|
THE
Golden Compass topped the weekend box office with an
estimated $26.1 million in US and Canadian ticket sales,
New Line Cinema said Sunday, although the costly fantasy
film struck less gold than the studio had expected.
The
picture, seen as the start of a potential blockbuster
franchise in the Lord of the Rings vein, got a warmer
welcome overseas, pulling in $55 million abroad for a
worldwide total of $81 million, New Line said.
“We were
hoping for a little better domestically but the
international numbers were solid,” said Rolf Mittweg,
New Line’s president and chief operating officer of
worldwide distribution and marketing.
As of
last week, the studio had been looking for a North
American opening in the range of $30 million to $40
million for the film from writer-director Chris Weitz.
The
PG-13 movie, based on the first book in British author
Philip Pullman’s acclaimed His Dark Materials trilogy,
was the only wide release to hit the marketplace, and it
set the pace for another dismal weekend at the box
office overall.
Results
were down from the corresponding weekend in 2006 for the
fifth straight time, according to Media by Numbers. It
was not the kind of news Hollywood was hoping for in the
face of an increasingly bitter writers’ strike that
looks as though it could drag on for months.
Walt
Disney Co.’s modern-day fairy tale Enchanted held up
firmly in its third weekend, taking in an estimated
$10.7 million to rank No. 2. The mix of animation and
live action, starring Amy Adams, has racked up $83.9
million through three weekends.
With the
holiday season in high gear, two Christmas-themed movies
are continuing to attract family audiences. Sony
Pictures’ ensemble drama This Christmas and Warner
Bros.’ comedy Fred Claus came in third and fourth with
about $5 million apiece, based on studio estimates.
New Line
acknowledges spending $180 million to make The Golden
Compass, starring Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and
newcomer Dakota Blue Richards, although industry sources
speculate that the picture’s true cost soared above $200
million in postproduction.
Reviews
have been mixed for the film, about a 12-year-old girl
who journeys to a parallel universe to save her best
friend and other kidnapped children from experiments
conducted by a mysterious organization.
Whatever
the picture’s cost, New Line hedged its bets by selling
off foreign distribution rights, the same strategy the
studio has used with The Lord of the Rings and, for that
matter, most of its major productions.
Mittweg
said that between those foreign territory sales and the
eventual revenue from the DVD and television markets,
New Line could turn a profit on the picture. “It looks
like we’re going to come out ahead,” he said.
Even so,
Mittweg was noncommittal about the studio’s tentative
plans to make two sequels, The Subtle Knife and The
Amber Spyglass, based on the rest of Pullman’s series.
“It’s
impossible for us to talk about sequels at this point,”
he said. “It all depends on the grosses.”
He noted
that The Golden Compass had yet to open in 30 foreign
territories, including Japan, Italy and Australia.
Still,
Compass will soon face fierce competition for broad
audiences.
Several
big holiday-season movies are coming, including the Will
Smith thriller I Am Legend this Friday and the Nicolas
Cage sequel National Treasure: Book of Secrets on
December 21.
If
Compass falls off sharply, it could end up generating
less than $100 million in domestic ticket sales—a result
that would be seen as a major embarrassment for New
Line.
But if
the movie holds up respectably, especially overseas, it
could rake in about $400 million worldwide. That
wouldn’t make it a blockbuster like The Chronicles of
Narnia or the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter films,
but it would be far from disastrous.
Despite
New Line’s two hits this year with the musical Hairspray
and the action-comedy Rush Hour 3, the studio has
struggled with most of its slate.
The
disappointing opening for Compass will probably spark
renewed speculation about the studio’s future under
corporate parent Time Warner Inc., which also owns
Warner Bros.
“In an
increasingly difficult film environment, Time Warner
needs to collapse New Line into Warner Bros.,” Richard
Greenfield, an analyst at Pali Research in New York,
said Sunday. “It’s making less and less sense to have
duplicate overhead.”
Profits
at most Hollywood studios have suffered in the last
three years as DVD sales, which helped fuel growth
during the late 1990s and earlier this decade, have
flattened.
Unlike
specialty divisions at other studios, such as Disney’s
Miramax and News Corp.’s Fox Searchlight, New Line
focuses on mainstream fare rather than art-house titles,
so it is seen as similar to its larger sibling, Warner
Bros. |
