Proof-of-life photo with a juicy blue gill.

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, been working on a new project and it’s consumed a lot of time. But fear not, it’s really cool and I should be able to talk about it very soon.

However the podcast may have to continue to take a breather as we see how this new project affects my schedule over time.

Opening this weekend:

Inception: The big geek movie of the summer! I sure know I want to see it. This will translate well to box office dollars, I’m just not sure how well. It’s like guessing how much over $100 million a “Twilight” movie will open at.

I’ll do some math then. Geek cred ($35m) + Leonardo DiCaprio ($30m)  +  interesting ad campaign and premise ($30m)  + “From the Director of the Dark Knight” ($50m) MINUS nobody died during production ala Heath Ledger (-$50m) equals $95 million opening weekend. Possibly edging past $100m.

I think the death of Heath Ledger is a sorely unappreciated part of “The Dark Knight”’s gross, easily accounting for $100-$150 million of it final tally.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Think we’re looking at another Bruckheimer bomb here, a high-concept movie with a concept that’s hard to sell. Plus it’s probably crap. I, like most people, enjoy the “National Treasure” films but as is being proved again and again, it’s the brand, not the actor/director people care about. Still, I could see it doing $30-$35 million for the weekend.Which is being generous.

There was an article recently called  “Whatever happened to the Box Office Bomb?”. It lamented the fact we never get an “Ishtar”, “Last Action Hero” or “Cutthroat Island” anymore. Instead we get “under-performers” that eventually squeak out a profit on DVD.

Let’s examine that with “Prince of Persia”. Worldwide gross $323 million. Cost: $200 million. Sounds good right? Not really. Studios only get back 50%-70% of a movie’s box office gross, the remainder goes to theaters. The percentage changes each week, the longer a movie is out. Opening weekend it might be Studio 80 / theater 20, next week is 70 / 30, and so forth.

This is why movies open huge, fizzle quick and are gone in a month. It is not in the studios interest for them to linger. Back in the 80’s, a movie could often be in theaters for an entire year (ET, Back to the Future, Star Wars). Now that would never happen.

Back to Prince of Persia. It opened weakly but held in OK, so its split is probably closer to 50/50 than 70/30. Let’s be generous and say Disney got 60%.  That puts it at $193 million, which might just barely cover its cost. But then there’s marketing. A typical big film will often spend an amount near or even equal to its budget on advertising. “Prince” had a ton of advertising so let’s say $100 million.

So that’s roughly $100 million it’s still in the hole. The film’s remaining source of income is DVD sales, which in this weak environment it will likely never recover. So the movie lost money.

Is it a true bomb? No, that would be Jonah Hex. But the sad fact is most movies don’t even begin to show a profit until DVD, which is why studios are going nuts over declining DVD sales and piracy.

Closing note: Most of history’s famous bomb movies aren’t really the biggest bombs. Stuff like “Pluto Nash”, “Cutthroat Island”, “Town & Country” did far, far worse than “Ishtar”, “Last Action Hero” or “Waterworld”.

Do you have an idea for a project you’d like to see me build? Well now’s your chance as we’re taking submissions / ideas for a group of projects this summer / early fall! Here’s how it works:

1. Come up with an awesome project / idea you’d like to see built.
2. Visit this page to email us your idea.
3. If chosen, see your project being built in a few months!
4. Select builds will be donated to the requester, especially in the case of special needs projects.

More details to come… stay tuned to www.benheck.com and my Twitter to keep in the loop.

NOTE: Any requests for “all in  one combo systems” will be ignored, so please stop sending those.

You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone who loves those films, or go 10 minutes without getting into a conversation about it, so I’m going to go ahead and predict a 5-day (Wednesday-Sunday) haul of $175 million for “Twilight: Eclipse”. Last fall the first crappy sequel stunned the world by making nearly $150 in a single weekend, and this one’s actually supposed to be “decent” so who knows? Hell, it could push $200 million for the 5 day period - expect records to be broken.

Speaking of broken, let’s move onto M. Night Shyamalan’s career. Here’s a guy who made 3 good movies in 3 years, then drank too much of his own Kool-Aid and starting churning out the turds such as the “The Village” - a film where I was actually upset that I’d watched it and wanted 2 hours of my life back. (Similar to seeing a sneak preview of this year’s boring “Robin Hood”, then realizing I’d missed “Lost”) Even in fail-up Hollywood you only get a certain number of strikes before you’re out (just ask Renny Harlin) so Shyamalan went with a cash-in “sure bet” - “Avatar: The Last Airbender”.

The only hope for this movie is counter-programming: Mom takes daughter to “Twilight”, son goes to see “Airbender”. In that best-case (but unlikely) scenario it could scare up $35-$40 million. Unlikely though - if you see a mom out doing something with a kid it’s always the daughter and a boy wouldn’t be caught dead near a “Twilight”-infused multiplex. So more likely it bombs and barely scraps past $20 million. But Shyamalan’s got his next movie lined up so his career will limp on. Sigh.

Toy Story 3 will continue to do well, say $30-$35 million for 2nd place. It will almost certainly become Pixar’s biggest hit ever, but probably won’t beat “Shrek 2″.

Rounding out the rest will be Adam Sandler’s latest “boy-man” comedy and “The Karate Kid”.

The big geek movie “Inception” is coming soon. No way in hell it does “Batman” numbers but it is the only remaining film of the summer I have any interest in.

For this coming weekend, expect the good-but-overrated “Toy Story 3″ to have another #1 weekend, probably well north of $50 million. Why these movies continue to get higher Tomatometers than much better films like “Wall-E” or “Up” is beyond me. Probably because they’re not risky like the ones I just mentioned.

The other 2 openers are a bit of a wild card. Firstly, I think “Knight and Day” will open well, despite the media’s strange, continued desire to convince us Tom Cruise is no longer a movie star. Guess what - he is, and more so than media darlings Brad Pitt or George Clooney will ever be. I’d be more worried about Cameron Diaz who, for whatever reason, is one of the highest paid actresses out there. She’s had more turds than Cruise ever will.

So say $40-$50 million on that one, and could have decent legs. Even the negative reviews on Rotten Tomatoes give it a lot of compliments.

Then there’s “Grown Ups”, which I assume will be an entire movie about 45 year olds acting like children. While I’m sure this movie will be god-awful, it does have a “Couple Retreat” vibe going for it plus a bunch of washed up stars and the Mall Cop guy. So people will show up. Expect a bunch of nonsense, then a touchy feely ending where they confess to their wives / kids that they’re the greatest treasure of all or some BS like that.

$35-$45 million, possibly a close race with Tom Cruise for 2nd.

Tune in next week as I try and predict exactly how much more than $100 million Twilight will open at! Also, Last Airbender is going to bomb - big time.

Argh! They’re just taunting me with all the 360 Slims sitting around doing nothing! Unfair! Cruel!

I know what you’re thinking. “Why didn’t you buy one already? Didn’t you get a PS3 Slim before Best Buy even put them out on the floor?” Yes, true. But ironically, I was at E3 all last week and by time I got home, they were sold out.  Security at E3 let me pick one up and look at the bottom, but that was about it.

So now I’m looking for one, very interested in analyzing it to see if I can make a cheaper / better Xbox 360 laptop, or Pelican unit for use by troops overseas.

Thanks to Bradley Metrock for digging one up for me! He’ll have first crack at whatever I build with it…. :)

Jonah Hex - bomb / continued end to Megan Fox’s career.

Karate Kid will continue to perform well.

That is all! Greeting from LA.

1) Xbox 360 Kinect, formerly known as Natal.

2) Jones taking a voyeuristic photo of Jessica Chobot.

3) PlayStation Move

…and, in a rare case of me liking something from modern Nintendo…

4) The Nintendo 3DS.

Also includes impressions of Rock Band 3, OnLive service, Nintendo booth’s resemblance to a strip club and much, much more.

Listen to Benheck.com Podcast Episode 74

www.benheckpodcast.com

#1 The A-Team

The first of this weekend’s 1980’s retreads is “The A-Team”, a movie based on a show I watched religiously as a child yet hardly remember (see also: “Dukes of Hazard”)

I am basing this #1 prediction off seeing the trailer during a packed showing of “Iron Man 2: The Suit Would Never Fit In That Briefcase And Even If It Did You Wouldn’t Be Able to Lift It”. Despite the “A-Team” trailer not being very funny (or having any welding scenes) people reacted to it very strongly. The trailer for “Prince of Persia” got crickets, and it still made $32 million opening. “A-Team” should be able to do at least as well.

This has been a very weak summer thus far, so something’s gotta open decent eventually. I mean, besides “Toy Story 3″ and “Twilight”.

#2 The Karate Kid

…a movie about Kung-Fu, not karate. Maybe it doesn’t matter, “Mummy 3″ contained NO mummies whatsoever (or Rachel Weisz) and it still made a decent chunk o’ change.

Wil Smith’s kid stars along with Jackie Chan. I have recently determined the reasoning for a lot of these remakes. People my age who grew up with movies like “Karate Kid” now have kids of their own. Apparently we see ads for this new one and think “Oh, I remember that movie as formulatic, safe fun. I’ll take my kids to something live-action for a change.”

This may not open as high as “A-Team” but it could hang in there as a sleeper hit, like “The Blind Side” or “insert-generic-but-crowd-pleasing-sports-movie-here”.

Old Releases

Shrek 4 will still hang in there, of course, since it has “Shrek” in the title. Probably as #3, or maybe just above “Kung Fu Kid”. All other releases will continue their rapid declines, yet Hollywood will continue to make video game adaptations despite the fact “Persia” blew it, even with its massive production / advertising budget.

The tepid box office summer will finally heat up later in June with “Toy Story 3″ and “Twilight: More Suckage” which will both open north of $100 million.

We’re back! In this newest, thrilling episode we discuss:

1) The Lost finale. Spoilers abound!

2) Smart Phones and things that are cool about the iPad.

3) Red Dead Redemption, AKA “Grand Theft Horse”. Also, how “Dances with Wolves” isn’t a Western, but “Roadhouse” is.

4) Actors who don’t seem to age, like Keith David and Kevin Kline. (Richard Dreyfuss is not in this club)

5) More Star Wars Episode 1 impressions than you probably care to hear, plus the movies “9″ versus “Nine”.

Listen to Benheck.com Podcast Episode 73

www.benheckpodcast.com