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SUNDAY PM UPDATE: This is one of those box office weekends which Hollywood will be talking about for days. Here’s the Friday, Saturday, weekend, and cume grosses for the Top 10:
1. More good news for Pixar and Disney. As expected, Toy Story 3 tops the North American box office for the 2nd straight week, recording the highest second weekend ever for Disney/Pixar. It’s also the second fastest Disney film to pass $200 million domestic box office — 9 days, compared to Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest‘s 8 days. Thanks to higher 3D ticket prices and a wide release into 4,028 theaters, the toon with massive appeal did $18.0M Friday and $22.6M Saturday and an estimated $18.4M for Sunday. It’s vital to Hollywood summer grosses that so many families are having a great experience at the cineplex because of this pic. It logged a $58.9M weekend, only a 47% drop following its monster opening a week ago, and domestic cume of $226.6M. Its international cume is now $100.0M and its worldwide cume is $326.6M. On IMAX, it took in $4.3M domestic from 180 theaters, and $1 million overseas from 47 theaters, for a global cume of $19.5M. “To infinity … and beyond!”
2. Sony Pictures’ Grown Ups scored the third highest grossing 3-day weekend opening of Adam Sandler’s career with $41M. It continues his near-perfect string of 6 films over $40M and 10 films over $34M weekend comedy openings. It finished with a strong 2nd place after opening to $14.5M Friday and $14.8M Saturday from 3,434 locations. ”Adam has been one of the most consistently performing summer box office draws for over a decade,” one Sony exec emailed me. (But only so long as he’s in raunchy pictures featuring fart jokes.) The audience breakdown was 47%/53% male-female with the demo 52%/48% under-over age 25. The film earned an A- Cinemascore for audiences 18 and younger. Tracking had been strong, but even the studio didn’t expect this poorly reviewed frolic to pass Click’s $40M. I credit the marketable ensemble cast including Kevin James but also Chris Rock, David Spade, and Rob Schneider. The cast helped promote the film starting as far back as the Super Bowl to NASCAR events as well as the MTV Movie Awards, the CMT Country Music Awards, and a series of promotions during the recent NBA Finals for ABC and ESPN and this weekend’s sell-out Yankees versus Dodgers series. Additionally, the outdoor marketing campaign used actual photos of the principal cast as 12 years old boys. Sony is claiming a negative cost of only $70M. How much do bathing suits cost anyway?
3. Twentieth Century Fox’s Knight And Day now sits in 3rd place with a slightly better-than-expected $20.5M for the 3-day weekend and $27.7M for its 5-day cume from 3,098 theaters. The pic took in $6.3M Friday and $8M Saturday. So no one inside Building 88 will be horribly embarrassed, which is all the Fox studio execs ensconced there care about. Especially after the pic received a failing grade of only $3.8M when it opened Wednesday in 3,043 venues (when $5+M would have been passable) and -9% for $3.4M Thursday for only a weak $7.2M cume going into today. Yet this is the kind of $117M rom-com ($107M with the Massachusetts tax breaks, split among New Regency, Fox, and Dune) that should have grossed $35+M easy. “It’s an original movie aimed at adults that is really good,” a Fox exec insisted to me. “It takes longer to catch on with audiences. And this movie is doing that.”
Then again, I have rarely seen Hollywood so transfixed on a movie before it opened. But with starry casting, and promotion aplenty, everything about this pic was high-profile – so a spotlight comes with the territory. (Those stunts for junketing journalists in Spain cost a fortune but translated into media value.) Plus, Fox is the studio Hollywood loves to hate, even more so after the insane success of Avatar, because it regularly takes medium-budget mediocre movies and makes big hits out of them because of killer marketing. Knight And Day should have been no exception. But the media keep gunning for Tom Cruise post-Oprah’s couch and wishing him to fail. Cameron Diaz becomes guilty by association because she can’t open a movie. And the weeks of poor tracking on this pic so unnerved the studio that it made a big PR deal of sneaking the film last weekend to counter the bad buzz building up.
The truth is that the film does play. Although once classy James Mangold should find different representation for letting him direct this long-in-development-hell Joe Roth produced drek. The script passed through the hands of 9 writers as well as Mangold who did an uncredited polish. (At one point titled Trouble Man And Wichita, and then just Wichita, it was Fox film boss Tom Rothman who came up with the treacly Knight And Day.) For that matter, I don’t understand why Cruise did the movie either, especially when he had so many better bake-off options back in February 2009. Like The Tourist, now starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. Back then it would have paired Tom Cruise with Charlize Theron and put him again with Valkyrie scribe Chris McQuarrie. But I digress.
I’m told test screenings were troubled, with audiences cruelly complaining that Tom Cruise is “weird” and Cameron Diaz is “old”. And yet Tom Rothman and Emma Watts were buoyed that they got the pair for bargain basement prices, especially since Tom is still a huge star internationally. Knight And Day opened this weekend in 12 mostly small overseas markets – 8 in Asia/Pacific, 2 in Latin America and 2 in Europe. The film earned $12.6M on 2,238 screens and opened #1 in Russia, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Hong Kong. But most openings are in the middle of July after the World Cup.
The public may pile on Cruise for the movie’s domestic underplay, but Hollywood thinks responsibility lies with Tony Sella’s and Pam Levine’s marketing suckfest. The one-sheet graphic didn’t even show the stars’ faces, the trailers ”made the movie look a USA Network TV show”, to quote one rival maven, and the lame line that it’s “Tom Cruise at his Jerry Maguire best” compares apples to oranges. On the other hand, I hear Rothman micromanaged the movie down to approving publicity stills and picking the release date, while Cruise pushed to have the pic sold as Mission Impossible 4. I can’t wait for The Blame Game to be played on Monday morning because there’s plenty to go around.
4. Karate Kid (Sony) Week 3 [3,740 Theaters]
Friday $4.7M, Saturday $6.0M, Weekend $15.4M, Cume $135.6M
5. The A-Team (Fox) Week 3 [3,242 Theaters]
Friday $1.8M, Saturday $2.4M, Weekend $6.1M, Cume $62.9M
6. Get Him To The Greek (Universal) Week 4 [2,188 Theaters]
Friday $975K, Saturday $1.1M, Weekend $3.0M, Cume $54.5M
7. Shrek Forever After (DWA/Par) Week 6 [2,340 Theaters]
Friday $845K, Saturday $1.1M, Weekend $2.8M, Cume $229.3M
8. Prince of Persia (Disney) Week 5 [1,851 Theaters]
Friday $855K, Saturday $1.1M, Weekend $2.8M, Cume $86.2M
9. Killers (Lionsgate) Week 4 [2,271 Theaters]
Friday $660K, Saturday $790K, Weekend $2.0M, Cume $44.0M
10. Jonah Hex (Warner Bros) Week 2 [2,825 Theaters]
Friday $500K, Saturday $615K, Weekend $1.6M, Cume $9.1M
This colossal failure’s seismic drop, -70%, from even last Friday’s tragic opening, is the sort of humilitainment that Hollywood loves. Problem is, this total writeoff’s $100+M losses will eat into the profits that Chris Nolan’s Inception will make for the studio this summer. Warner Bros’ Alan Horn, Jeff Robinov, Greg Silverman, and DC Comics’ Paul Levitz, Gregory Noveck, and Dan DiDio have a lot of explaining to do. I can’t just shove this one under the rug, fellas.
Overall, the weekend looks like a strong $161M, but that’s still -19% from last year when Transformers 2 powered up the box office.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Where’s that guy that SWORE Jonah Hex was going to do at LEAST 45 million…? I believe he bet his left nut on it. Shit man, how’s that One Ball thing working out for you?
Yeah, and while we’re at it, where’s the guy who swore the A Team was going to have legs, and still be in the theaters in August?
Couldn’t be happier about Toy Story 3 and its success. I, too, hope it goes on to surpass the Shrek crown for highest grossing animated film in history. As for Knight & Day, I used to be one of Cruise’s most ardent fans. Then came Katie…the Matt Lauer interview…the Oprah debacle…etc. Am I forgiving? Yes. But why continue eating something that no longer tastes good? I wish no ill on Cruise. But I can’t digest him anymore. He made too much of a lousy impact with his…um…asinine antics.
I don’t get it…why is it that whenever Hollywood has a bomb they blame the marketing? I don’t work in the industry, or in marketing, but as a businessman looking in from the outside it appears the marketing department is the one area not in ‘power’ or have managers/agents to defend itself. Their argument falls on deaf ears when a film is essentially universally panned by the majority of critics across the country (as is the case with K&D), as well as paying audiences.
Audiences have fallen for the marketing of bad Tom Cruise movies for years, and finally appear to have figured it out. Just like they appear to finally realize not every 3D movie is worth paying $18.50.
As Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
they blame the marketing because it’s a HUGE part of why a movie fails or thrives opening weekend. there are well reviewed movies that bomb all the time because the marketing department failed to reach the right demographic with the right campaign; there are also critically reviled ones that do splendidly (grown ups is at 10% on rotten tomatoes, far lower that K&D, and yet it’s doing better at the box office). as a businessman surely you realize that in any sales situation making sure you reach your potential customers with the right message/ads/branding etc… is key.
this isn’t to let the film’s creatives off the hook if the movie sucks, but when it comes to box office- opening weekend, the importance of good marketing can’t be underestimated.
Also because at most studios marketing greenlights the movies or a former head of marketing is running the studio.
Kevin James… Middle Earth hearts the fat man.
Grown-Ups is the model for bottom of the barrel crap. Anyone involved in that should be ashamed of themselves. Why not just film Sandler walking around all day, wiping his ass, watching tv. Same thing. Sad.
Listen Gross Man. I don’t see any one green lighting your punk ass shit. Have you even seen the film.
Grossman, I bet you liked Knight & Day and Jonah Hex though… enough said.
I’m tired of every ent mag slamming the “poor opening of Knight and day” it’s a fab film. I saw it. Treat yourself to something fun…
All of Mangold’s films are good.
- I’m told test screenings were troubled, with audiences cruelly complaining that Tom Cruise is “weird” and Cameron Diaz is “old”. –
I read on another forum that significant “Benjamin Buttoning” was performed on both stars in post.
This summer is full of epic fail of apocalyptic proportion. It has to be the worst summer for movies we have EVER seen for content AND box office tally.
In my opinion, we have 2 good films (Iron Man 2 and Kung Fu Kid) and 1 stellar film (Toy Story 3) and June is done. Really pitiful.
As I understand it, Jonah Hex was made before the redesign of DC into DC Entertainment – back when people on the comics side (DiDio, Levitz, etc) had absolutely nothing to do with the film end of things. So I’m not sure what they have to answer for here – if anything, this seems a stellar example of why DC Entertainment was formed and DC was rejigged – precisely so that people who know the characters like DiDio would have some actual involvement with movies. I mean, that was the whole idea behind making Geoff Johns CCO, no? Taking DC’s best writer who has proven himself incredibly adept at revamping and updating concepts and putting him in charge of adaptations to other media so train wrecks like Jonah Hex wouldn’t happen?
Yea, unfortunately we’re never going to get another Jonah Hex film. These lesser known characters need to hit one out of the park from day one because they don’t get a second chance.
A character like Batman can bomb but that’s ok because WB will just reboot the franchise in a few years.
And then you’ve got the middle-tier characters like “The Punisher” who have had a few films, none of which became mega-hits. There are plenty of scribes who could turn out an amazing film for the character but unfortunately they’re never going to get a chance.
DC comics have one big problem. Other than Batman and Superman no one gives a crap about their characters. (MAybe Wonderwoman back in the dat, but not now.) You can only polish a turd so much.
Jonah Hex shouldn’t have been made for a lot of reasons, and the execution was terrible. But no one cared about an obscure character in the first place so it was always doomed. Now their gonna make Dr. Strange. Who’s gonna see that? Answer – no one.
Nobody gave a crap about Iron Man either — until someone made a great movie about him. DC has an endless supply of interesting characters to develop. Doesn’t matter how many people have heard of them. Just make cool movies and people will go see them.
The thing you said about K&D’s marketing being all over the place…sometimes that works. The marketing for the Blindside emphasized the sports angle when playing during things like sporting events, whereas it showed the dramatic side during more female or dramatic programming.
Blindside succeeded because of the massive faith-based promotions in the Bible Belt, not because of marketing to sports or anything else. Fun movie.
NOTHING this summer will be better than CYRUS. NOTHING
NOTHING this summer will be better than Miley Cyrus in The Last Song, NOTHING
Thank you for the above post Mr. or Mrs. Publicist for Jonah “I can’t act” Hill.
To borrow a phrase from Nikki, Jonah Hill’s thespian aspirations is one, big “suckfest” !!!!! He, just like David Schwimmer of “Friends” fame, should kiss the ground upon waking each morn in eternal gratitude they have a career in Hollywood.
Sheesh. Talk about the celluloid equivalent of the Peter Principle. Hill is IT personified. I will not be seeing the indie schlocky Cyrus. Sounds like bores-ville.
Fox = Killer Marketing? Because A-Team, K&D and (the upcoming) Predators all over-performed? The only consistent killer marketing by a studio this summer belongs to Sony. Everyone else has been mixed or FAIL.
Why would anyone pay to see a Sandler film in theatres? I mean I enjoy some of his stuff, but it’s more of a “I can wait for this to hit video” type quality that his movies have.
I think the problem with Night and Day is audiences are having genre fatigue. If I am counting right this is the 4th film in 6 months with the same premise but different stars. Killers is still out there and it hasn’t found an audience. I think audiences were not ready to embrace another action/comedy/romance no matter who is in it. I also think the critics have been he overly generous with their reviews of Night and Day this was a big budget summer film and they are critiquing it like it had a $40 million dollar budget.
I saw Knight and Day on Wednesday and enjoyed it. Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz had great comedic timing and the action and scenery/locations in Europe were beautiful.
Grown-Ups is depressingly awful. Overpraised comedians slogging through weak material. One of its running jokes is that David Spade, who looks surprisingly old and fat, starts to gag every time someone mentions sex with an older woman.
Your taking it awfully personal. Do people gag when they have sex with you.
It’s interesting to me that a guy like Spade, who made his career as a stand-up making fun of bad career decisions celebrities make, has turned into the very guy he mocked as a comedian.
Hey, Eddie Murphy has been blazing that path for years–and Chris Rock is getting dangerously close to doing the same.
Wow you haters have a real hard-on for Big Tom. From what I can see, “Knight and Day”:
a) Opened on a Wednesday. Why?
b) Lesser flick with lesser stars and same premise opened right before it (Killers), and both pale in comparison to the originator, “Mr and Mrs. Smith”
c) Poster didn’t even feature the stars. Weak
d) Lackluster promotion
Much as I love Tom and Cameron, they are indeed a bit dated as well, especially in this kid-centric era where nobody remembers 10 minutes ago, let alone 1999-2000.
Tom should have held out for MI:4 if he wanted to do a summer action flick. No confidence in Brad Bird, though, despite animation successes. Would much rather J.J. return to the director’s chair.
My .02
so, again BOUNTY HUNTER has done better than Knight & Day, as well as Killers!!!!so why is BH termed a Bomb when it has lower budget than these two???
Because Knight & Day will be huge overseas. Bounty Hunter did the same business overseas that it did here, which wasn’t much. That’s the difference. Cruise movies still make money, like it or not.
Actually Bounty Hunter has done slightly more overseas than domestic. But what’s important is that it has made more than $135 million world wide to date and counting – with a budget of just $40 million. Knight & Day is going to need to make more than $350 million world wide to see similar profit versus budget numbers. That’s going to be quite an uphill climb based on this opening.
Fact is Bounty Hunter has performed as expected or greater – and so far better than Killers (which had double its production budget), and headed for a better opening than Knight & Day (with nearly three times its production budget). It should never have been designated an “embarrassing flop” out the gate.
All of you IDIOTS think making a comedy is easy, but whenever you try they suck. Adam owns you over and over and over again. If all it took was fart jokes to make a hit, then all studios would make are comedies. People who can’t make good movies make “important” films because then no one can say they suck without losing face.
Nikki you are an average wit and should refrain from insulting Adam when you aren’t even talented enough to work in the movies, so you leech off other people’s work and report on it.
I heard the studios are making ten films of just farting. Since Nikki thinks that is all it takes to succeed in comedy.
A few years ago it would have been Chris Rock’s face right next to and as big as Adam Sandler’s on a movie poster. Now it’s Kevin James.
Because of PAUL BLART!? Rock’s been around longer, is more talented and sharper and I’m sure has made as much money for studios these past 20 years as James did for MALL COP if not more. NEW JACK CITY, LETHAL WEAPON 4. These movies made money.
Studios think we’re really stupid.
Yeah, that was odd. They barely even let Chris speak in the trailer. I guess they figure his demographic will come no matter what. Chris seemed to get demoted to the “token black guy” like the one in “Couples Retreat”.
Referencing Lethal Weapon 4 and New Jack City isn’t going to change their minds.
I’m guessing it’s because Rock hasn’t ever opened a film on his own, is coming off multiple flops while Kevin James has starred in four films since leaving his wildly successful TV show, Hitch – 179 mil domestic, I Now Pronounce You Larry and Chuck 120 mil domestic and Paul Blart – 146 mil domestic – that would make Kevin James a movie star while Chris Rock is a stand up comedian who has never opened a film, ever. Hence why James is the bigger face on the poster.
This was one of the worst movies i have seen in a long time> Tom Cruise looks every bit the lunatic that jumped on Oprah’s coach. Cameron Diaz looked like leather face. The story was stupid
Knight and day is way better than Buhay and even killers wasn’t as bad as the horrible script of Buhay. Perhaps Bh ruined it for the opening weekends of the two that followed.
No one in the 14-25 demographic is going to the movies, but don’t blame us for all this lackluster performance: We don’t have any money! Downsizing comes down the hardest on retailers, so it’s a little hard for me to go splurging on these outrageous ticket prices when I don’t even work forty hours a week delivering pizza.
The last straw for me was Alice in Wonderland: Me and my friends were all fired up to see it, and even though we weren’t making much, we somehow mustered the $14 a pop required for IMAX seating and took the long drive from our rural town to the theater, not to mention the joint we smoked before the movie. And what happened? The movie sucked, that’s what happened: Totally squandered all of its thematic and 3-D potential.
I didn’t see another movie until Kick-Ass, and most of my friends stayed home for that one, waiting for Nightmare on Elm Street. You see how this works? We really don’t have the money to go and gamble on whether or not Knight & Day might be “pretty entertaining.” A dime-sack is pretty entertaining, too.
Seriously, I’m waiting in line for my ticket and I look at the admission fees: Most theaters around here are pushing ten bucks for a matinee! Are we going to the movies or boarding a train? Remember when eight bucks for a night show was considered steep?
We did end up seeing Toy Story, though… if you create something that’s genuinely damn good, it will attract patrons, period. Not just semi-good, ala Knight & Day, or pretty good, ala Get Him to the Greek, or something debatable like Shrek Forever After. Make a great movie and it will eventually find its audience.
The music industry is supposedly dead, right? Well, earlier this week, I marched my broke ass to Best Buy and picked up Recovery, the first CD I’ve purchased in a really long time. Great album, by the way: Just the kind of creative adrenaline this washed-up industries need. Same for film with Toy Story 3.
I hope Hollywood is reading your post, because it tells them more than their douchebag marketing departments ever could. (And I DO work in the industry).
Mediocrity = mediocre returns
Fact is fact. Just put this entire summer in your Netflix Queue, because it’s not worth going to the theatre for. (Hopefully, Inception is the exception).
Second that, college kid here and besides the astronomical prices of tickets these days (‘Alice’ was also the last time I do 3D unless it is something like ‘Avatar’ where the movie is planned from the very beginning to be in 3D and utilized effectively), the general lack of original movies has caused me to just stick with Netflix for the most part this summer.
The creative drought in Hollywood is just depressing to me. I am a huge cinephile, love masterpieces like ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ and ‘Citizen Kane’ just as much as I do summer blockbusters and superhero films. Just a couple of years ago I went to midnight showings of big movies because I had to be one of the first to see it. These days? Not one movie has been worth going to the midnight showing, much less paying matinee prices in general.
DK hits the nail on the head, those of us who would be considered the core demographic of movie-going people are not just going to lap up anything thrown at us. Oooo, another Adam Sandler sophomoric comedy? Can’t wait. The only movie I had to see on opening weekend this summer was ‘Toy Story 3′, not only because it got great reviews, but because it resonated with me due to my having grown up with the original movies as well as having a number of themes that affected me on much more than a superficial level. Besides that one outstanding film (I will see anything Pixar puts out, and I am in my twenties), this summer is a complete dud, and many of my fellow twentysomethings are doing as I am and not wasting the money on these decent or crappy films in theaters.
I trust Chris Nolan so here’s hoping ‘Inception’ is as good as the early buzz has been, that will be the only other movie this summer that I (and from discussions many of my fellow movie-going twentysomething friends) have to see in theaters. Hollywood, put out good movies that we actually WANT to see and we will come, trust me.
DK, Handy–dead on. The industry seems to have designed this summer’s slate for a 2005 (or 1985) rolling-in-discretionary-income audience. Every teen/20-something I know is working retail (and getting their work hours cut,) dropping out of college to earn money, or just barely staying in college. None of them have money to blow to see even good movies more than once–and they sure as hell don’t have it to throw away on flicks that don’t deliver at all.
And my (somewhat older that you) friends agree with yours–INCEPTION looks like the only upcoming summer movie worth spending to see.
Just looked over the July slate, and Hollywood won’t be getting more than twenty bucks from me next month: My buddy and I are psyched for Inception, and I’ll probably watch Predators, but other than that, it’s barren… I’d like to watch Despicable Me and Sorcerer’s Apprentice, but it’s not worth the gamble, especially for the 3-D Despicable.
It’s sad to say because I really do enjoy a good movie, but after Inception, I probably won’t return to the theater until Saw VII. Do they really expect me to shell out for The Other Guys and Charlie St. Cloud? Times have changed and money’s tight. I anticipate a lot of sub-$10 million openings this summer; Jonah Hex may be the first big bomb, but I have a feeling it won’t be the last.
There’s a tendency, especially in the summer and holiday seasons, for people to want to label everything either a hit or a bomb immediately. People are more interested in extremes and quick labels than in the middle, which requires more detailed consideration and often the passage of time to evaluate.
Look at the final summer box office tallies and you’ll see there were fewer “bombs” than you were led to believe.
Here’s my deal. I like Cruise. I have always liked him and always will. However, I’ve seen him be the kick butt/agent/superhero guy sooooo many times. He needs to do more character work. He was great in Magnolia, he rocked as Lestat, he was hilarious as Less Grossman. He shined in Vanilla Sky much more as the guy with the disfigured face than he did as the playboy with everything he could want. I feel I’ve seen him be this (Knight and Day) character way too many times over (or some variation of). I’m not saying never do it again. I’m just suggesting he leave it for a while and make the return to it exciting after having done some different things. He is very underrated as an actor because of his Movie Star status. I don’t know if just gaining weight like Stallone did for COPLAND will suffice, but something along the lines of what Charlize Theron did in MONSTER would be good. Play the ugly Tom and they will love you for it. I know you got lotto mo inside you.
Dear Jack–FINALLY, someone with the intelligence to praise Tom Cruise as a highly underrated actor! So far on these posts, I have yet to come across anyone commending Cruise on his Oscar-worthy performances in BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, A FEW GOOD MEN, RAIN MAN (I know, Hoffman’s one-note role won the Oscar but Cruise, as a spoiled yuppy’s gradual transformation into a loving, compassionate young man, deserved it), etc. And can we please forget about his couch-jumping on Oprah! I, for one, found it a touching declaration of a young man’s love for a lovely young lady (after his marriages to those twin beasts Mimi Rogers & Nicole Kidman, who only snagged him to further their mediocre careers, he certainly deserved some happiness in his life). Yes, I personally find scientology not to my taste, but everyone should be respected for his choice of religion (Richard Gere’s a Buddhist, Madonna & many others have chosen other non-popular ideologies, and the much-beloved Travolta and many others are also scientologists but have escaped the public pounding inflicted on poor Tom). And, yes, I’m prejudiced. In the late ’80s-early ’90s, I worked for the publicity firm that handled Tom, and whenever he came to NYC to promote a new movie, I was happily assigned to cover his interviews. He was a modest, intelligent, engaging, thoughtful young gentleman, and a sheer pleasure to work with (unlike dozens of others “stars” I could name but won’t). When another client, Tom Berenger, with whom I was close friends, did, as a favor to Oliver Stone for “Platoon”, one scene in “Born on the Fourth of July”, he flew back home to Beaufort to find a delivery truck driving to his house and giving him an elaborate floral/balloon arrangement tied to a bottle of champagne, the card read “it was an honor to work with an actor of your caliber, sincerely, Tom C”. Berenger was deeply moved by such a warm, sincere gesture; it had never happened to him before in his life. In the years since, Cruise & Kidman adopted two children during their ill-fated marriage. I have never seen any mention of or evidence of Nicole having any ties to these children, but often, while watching one of those TV entertainment shows, see their adoptive father taking them to Knicks games. Since today’s moviegoers seem to have such a hate-on for one of our finest actors, I’d advise Tom to do what so many others who have hit career snags have done: hit the Broadway stage for a 6-month revival of a classic play. It would put an end to the foolish national pastime of “hating Tom” and remind critics, moviegoers, and theater-goers why we fell in love with Tom Cruise to begin with!