The adult, star-driven drama is officially an endangered species
The spring was hard on several highbrow dramas aimed at older moviegoers, as Russell Crowe's "State of Play" and Julia Roberts' "Duplicity" labored to attract ticket buyers. Tom Hanks' "Angels & Demons" is hardly a flop, having grossed more than $131 million domestically and well more than double that overseas. But the Sony franchise's predecessor, "The Da Vinci Code," grossed more than $217 million domestically, with far worse reviews than "Angels & Demons" received. Denzel Washington and John Travolta's "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" is no blockbuster for Sony either, Johnny Depp's "Public Enemies" faces a crucial test for Universal this weekend, its second in theaters, and Adam Sandler's "Funny People" could be a tough July 31 premiere for Universal.
The only grown-up drama showing steady (if very modest) returns is Focus Features' "Away We Go," the Sam Mendes-directed comic drama that could approach a total gross of $9 million this weekend. With no pricey stars, it didn't cost much to make -- about $17 million, and should manage a good profit when overseas sales are counted. It was hardly a shock, then, that in the middle of the summer Sony pulled the plug on "Moneyball," a $58-million Brad Pitt baseball biography directed by Steven Soderbergh.
Critics can help in only one direction, and less than before
Only if reviewers were mistakenly shown "Plan 9 From Outer Space" could Paramount's "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" have collected worse notices. But even with some of the poorest marks of the summer, director Michael Bay's "Transformers" sequel enjoyed the second-best five-day opening in Hollywood history, narrowly missing the record set by last summer's "The Dark Knight." Loyalists clearly loved the dueling robot epic, giving it even better exit poll marks than fans did Paramount's "Star Trek." Though great reviews and equally positive word-of-mouth clearly helped the performance of "Star Trek," Disney's "Up" and the good openings for "Public Enemies" and Summit's "The Hurt Locker," the overwhelmingly positive notices for "Sugar" ($1.1 million) and "Tyson" ($858,000) couldn't quite turn those late-spring Sony Pictures Classics releases into art-house hits that would play through the summer.
Old formulas are just that -- old
