UPFRONTS 2013: The Overachievers 
‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ On Track For $27M … 
‘Mike & Molly’ Creator Mark Roberts To … 
Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts Set For … 
Hammond On Cannes: Weinstein Brings Out Stars For 2013 … 
Cannes: Fake Gunshots Interrupt Canal Plus Live Broadcast … 
‘The Great Gatsby’ Starts With $5.4M … 
Cannes: Music Box Acquires Competition’s … 
Cannes: Bruno Wu & Pierre-Ange Le Pogam Kick Up Angel … 
UPDATE: Amazon Studios Begins Pilot Pickups; … 
Bruce Rosenblum Bids Classy Goodbye 
RATINGS RAT RACE UPDATE: ‘American Idol’ Hits … 
UPDATE: ‘Iron Man 3′ Box Office Crosses $1B … 
John Lesher’s Le Grisbi Teams With DCM Productions … 
Upfront Market: Will Auto Makers Subsidize TV … 
Cannes: Thief Makes Off With $1M+ In Chopard Jewelry Meant … 
Cannes: Cyrus Nowrasteh To Helm Film On Soviet Dissident … 
‘Scandal’ Finale On Small Screen And Onstage At … 
Cannes: Cassian Elwes, Robert Ogden Barnum Launch e2b … 
SPOILER ALERT! NBC’s ‘The Office’ Finale 
‘Modern Family’ Gets Cable Makeover For Launch … 
UPDATE: Sources tell me that Paramount’s The Last Airbender opened to $16+M Thursday, including the $3 million from its midnight shows. The pic based on the Nickelodeon animated TV series should be on its way to $60M for the 5-day July Fourth Holiday and a shot at 2nd place.
Hard to believe but there’s another movie opening this weekend besides the Twilight Saga’s Eclipse. It’s Paramount’s The Last Airbender 3D from M Night Shyamalan, and I’ve just learned it quietly opened to a solid $3 million in Thursday midnight screenings because of the studio’s counterprogramming strategy. Paramount says that’s the highest midnight gross this summer for a non-sequel. Unfortunately, the studio is stuck with a high price tag of $145M, including the 3D conversion costs of this actioner based on the animated TV series from Nickelodeon called “Avatar: The Last Airbender”, and what rival studios are telling me is at least a $50+M marketing campaign. But the movie has been tracking well with males of all ages and kids and now looks to break M Night’s recent drought at the box office. That’s despite horrid reviews — only 6% positive on Rotten Tomatoes, worse than this summer’s biggest bomb Jonah Hex. It should come in 2nd this weekend neck and neck with Disney’s Toy Story 3 but far behind Summit’s Eclipse with between $50M and $60M for the 5-day July 4th holiday thanks to help from higher 3D ticket prices. Remember that Sunday’s theatrical grosses will be way down because that’s when Independence Day falls this year. But The Last Airbender is expected to make most of its money internationally.
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I guess this is good news for the movie business, but I must be really out of touch with this demographic– when I saw the trailer, I thought it had bomb written all over it.
Fiscal Bomb possibly. Failure on multiple levels, definitely. H’wood should be able to collectively “fire” individuals. You make “The Village,” you get a warning. Follow it up with “The Happening,” you’re on probation. Wrap it up with “Last Airbender,” boom. Fired.
You forgot “Lady In The Water”. Where’s the punishment for that one?
The Village was fairly watchable compared to Lady In The Water and The Happening.
Won’t be seeing Airbender. All of the reasons are out and about on the interwebs.
and you forgot the amazingly bad “Lady in the Water”! Some people are just able to ride one monster hit for a decade! crazy.
Let’s not forget the that faux-naif masterpiece of pretentious pigswill, The Lady in the Water.
That was actually more painful than the Not-Happening.
And the villains are — yikes — the trees!
The Last Airbender is going to die like a dog domestically after it’s first weekend. And M. Shite can finally go to movie jail. Sad. And Lame. It’s a long way down from the Sixth Sense.
Lady in the Water? Did you have it erased from your memory for your own well being?
I feel bad for everyone who actually paid to watch the movie. It’s currently 6% at Rotten Tomato. I’ve read many reviews and pretty much everyone gave it negative reviews.
Did you actually see it? Or are you just judging it by reviews.
The Last Air bender is a movie making disgrace. How did M. McKnight miss the boat so badly. Did he go out of his way to botch the perfect storyline and interesting group of characters for a reason? How irresponsible for the studio to release the movie? Did they not do any screen testing with real audience? A complete waste of money and time. Very insulting to the loyal fans of the original animated series.
just because theres a negative review doesn’t mean that its not a good movie. honestly people have your own opinion. Don’t base it on race or the series obviously he was trying to do something different and unique off of another’s idea which has been done many time.. people are hyper critical when the truth is they sure can’t make movies themselves!!
Do you think it will make it’s price tag back? It got completely ripped apart by critics. Plus I heard the special effects and 3D conversion were horrible.
This will do better when Twilight3 slows down—in essence—change hands. But I, too, thought the trailer was alittle lackluster as well.
Word of mouth is going to be a killer on this one. Clash of the Titans-level 3D effects with an otherwise bad film. $40mm opening weekend and $85mm domestic total.
International might excel, however, like Clash did.
TLA will do good this weekend, but then drop off the face of the earth by next weekend as bad word of mouth kills the movie.
TLA has a very loyal and rabid fanbase who already aren’t taking too kindly to M. Night Shantytown’s evisceration of their fav. T.V. show.
Too bad the movie is being destroyed by critics. A 6% percent on Rotten Tomatoes. This movie will have a decent opening weekend but fall hard and fast. I think M. Night is done.
I didn’t know we still cared about what critics say; I know I usually do the opposite of their recommendation with Summer movies. By the way, TLA is getting 75% positive on RT from the people that matter: ticket buyers.
Why is it too bad? If it’s a shitty movie, it deserves to get excoriated.
The reviews for this one have been out of this world terrible. However, I predict a strong opening weekend, due to the fanbase for the film’s source material. I’m going to check it out too, since I’m a fan of the TV Show, but I don’t expect much.
Have you read reviews? WORSE than Eclipse reviews. Shame. They cant claim box office or critical success. I heard it was super racist or something. Asians are mad
So many of the people who saw it in midnight screenings are saying the film is horrible, and they’re on several internet sites telling folks not to waste their money. (One guy said his audience booed at the end and threw things at the screen.) As of this writing the Rotten Tomatoes rating is 6% — by comparison, “Jonah Hex” is at 12% — with many critics calling it the worst film of the year.
The film might have a decent opening, word-of-mouth will likely sink it, at least in the U.S.
Yeah, as soon as the credits came on here, there were several ‘boos’ followed by massive grumblings
SWEET!!!!! I can’t wait to see this film!
No way. It’s going to die a death and M. Night will be left crying in his barcalounger, whispering “They called me Mr. Glass.”
Repeat: there’s no way in hell this thing’s going to make $40-$50 mil even over the 4 day weekend. It’s called word of mouth. And investing in a property that no one gives a shit about except for a suit looking at a sheet of numbers.
You’re way out of touch. This was (maybe still is?) a hot property and was intended to be a trilogy. Especially lucrative for Paramount since Viacom owns it outright. Looks like Shayamalan ruined it though.
hard to believe that Eclipse will not be the worst reviewed movie opening this weekend. That’s talent right there.
I can’t wait to go see this tonight! Our theater isn’t showing it in 3D (toy story is dominating that screen), but we’re good with 2D.
I hear the critics are trashing it, but I dont’ care. They are wrong more often than not lately.
Wrong on what, supergenius?
Turns out JONAH HEX, GROWN UPS, KILLERS, PRINCE OF PERSIA, SEX AND THE CITY 2, MARMADUKE, MACGRUBER, LETTERS TO JULIET, and JUST WRIGHT are terrible films.
“[Critics] are wrong more often than not lately” — sure, if you’re a prepubescent boy who likes robots hitting each other.
Dear Cali,
No
I hope this movie does well, so we can get a sequel with a different writer.
The only bad thing about this movie is the script(and some of the acting).
Well, if the only things wrong are the script and the acting, how bad can it be?
“The only bad thing about this movie is the script(and some of the acting).”
That’s all?
I’m sure when Twilight gets sold out at many theaters, they’ll buy Airbender tix just to get in and try to sneak into Twilight. Sometimes it’s smart to release the same weekend as a huge movie!!
Before you wrote this, did you ever stop to think about the fact that no one wants to stand up for 2 hours through a sold out movie?
I remember when some dolt at Time Magazine or something declared M. Night to be “The Next Spielberg”.
Talk about short-sighted. Even back then, it was pretty clear that SIXTH SENSE was a one-off, and that Night, for all his arrogance and bluster, would remain the proverbial “one-trick pony”.
History has proven this, with crystal clarity.
Yeah, this is so poorly reviewed it’s going to be an epic bomb.
One of the biggest disappointments of the year, if not the biggest. So much of the soul of the cartoon that it made it special in the first place was inexplicably taken out. This should’ve been an easy homerun for Night, everything was laid out for him to succeed and make a grand adventure on a silver platter, but he got in the way, boy did he fuck up. BIG TIME!!
The acting was terrible across the board. The staging of the action was dull at best. The story: a literal joke. And I’ll go as far and say that it was a bit racist. All the good guys, Anglo with some Asians as background spice. All the baddies, Hindu or Arab. What the hell dude, this is 2010 for chrissakes. M. Night is done in my book. No more trust. Whatever he had in the past is gone. I will never see anything associated with his name again.
What happened to this filmmaker? “Sixth Sense” was one of the best movies of the last 20 years. But since then…? Whew! “Lady in the Water”?
Making movies is hard. Making good movies is even harder!
I haven’t seen the full trailer that everyone’s apparently panning, but I remember seeing the teaser trailer almost seven months ago and being so excited about it. M Night has historically been an excellent director when it comes to creating mood and tension but he doesn’t seem to know how to finish well (6th Sense being the exception). Almost like a Stephen King novel. Airbender seemed exciting to me because it looks unlike a typical M Night movie. Hope it isn’t as bad as everyone says and that it does okay.
Unfortunate – I promised my kids I’d take them to see this, hoping it would be halfway decent so I could tolerate the experience. Now it seems like I’m going to have to suffer through something akin to Battlefield Earth.
“Two tickets for the Last Airbender, please?”
Do execs at Paramount really think anyone was ever going to say those words out loud ?
Having been an adult fan of the TV series I didn’t read the reviews. I went and midnight with my daughter and about 100 other teenagers and we had a ball.
I thought the movie tried to do a little to much, but as I understood what ground he was trying to cover I could understand some parts being ‘choppy.’
For the fan of the series, this was a great treat! I hope they do enough to get the other two books made.
This film I think was really made for the fans, with a toss of the hat to those who hadn’t seen it before.
I’m a huge fan of the tv show, so I saw this at midnight. After reading the terrible reviews I was not expecting much, but what I saw onscreen was unbelievably disappointing. Fans of the cartoon will be appalled at m. Nights inability to comprehend the series– part of it’s warmth was the comedic slapstick of the young characters, something that was completely absent from the movie, unless you count dev patels terrible acting as comedy (the other actors were just as bad if not worse, I just didn’t stick around long enough to watch credits to find out their names). The cartoon was amazing because of the rich deep characters that you got to follow on a episodic basis, something that was completely forgotten in the movie as you rush from event to event with someone narrating and trying to explain it all in between, leaving it feel like you just went on an hour and a half tour through a bad amusement park.
And on the 3d note, this should be required viewing at film schools on how not to film a 3d movie. After being blown away by the trailers before it (the 3d now is getting really remarkable as studios learn to use it better), there was never once a ‘wow’ moment in airbender. Night likes to leave either the foreground or background object out of focus, which looks terrible on 3d.
As a fan, I am mad that night messed up what I thought was going to be a layup movie for him. My friends that had