and she sang and when she was done, I said, ‘You are an amazing artist, a true artist and you will change music’ and I signed her. Her name was Lady Gaga. “Then a few months later, I got her demos and it was a work in progress and I was having a bad day. A bad day. And I said, ‘You know what? I really don’t like it. Let her have her freedom. Let her go find her career.’ And it was the worst thing I’ve ever done.” Did L.A. Reid Sign Ciara? OutKast Signing With L.A. Reid’s Epic Records
Former Beatle wed American heiress Nancy Shevell in London. By Gil Kaufman Sir Paul McCartney and Nancy Shevell leave the Marylebone Registry Office after their civil ceremony marriage on Sunday in London Photo: Danny Martindale/Getty Images Former Beatle Paul McCartney married for the third time on Sunday, taking his vows at the iconic Old Marylebone Town Hall in London where he wed first wife Linda Eastman in 1969. McCartney, 69, tied the knot with American trucking company heiress Nancy Shevell, 51. Unlike his lavish 2002 wedding to former model Heather Mills, which ended in a bitter divorce in 2008, Sunday’s affair was a quiet one, attended by close friends and family, including former bandmate Ringo Starr and wife Barbara Bach, ex-Beatle George Harrison’s widow, Olivia, Shevell’s son, Arlen, and her second cousin, “View” host Barbara Walters. Shevell wore a dress designed by McCartney’s daughter Stella, and the “Maybe I’m Amazed” singer slipped a five-carat square-cut Neil Lane diamond ring on her finger during the brief ceremony. All You Need Is Love: Wish Paul Well On Facebook According to a report in the Huffington Post, McCartney “appeared proud, content and eager” to share his joyful day with the crowd that had gathered and “raised his bride’s hand in triumph” as they walked down the steps of the town hall after the civil ceremony. “I feel absolutely wonderful,” McCartney told fans as he arrived at his London home after the wedding. Stella McCartney also helped whip up a three-course vegetarian feast served to guests at the reception at McCartney’s home in the St. John’s Wood neighborhood on what would have been late Beatle John Lennon’s 71st birthday. Veteran TV presenter Walters is credited with introducing the couple four years ago at a party in the Hamptons in New York. Shevell was married to attorney Bruce Blakeman for 20 years before meeting McCartney. Related Artists Paul McCartney
?uestlove tweets about controversial comment country singer made on Fox News. By Gil Kaufman Hank Williams Jr. Photo: Getty Images Country star Hank Williams Jr. spent Monday afternoon in damage-control mode, backtracking from statements he made that morning in which he compared President Obama to reviled Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. The comments got Williams’ traditional “Monday Night Football” opening song, with its famous “Are you ready for some football?” refrain, yanked from the night’s Indianapolis/Tampa Bay game. “Some of us have strong opinions and are often misunderstood,” Williams said in a statement released Monday afternoon. “My analogy was extreme — but it was to make a point.” On Monday morning, Williams appeared on Fox News and referred to Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner’s June golf outing with Obama as one of the “biggest political mistakes ever” by the Ohio politician. “It’s like Hitler playing golf with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu,” the country singer said of the bipartisan golf game. The hosts of the conservative network’s “Fox & Friends” morning program seemed surprised by the comment, with co-anchor Gretchen Carlson asking Williams to clarify what he meant by the inflammatory statement, saying, “You used the name of one of the most-hated people in all the world to describe, I think, the president.” Williams responded, “That’s true … but I’m telling you like it is.” In his follow-up statement, posted on his website , Williams explained his sentiments on the Obama/Boehner pairing: “I was simply trying to explain how stupid it seemed to me — how ludicrous that pairing was. They’re polar opposites, and it made no sense,” he said. “They don’t see eye-to-eye and never will. I have always respected the office of the President.” ESPN announced that it was dropping Williams’ theme song from Monday night’s program but didn’t say whether it would re-appear at a later date. “While Hank Williams Jr. is not an ESPN employee, we recognize that he is closely linked to our company through the open to ‘Monday Night Football,’ ” the network said in a statement. “We are extremely disappointed with his comments, and as a result, we have decided to pull the open from tonight’s telecast.” Roots drummer ?uestlove commented on the flap on Twitter, writing, “Every ‘HITLER’ outburst i hear in the news shows me that people in fact do NOT know the evil Hitler committed … I’m borderline certain those who are (NOW) quick to use HITLER so carelessly, were probably part of the ’60 years ago never happened’ crew.”
The two married in California over the weekend, with Jonah Hill, Adam Sandler, Paul Rudd in attendance. By Jocelyn Vena Lauren Miller and Seth Rogen (file) Photo: Theo Wargo/ Getty Images A big mazel tov to Seth Rogen! While fans were hitting up the movie theaters this weekend to see his film “50/50,” Rogen was busy marrying his longtime lady love, Lauren Miller. People.com reports that a number of Rogen’s pals and former co-stars, including Jonah Hill, Adam Sandler and Paul Rudd, attended the California ceremony on Saturday. The pair married in Sonoma in a location overlooking a nearby vineyard. A female rabbi married the pair with other friends like “Knocked Up” director Judd Apatow, his actress wife Leslie Mann and “The Office” star Craig Robinson in attendance. After the pair tied the knot they reportedly drove off in a convertible to another location for the A-list reception. A source tells Usmagazine.com that “the wedding was more laughs than anything else. Every other line was a joke and the crowd couldn’t contain their laughter. It was nonstop fun!” The festivities reportedly took place over three days. Rogen’s cancer dramedy, “50/50,” co-starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, opened on Friday and came in at a solid #4, right behind “Dolphin Tale” (#1), “Moneyball” (#2) and “The Lion King” (#3). Rogen and his writer bride met back in 2004 when he was a writer on “Da Ali G Show.” When he was on “Conan” last November he opened up about popping the question to Miller a couple months before, in September. “Literally, I felt like someone had given me like a truckload of heroin to hold onto, I felt like the feds were going to kick in my door at any second,” he said of buying the engagement ring. “I couldn’t have a conversation with my girlfriend. All I could think of was this ring. Like, ‘Don’t say ‘Lord of the Rings’! Don’t mention anything about a ring!” He joked that the proposal wasn’t perfect: He did it while she was dressing. “I didn’t picture it like this, and I know she didn’t picture it like this,” he recalled. “No little girl is like ‘It’ll happen in a closet with my [chest] out.’ ” Leave your well-wishes for the couple in the comments below!
Spoiler alert: We already know who’s going to be in the Super Bowl. Well, the halftime show anyway. Madonna will headline the extravaganza, according to SB Nation (dot) com. The 53-year-old Material Girl continues the NFL’s recent tradition of recruiting musical legends to perform between halves. Over the last 10 years, the Super Bowl halftime show has featured such artists as Prince, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen. The move toward securing older artists came in response to the outcry over the notorious Janet Jackson-Justin Timberlake “wardrobe malfunction” of 2004. The Black Eyed Peas halftime show this year was kind of terrible, which didn’t do younger artists any favors either. Anyway, Madonna will surely bring her A-game. A cautionary note to halftime show producers, though: Do not, under any circumstances, adorn the stage with hydrangeas . Super Bowl XLVI is set for February 5. [Photo: WENN.com]
A mother of a baby girl and a pregnant manager on The Office , Jenna Fischer is now a parent in real life, as well. The actress and husband Lee Kirk welcomed their first son into the world on September 24, it was announced today, a boy named Weston Lee. “Mom and baby are doing great,” Fischer’s rep says. Jenna and Lee got married in July 2010, as Survivor ‘s Jeff Probst officiated the ceremony. We wish this new family nothing but the absolute best and we encourage readers to visit our pals at TV Fanatic every week for an updated section of The Office quotes ! [Photo: WENN.com]
In celebration of the 20th anniversary of Nevermind, band’s close friend — and former MTV staffer — Amy Finnerty recalls their rise to fame. By James Montgomery, with reporting by Vanessa WhiteWolf Kurt Cobain Photo: Kevin Mazur/WireImage When Amy Finnerty first met Nirvana , she had just come to MTV to work in the Music and Programming department. Of course, she didn’t let them know that fact. She was just blown away to finally meet the guys who had made her favorite album (at least at that point): Bleach. Over the next four years, Finnerty would not only become close friends with the band, but intrinsically linked to them too. Since she was just a few years younger than the guys (not to mention a huge fan), she was one of the first people within the company to champion them — and was almost singlehandedly responsible for getting their “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the channel. And because of all that — and the 20th anniversary of the epochal Nevermind album — MTV News sat down with Finnerty to get the inside story on the days before Nirvana became a household name and the wild (and amazing) times that followed after. And it all started with that first meeting, backstage in New York. “The first night I met Nirvana, I was backstage at, I think it was a Waterboys show, and the band was in New York, touring on the Bleach album, and they were being courted by a bunch of record labels, Geffen being one of them,” she said. “So I’m standing around backstage, and I see Kurt Cobain leaning up against the wall, and, uh, ‘Oh my God, that’s Kurt from Nirvana.’ And, at that point, they weren’t Nirvana — I mean, they were to me, but not everybody on the planet knew who they were — but, I was terrified. I was scared to go up and introduce myself, but I did. And he said, ‘How do you even know who I am ?’ And I said ‘You’re in Nirvana! I’m going to see your band at the Pyramid in a few days! You’re a great, great band!’ “And he was pretty surprised, so we got to chatting and he said to me, ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’ and I said, ‘Oh, well, I work at MTV, whatever,’ and so he screams down the hall, ‘Krist, this girl works at MTV.’ And it was on from that second,” she laughed. “They started teasing me, making fun of me, Krist was throwing beer around, we were shaking up our beer bottles and squirting each other with beer and stuff, so, it immediately became this joke, because I really wasn’t trying to tell them what I did [at MTV]. For the longest time, they referred to me as ‘V.P. of Post-It Notes,’ because they didn’t know that I worked in Music Programming, because they would’ve teased me about it.” Riki Rachtman recalls Nirvana’s cross-dressing appearance on “Headbangers Ball.” Of course, in the months that followed, the hype around the band (and their then-forthcoming album Nevermind ) began to swirl, and once Finnerty heard what they guys had been working on with producer Butch Vig, she knew big things were on the horizon. “The first time I listened to the record, it was like, when you’re on vacation and you see something really beautiful that you’ve never seen before and you open your eyes up super-wide, because you want to get the memory ingrained into your brain, and that’s the way I felt,” she said. “I was trying to remember every single note.” Still, convincing the folks at MTV to take a chance on the band proved a lot tougher than she’d imagined. After all, she was young, and the band was virtually unknown outside of a few hip enclaves around the country. But that all changed the second she saw the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video — which, in a bit of alt-rock kismet, arrived in her office at the exact moment another soon-to-be-huge band did too. “The Smashing Pumpkins were staying at my house, and I said, ‘You guys, come by MTV, give me the keys to the apartment, and then I’ll bring you around the halls and introduce you to some people.’ … And so the Pumpkins came in 10 minutes after I had gotten my hands on that music video, and so we went into my office to watch it, and everyone thought it was incredible,” Finnerty said. “So I took the video and I walked around the halls at MTV and simultaneously introduced a bunch of people to the Smashing Pumpkins, and then we’d watch the video … and then we’d go to a producer’s office and I’d say, ‘These are the Smashing Pumpkins, and the Gish record that just came out is so incredible, and they’re going to send us a video. Oh, and by the way, we’ve got this Nirvana video; you have to check it out.’ ” Nirvana’s rise to fame, in their own words. After Finnerty showed a few folks within the building “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, she brought it to MTV’s music meeting, where the fates of new videos were decided. After some healthy back-and-forth, it was determined that “Spirit” would be given a world premiere during MTV’s “120 Minutes” (with rotation on the channel to begin the following week). It was a sink-or-swim moment for the band and as you’re probably aware, things worked out pretty well. “That was unprecedented; MTV, as far as I know, had never world-premiered a video for a band that they had no history with,” Finnerty explained. “And then … some of the crew and a lot of the people that were on the road with the band came over to my house that Sunday night, and we all sat up waiting for this world premiere, and, like, I took pictures of it. It was a big moment!” It was just the first of many for the band and their friend. But for all the highlights, perhaps none illustrates Nirvana’s scruffy charm quite like a story Finnerty told us about a party she threw for the band at her New York City apartment. Twenty years later, it’s one she’s still amazed by — sort of like the band she helped become huge (“in some small way,” she cautioned) just by believing. “So Nirvana played in New York, and I had decided to have a party at my apartment afterwards … and the band came, and I think [the Pixies’] Kim Deal was there, and then there were just a host of other people that I had no idea who they were. And I leaned over to Kurt and I was like, ‘Are these your friends? Do you know any of these people?’ And he was like, ‘I don’t know any of these people … do you want me to get them to leave?’ ” she recalled. “So he said, ‘I’m going to walk out, I’m going to go downstairs and hide under the stairs, and everyone’s going to leave. Watch.’ And so he walked out, and, you know, you could see everyone trying to act casual, but they all saw him leave, and then it was like a mass exodus; within 10 minutes my apartment was cleared. “And then he came back up and got me and told me that we were going to go listen to the best jukebox in town, and I thought I was going to have this unbelievable night of listening to some hidden punk rock on some cool jukebox in New York, right?” she continued. “But instead he took me to the 119 Bar, which, at the time, had a jukebox that only played disco music. And so we danced to Donna Summer, and then we went home. It was a pretty amazing night.” Stick with MTV News all week as we reveal the Nevermind You Never Knew , celebrating the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s definitive album with classic footage, new interviews and much more. Related Artists Nirvana
