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A lot of the shows we decided to cover weren't very good, so it comes as no surprise that they were cancelled. Really, are there that many people sobbing into their pillows over the demise of John Doe, The Tick, The Chronicle, Roswell, Birds of Prey, Haunted or The American Embassy? I certainly hope not. Some series have survived our attempts to cover them, namely 24 and Smallville. But what made me suspect that the networks were deliberately trying to annoy us was the axe coming down on the likes of Farscape, Angel and Firefly. These were well reviewed shows with rabid followings. Hell, Farscape was even SCI FI's highest rated show when they canned it.
You know what the clincher is though? The shows we grew too bored with to continue reviewing. These are shows that refuse to leave the air, even when our VCRs refuse to even consider taping them. Shows like Enterprise, Stargate SG-1 and Survivor have over stayed their welcome with our critics but continue on like the annoying party guest who won't take the hint that the party is over and go home.
It's as if the networks were deliberately trying to get us to give up on reviewing television series. Unfortunately for them, they underestimate the ability of Steven Dougherty to put up with crap. The man reviews Smallville. Scratch that, he volunteered to review Smallville and continues to do so, even when his doctor strongly advised him against it. We don't know when to quit. We like the abuse. So bring it on! That would be more impressive a declaration if we believed that Fox could go more than three weeks into the season without cancelling at least two new shows.
So now we're left with only two series, 24 and Smallville, to review regularly. With network schedules being announced recently, I'm writing this to ask our readers what new series they want to see reviewed. At the same time, I'm also looking for volunteers to regularly cover new series. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you're interested. The pay sucks but we promise not to laugh at you for taking the job. We do promise to laugh at you when you start acquiring stalkers though.
Quick Thoughts
I see that Gatorade has teamed up with ESPN, which is busily promoting its 25th anniversary ("The Year of the Fan"), to create a Gatorade flavor called ESPN the Flavor. I see that and wonder just what flavor ESPN would be. What are they doing, squeezing out Dan Patrick and Stuart Scott's jock straps? I really don't want to know.
Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 won the Palm D'or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Why do I have the feeling that the victory won't earn him a congratulatory invitation to the White House?
Box Office
Shrek 2 tore through the competition like Puss In Boots through a bag of catnip, pulling in over $104 million in its opening weekend. Coupled with the proceeds from its Wednesday opening, the film has already raked in $125.3 million. Damn. That's impressive. Even DreamWorks suits were caught off guard by that figure, having predicted something in the $70 million range. Of course this is the sequel to a wildly successful film and it manages to come close to the quality of the original, something very rare in sequels. That should keep it storming right along for some time.
Troy on the other hand dropped 49% to $23.8 million in its second week. That's better than Van Helsing's 61% drop in its second week but still not good. Mixed reviews and brutal competition very early in the summer season are making it a likely candidate to underperform compared to its staggering $175 million budget.
VH took another beating in its third week, plummeting another 51% to $10.1 million. That makes it a $100 million movie, the long time standard for a huge hit. The problem with that though is that it cost far more to make and market, meaning it's still in the red. Estimated at around $160 million to make, plus at least $60 million to market, Universal will have to more than double the box office to date just to make a buck.
Man on Fire and Mean Girls are proving to have some legs. Much lower budgeted films, they are both proving steady performers, even in the face of the juggernauts. Mean Girls took in $6.9 million for fourth place and Man on Fire took in $3.5 million for fifth place. Both are well over $60 million in box office to date.
The big drops suffered by Troy and Van Helsing has me believing that studios learned nothing from last year. That summer was dominated by movies that opened huge and then dropped huge in their second week. The marketing push for the monstrous first week box office has pretty much cut the legs off of movies. They never get a chance to find an audience and grow. That's not to say that the fairly simplistic Troy and Van Helsing are suffering from not finding an audience. Rather it's a case of mediocre films being given an overwhelming PR push to get everyone out that first week.
Generally speaking this has been to the studios benefit over that of the theaters. Box office is supposed to be a 50-50 split between studio and theater. But that has worked on a sliding scale in which the first week was split more like 80-20 in favor of the studio. In later weeks the split would be more balanced, and eventually would favor the theater. But since movies never last all that long in theaters anymore, the theaters ended up taking it in the shorts. That may be changing. The big theater chains, in bankruptcy recently, have emerged as solvent and hungry companies. No longer burdened by huge debt on the construction of countless new theaters, the chains suddenly in a position to make demands of the studios for once. That might mean the split will become more fair. Then theaters would no longer be honest in insisting that they have to charge $5 for a small popcorn to make any money at all. Want to take bets on if they actually slash the cost of items at the concession stand?
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