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Brad Pitt’s ‘Killing Them Softly’ Dies With ‘F’ CinemaScore As Twilight Saga, James Bond, And ‘Lincoln’ Dominate Box Office Yet Again

By NIKKI FINKE, Editor in Chief | Sunday December 2, 2012 @ 3:30am PSTTags: Box Office, Brad Pitt, Killing Them Softly, The Collection

SUNDAY 7:30 AM,  3RD UPDATE: No change in the three top movies’ order at the domestic box office: Summit Entertainment’s Twilight Saga finale Breaking Dawn Part 2 is #1 for the third weekend in a row, the Eon Productions/MGM/Sony Pictures’ James Bond actioner Skyfall is a close #2, and Steven Spielberg’s Oscar buzzed Lincoln from DreamWorks/Fox/Disney is #3. It was a lean Friday but a fat Saturday. Ben Affleck’s Academy Awards-touted Argo crossed the $100M benchmark this weekend. While during the week, Wall Street called DreamWorks Animation’s Rise Of The Guardians “one of the most disappointing releases in the company’s history” – enough to hurt the public company’s share price. Analysts who expected to see $55M-$58M for the toon over Thanksgiving – not $32.6M - join Hollywood in still struggling to understand why audiences rejected the film. Toon is probably all in at just $80M.

Traditionally the weekend after Thanksgiving gives new definition to the term ‘quiet’. I’m told it’s failed to produce a wide release hit for 20 years and counting. So there were low expectations for producer Brad Pitt‘s R-rated ruthless star turn in Killing Them Softly (2,424 theaters) from his Plan B production company and Oracle heiress Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures which financed it for $15M. But Friday night it received a miserable ‘F’ CinemaScore from audiences despite decent reviews and a stellar cast including Ray Liotta, Richard Jenkins, and James Gandolfini. Little wonder that distributor The Weinstein Company dumped the film this off-weekend – when no movie has opened north of $10 million since 2005′s Aeon Flux - after acquiring it post its Cannes premiere for a release commitment only in the U.S./Canada. “If we do double digit millions, we will be fine. And if it happens to get into the teens, we would be very happy,” an exec told me before it opened. So TWC must be mad as hell because the pic only opened to single digits. One film financing exec tells me about the TWC deal on this pic, “Killing Them Softly will be lucky to reach $15M box office when all is said and done. Using that figure and extrapolating out their Showtime pay TV deal (which is not that great), potential TV deal, VOD, and DVD, they are going to be unrecouped about $12M in P&A assuming they spent $27M to release. Not good.”

Killing Them Softly was scheduled to be released September 21st, then moved to this weekend to avoid competing against TWC’s The Master. (Although it moves another ‘R’ movie against TWC’s Silver Linings Playbook.) The actioner retained its original release date in other regions where Inferno International is representing overseas sales which have produced nearly $15M in grosses so far. (Inferno filed for bankruptcy protection in Los Angeles earlier this year, citing a legal judgment related to the 2005 release of the Ryan Reynolds comedy Just Friends.) The film, shot in New Orleans for tax credits, follows three dumb guys who think they’re smart and rob a Mob-protected card game, causing the local criminal economy to collapse. Pitt plays the hit man enforcer hired to track them down and restore order. Based on George V. Higgins’ 1974 crime novel Cogan’s Trade, it was scripted and directed by Australian Andrew Dominik who previously teamed up with Pitt on another of Brad’s puny-grossing passion projects – 2007′s The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (just $3.9M). Harvey and Bob Weinstein, as well as Ellison, are among the executive producers. Besides Pitt, Dede Gardner, Steve Schwartz, Paula Mae Schwartz, and Anthony Katagas produced the film.

Playing in far less runs (1,403 theaters), LD Entertainment’s extremely unpleasant The Collection is its horror sequel to 2009′s The Collector and didn’t get near the original’s $3.6M debut at 1,325 locations ($7.7M total). The latest stars Emma Fitzpatrick and Josh Stewart, who reprises his role as Arkin. Written by Saw veteran genre scribes Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan who also directs, this grisly R-rated follow-up received less than middling reviews. While The New York Times called it “just a pointless exercise in sadism”, my favorite slam was the Detroit News reviewer who opined: “People in Hollywood need to work and surely The Collection created a lot of jobs, but there must be a better way.”

Overall, the Top 10 order based on weekend estimates looks a lot like the holiday’s. Total moviegoing is $110.6M, +45% over last year. But not close to last weekend’s Best-Ever Thanksgiving 5-Day Box Office:

1. Twilight: Breaking Dawn 2 (Summit/Lionsgate) Week 3 [Runs 4,008] PG13
Friday $5.4M, Saturday $7.5M, Weekend $17.1M, Cume $254.2M

2. Skyfall (Eon/MGM/Sony) Week 4 [Runs 3,463] PG13
Friday $4.8M, Saturday $7.6M, Weekend $16.9M, Cume $245.9M

3. Lincoln (DreamWorks/Fox/Disney) Week 4 [Runs 2,018] PG13
Friday $4.0M, Saturday $5.9M, Weekend $13.3M, Cume $83.5M

4. Rise Of The Guardians (DreamWorks Anim/Par) Week 2 [Runs 3,672] PG
Friday $2.9M, Saturday $6.3M, Weekend $13.4M (-44%), Cume $48.5M

5. Life Of Pi (Fox) Week 2 [Runs 2,928] PG
Friday $3.3M, Saturday $5.3M, Weekend $12.2M (-46%), Cume $47.8M

6. Wreck-It Ralph (Disney) Week 5 [Runs 3,087] PG
Friday $1.6M, Saturday $3.3M, Weekend $7.0M, Cume $158.3M

7. Killing Them Softly (Annapurna/Weinstein) NEW [Runs 2,424] R
Friday $2.5M, Saturday $2.7M, Weekend $6.9M

8. Red Dawn (FilmDistrict) Week 2 [Runs 2,781] PG13
Friday $2.0M, Saturday $2.9M, Weekend $6.6M (-54%), Cume $31.3M

9. Flight (Paramount) Week 5 [Runs 2,603] R
Friday $1.3M, Saturday $2.0M, Weekend $4.5M, Cume $81.5M

10. Silver Linings Playbook (Weinstein) Week 3 [Runs 371] R
Friday $914K, Saturday $1.3M, Weekend $3.2M, Cume $10.8M

11. The Collection (LD Entertainment) NEW [Runs 1,403] R
Friday $1.1K, Saturday $1.2K, Weekend $3.1M

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Hot Trailer: ‘Killing Them Softly’

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Wednesday November 21, 2012 @ 6:38pm PSTTags: Brad Pitt, Killing Them Softly

Here’s the latest trailer for writer-director Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly, based on George V. Higgins’ novel Cogan’s Trade. Brad Pitt stars as a mob enforcer/hit man in The Weinstein Company release that opens November 30th. The movie also features Ray Liotta, Richard Jenkins and James Gandolfini:


Watch This … Read More »

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Toronto: Weinstein Co Pushes Brad Pitt Pic ‘Killing Them Softly’ Back Into Oscar Race

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Tuesday September 11, 2012 @ 6:41pm PDTTags: Brad Pitt, Harvey Weinstein, Killing Them Softly, TIFF Wrap-Up, Toronto Film Festival
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Taking advantage of a sliver of daylight in the Oscar season release corridor, The Weinstein Company has moved from an October 19 to a November 30 release on Killing Them Softly, the Andrew Dominik-directed crime drama that … Read More »

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Hot Trailer: ‘Killing Them Softly’

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Wednesday August 1, 2012 @ 6:48pm PDTTags: Andrew Dominik, Brad Pitt, Killing Them Softly

Here’s a new trailer for Killing Them Softly, written and directed by Andrew Dominik and starring Brad Pitt as a hitman. Based on the George V. Higgins novel Cogan’s Trade. The Weinstein Company release is scheduled to open October 19th:

Watch trailer on YouTube

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Weinstein Shifts ‘The Master’ To Sept. 14th

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Friday July 27, 2012 @ 5:57pm PDTTags: Killing Them Softly, The Master, The Weinstein Company

The Weinstein Company has confirmed moving Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master to a limited opening on September 14 from its original date October 12. The movie will add theaters on September 21. Philip Seymour Hoffman … Read More »

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Brad Pitt Hits Cannes With ‘Killing Them Softly’ As Skies Part, Sun Shines Again

By PETE HAMMOND | Tuesday May 22, 2012 @ 10:27am PDTTags: Brad Pitt, Cannes Film Festival, Killing Them Softly, The Weinstein Company
Pete Hammond

Killing Them Softly, the last of the films from The Weinstein Company in the Cannes Film Festival‘s official selectionBrad Pitt Cannes – and easily the distributor’s most controversial, politically at least – is premiering tonight. Star Brad Pitt made the day of the paparazzi who kept incessantly yelling “Brad! Brad! Brad!” at the pre-press conference photo call even as his co-stars and director Andrew Dominik stood virtually ignored in the same shots. Pitt marks the biggest star presence yet at the festival: Showing his true power, even the rainy skies turned blue, the temperature outside heated up and the sun came out just in time for his hike up the Palais’ red-carpeted steps.

Related: Harvey Weinstein Unveils ‘The Master’, ‘Django’, ‘Silver Linings’ In Cannes

Brad Pitt Killing Them SoftlyThe film, on which Pitt and partner Dede Gardner were among the producers through their Plan B shingle, is a tough-as-nails, tight, noirish and brutal crime thriller that boasts an ensemble of exceptionally fine performances. That includes Pitt as an strictly all-business hit man hired by the mob after small-time crooks pull off a heist of their poker game. Also perfectly cast are veterans James Gandolfini, Richard Jenkins, Ben Mendelsohn, Ray Liotta, Sam Shepard (briefly) and Scoot McNairy. The only woman I can remember in the cast was a prostitute roundly and hilariously insulted by the sex-obsessed hired gun played by Gandolfini.

The testosterone-driven genre film stands with the best recent examples, and it is also surprisingly political — switching the setting of the 1974 Boston-based George Higgins novel Cogan’s Trade to 2008 New Orleans right at the time of the presidential election and economic meltdown. For most of the movie’s running time, the politics are simmering in the background with numerous excerpts of speeches from then-candidate Barack Obama and then-President George W. Bush. Toward the end it gets more pronounced, particularly when Pitt’s character Jackie Cogan seemingly puts out one of his “hits” on Obama’s hopeful speech-making. Read More »

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Cannes Analysis: U.S. Films Make Their Mark On 2012 Lineup

By NANCY TARTAGLIONE, International Editor | Thursday April 19, 2012 @ 10:21am PDTTags: Big Deals Film, Cannes Film Festival, Killing Them Softly, Thierry Fremaux

Following last year’s stellar lineup (The Artist, Midnight In Paris, etc), Cannes Film Festival general delegate and artistic director Thierry Frémaux had a tough task to come up with an equally ripe selection this year. It seems he succeeded given that words being tossed around the French film biz today include “impressive” and “sumptuous.” However, he tells me he didn’t feel pressure to outdo himself. “Last year at this time no one knew, even me, that it would be considered a very good year.” He’s still going to announce another 3 or 4 titles, but he says he doesn’t even know what they are yet.

Related: Full Lists Of The 65th Cannes Film Festival Selection

There’s a heavy presence of English-language films in this year’s vintage, but Frémaux points out that looks can be deceiving: there are features from 26 countries. He tells me, though, that he feels a renewed “presence of a certain type of American cinema that we no longer had.” It’s come back strong, he says, “but I also hope it’s a new existence for great American films on an international level.” Read More »

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