It used to be, for about a decade, that Will Smith
was a sure thing at the box office– especially on holiday weekends.
“Independence Day,” plus the first two “Men in Black” movies, set off
July 4th fireworks when they were released. As recently as July 4, 2008
Smith had a blockbuster in “Hancock,” which was sort of awful but a
smash hit nonetheless.
But times change, so do tastes, and movie stars have to realign
themselves. “Men in Black 3,” which opened yesterday in as many theatres
as Sony could find,
is not getting a lot of great box office prognosis. The low is seen at
$75 million for the four day Memorial Day weekend. The high–and this
would be very lucky– is at $85 million.
That’s not a lot considering “MIB3″ cost at least $250 million. Also,
the box office totals are artificially inflated by 3D ticket prices.
These 3D movies are like baseball players on steroids trying to claim
new home run records. The numbers look good in the announcements, but
when things calm down, you can see it’s fewer fans at higher prices.
Smith had a happy go lucky vibe for years with audiences. But things
changed in December 2008 with a terrible movie called “Seven Pounds.”
The film was a dud. Smith took on a kind of Messianic presence–suddenly
he knew how to save the world. It was the character, but it bled through
to the actor. Something went terribly wrong. The whole thing may have
been Smith thinking that his much admired work in “Pursuit of
Happyness”, the year before, was real.
Add to this endless tabloid stories about his marriage and his
homelife. Then are the Scientology connections, and Smith’s sudden
PR-image driven friendship with Tom Cruise.
Smith and wife Jada Pinkett Smith then opened their own private school
in Calabasas, California that teaches Scientology study methods. His
image was starting to get a little wonky.
“MIB3″ will still be number 1 for the weekend. It’s dethroning “The
Avengers,” which was a force of nature and marketing. But a soft number 1
means a lot, too. A lot has happened to Smith and the pop world in
three and a half years. But let me say this: with all of that, Will
Smith is still the nicest guy you could hope to meet. He has always been
a pleasure for the press. Everyone likes him. He’s so polite, present
and “in the moment.” It just may time for a rethink about where to go
from here.
One curious thing about “MIB3″: there was no screening in Cannes, and
no promotion for the film. Usually when a blockbuster is coming around
Cannes time, the film is featured all over the Croisette. Sony really
laid it on thick for “The Da Vinci Code” several years ago, and it
worked. This year, even Sacha Baron Cohen came to Cannes for “The
Dictator” as it was opening around the world. A red carpet premiere and
some kind of stunt would have given Cannes and the film each a jolt.
But…nothing.
The summer season at the North American box office isn’t exactly opening with a bang. Men in Black III debuted with hardly outstanding figures in the US/Canada on Friday. Directed by Men in Black / Men in Black II‘s Barry Sonnenfeld, and starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, the action / comedy / sci-fier will undoubtedly be this weekend’s top-grossing movie — which means that after three weekends on top, The Avengers‘ reign at the domestic box office has ended. On the other hand, there’s no denying that MIB3‘s Friday performance fell below expectations, especially for a 3D movie budgeted at somewhere between $225m-$300m. Men in Black 3 collected $18m-$20m (including $1.55m from
Thursday midnight screenings) at 4,248 theaters on Friday according to
early, rough estimates found at Deadline.com.
As per Deadline, that means a relatively underwhelming $65m-$75m for
the four-day weekend (Monday is Memorial Day in the United States).
Box-office prognosticators were expecting the third Will Smith-Tommy Lee
Jones pairing to bring in $80m-90m.
It gets more worrisome: according to Deadline, the film cost Sony
Pictures either $225m (as per Sony) or $300m (as per "rival studios").
For its part, the Los Angeles Times has the Men in Black 3 budget pegged at "nearly $250m." For comparison’s sake: Disney’s John Carter cost a reported $250m and The Avengers $220m, while the reported budget of Universal’s Battleship was $209m.
Why the underwhelming (estimated) Men in Black 3 box-office? The film has an acceptable 73% approval rating among Rotten Tomatoes‘ top critics (with a so-so average rating of 6.3/10). In any case, movies such as Men in Black 3 are review-proof.
What then? Well, one possibility is that Will Smith hasn’t made a movie in four years. And Smith’s pre-MIB3 release, the $55m-budgeted Seven Pounds, was a major box-office disappointment, grossing only $69.95m in North America. (Internationally, Seven Pounds performed better — though without reaching blockbuster status: $98.21m.)
Not helping matters is that Tommy Lee Jones hasn’t had a box-office hit of his own since Men in Black II a full decade ago. (Captain America: The First Avenger and No Country for Old Men weren’t "Tommy Lee Jones movies.") Jones’ biggest personal "box-office hit" since Men in Black II was The Hunted, a $55m-budgeted 2003 release that took in a paltry $34.24m domestically and a dismal $11.25m internationally.
And finally, as mentioned above, the previous Men in Black movie was released ten years ago. Apart from something as iconic as Star Wars, it’s difficult to whip up interest for a long-dormant movie franchise. Imagine if the gap between, say, The Twilight Saga: New Moon and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse had been ten years. However popular Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner may be with the Twilight
crowd, there’s a good chance that young fans of the series would have
outgrown it, while potential new ones might never have heard of either Twilight or its trio of stars.
Ultimately, it’s worth remembering that as per the Motion Picture Association of America,
approximately 30% of North American "frequent" moviegoers are 17 and
under. Ten years can represent, quite literally, a lifetime.
Now, what about Brad Bird / Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol? I’d say that the success of Cruise’s fourth Mission: Impossible movie has less to do with the franchise itself than with the fact that MI4 earned excellent early buzz and highly enthusiastic notices: 97% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes, with a 7.6/10 average. That’s hardly been the case with MIB3.
In addition to Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, Men in Black 3 features Oscar nominee Josh Brolin (Milk), two-time Oscar winner Emma Thompson (Best Actress for Howards End, Best Adapted Screenplay for Sense and Sensibility), Jemaine Clement, Michael Stuhlbarg, Mike Colter, Nicole Scherzinger, Michael Chemus, and Alice Eve. Etan Coen wrote the MIB3 screenplay.
Will Smith / Tommy Lee Jones / Men in Black 3 photo: Wilson Webb / Columbia Pictures.
Will Smith's sci-fi franchise is set to conquer the box office once
again. But sources close to the movie tell Chris Lee that filming was a
disaster—and the studio considered pulling the plug.
On
the surface, at least, it seemed like the formula for a box-office
grand slam. Take the biggest star on the planet—Will Smith—stick him in a
third installment of a blockbuster sci-fi comedy franchise, and release
the movie on Memorial Day weekend. Cha-ching!
Instead, Men in Black 3
stands as one of the most difficult movie productions in recent
Hollywood history, a massively expensive exercise in inefficiency and
infighting that compelled the heads of Sony Pictures, the studio
releasing the film, to consider taking a huge loss rather than
continuing to throw good money after bad.
The
star vehicle with a budget north of $215 million—Smith’s first film in
four years—was hustled into production by Sony to nab the actor before
he signed on to a competing blockbuster (and to take advantage of a $38
million New York state tax incentive that was expected to expire). So
anxious was Sony to get the cameras rolling that MIB3 began shooting without a completed script—the Hollywood equivalent of erecting a skyscraper without a finished blueprint.
Director Barry Sonnenfeld shepherded all the Men in Black
movies to completion and acknowledges the third film’s unorthodox
production process while standing up for the studio’s
shoot-first-ask-questions-later methodology. “Starting the movie without
an absolutely finished script is not normally the right way to do
movies,” the director says. “But I feel the decision Sony made was the
right decision. On this one, we might still be waiting for the script.
Sometimes, if you just dip your toe in, you’ll never dive in because
it’s too stupidly cold."
To
accomplish this crazy feat, the producers built a hiatus into the
schedule so that an elite tag team of screenwriters could help draft the
movie’s second and third acts. But when the hiatus dragged on for three
months, speculation ran wild that Smith’s grandiosity had bogged down
the production.
Will Smith slaps a reporter who tried to kiss him at the Moscow premiere of ‘Men in Black 3’.
Sony is at pains to disavow that perception now that prerelease intel all but dictates MIB3
will be the summer’s next global blockbuster. But multiple sources
close to the film maintain that Smith’s insistence on splitting hairs
resulted in cost overruns and production chaos. According to a source
close to the production, who requested not to be identified, Smith’s
notoriously exacting method of working through a screenplay—breaking
down a script scene by scene with a laptop computer on set and demanding
“last say” on every key decision—handed the production its most serious
delays. “Will is known to get in there and control things,” the source
says. “He likes to go in and understand everything. There’s a
deconstruction and reconstruction in each scene that’s part of his
process.” Smith declined to comment for this article.
Will Smith and Josh Brolin in Men in Black (Asadorian-Mejia / Splash News)
Operating
as a unified front, Sonnenfeld effectively held up production with
their demands for rewrites and continuing rehearsals, while producers
Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald pressed the studio to support their
own vision of the movie, according to several people who worked on MIB3.
Meanwhile, New York tabloids had a field day covering the
“starship-sized” trailer Smith occupied during filming in New York’s
SoHo. Reportedly nicknamed “the Heat,” the 53-foot behemoth boasted such
amenities as a screening room, offices for assistants, and an
all-granite bathroom. Neighbors grumbled about the enormous vehicle’s
gaseous fumes, and retail tenants groused that it was damaging their
businesses.
By
spring 2011, according to another source close to the production, the
film ran the risk of not being completed by its May 25, 2012, release
date, setting off alarms inside the Sony exec suite. Already having
poured untold tens of millions of dollars into the production, studio
co-chairs Michael Lynton and Amy Pascal were forced to openly consider a
doomsday scenario: “Should we just take a write-down?” the source
recalls Lynton asking Pascal.
In other words, should Sony swallow the losses and pull the plug on a movie featuring Hollywood’s top box-office draw?
When Smith made the first Men in Black, he was still something of an untested Hollywood commodity with only one hit film, the ensemble thriller Independence Day. The rapper turned actor had lucked into Men in Black when Sonnenfeld’s wife, a fan of Smith’s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, suggested him for the part. Men in Black wound up raking in $589 million worldwide, stunning the industry and establishing Smith’s box-office bona fides.
Based on an out-of-print -comic-book series that producers Parkes and MacDonald had brought to Sony, Men in Black
is the story of undercover agents J and K (Smith and Tommy Lee Jones)
who work for a secret nongovernmental organization that helps maintain
Earth’s uneasy peace with space-alien refugees, who pose as humans and
live in New York City. A dismally reviewed 2002 sequel still managed to
haul in a whopping $441 million in grosses, firmly establishing MIB
as a lucrative franchise. During a break in filming on that movie,
Smith pitched Sonnenfeld the time--traveling premise for MIB3.
In Men in Black 3,
Smith’s Agent J travels back to 1969 to thwart alien supercriminal
Boris the Animal (Kiwi comedian Jemaine Clement) from assassinating
Jones’s character. The rub? J must team up with a younger version of his
curmudgeonly partner in order to save him. But living up to the
time--traveling standards set by Back to the -Future and The Terminator—MIB3’s cinematic lodestars—posed certain conundrums of continuity that required a revolving door of writers to fix.
“The
joke on the movie became that it would probably be easier to build an
actual time machine and go to the future to see what the script ended up
being, because it was so complicated,” says Etan Cohen, one of six
screenwriters who worked on the film, and the only one to receive a
credit. Cohen, the hot young comedy scribe behind Tropic Thunder and the animated smash Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa,
had been enlisted in 2009 to write MIB3’s shooting script, but after
months of rewrites, other work called him off the project and the film
moved on to the physical production phase without him.
An alien plot to assassinate Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) forces Will
Smith to time travel to save him. (Wilson Webb / Columbia Pictures)
“Given
that we had an excellent first act and a new ending, we knew we had a
movie. But there were debates about how young and similar young Agent K
should be, how the villain should appear in the second act,” says
Sonnenfeld, who repeatedly butted heads with the film’s producers. “We
only had Tommy Lee [on set] for five weeks before we went on hiatus. We
knew the second and third act didn’t have enough locomotive.”
During the hiatus, Sony brought in screenwriter David Koepp (Spider-Man) for five weeks, and later hired Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me If You Can) as well as Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine)
for further script revisions. Another writer, Mike Soccio (described as
Smith’s personal dialogue doctor on all the MIB movies), was hauled in
to do on-set punch-up work. “Several of the writers were dealing with
plot issues. Others came in to deal with tone and comedy,” says Doug
Belgrad, president of Sony’s Columbia Pictures division. “A lot of
really smart people were putting their finger on things, saying, ‘Hey,
this might be a problem for the audience,’ or ‘What kind of sleight of
hand can we use here?’ That was hard.”
As the rewrites dragged on, Sony execs raised the possibility of terminating the production, and the creative quorum behind MIB3 set their differences aside to finish the job. “Men in Black
is a strange combination of talents. With the exception of Etan, the
core creative elements—down to the props—are the same in all three. When
you have a group of people that have done three movies in 15 years, we
have a right to treat each other like a family,” says producer Parkes.
Cohen,
who was brought back in for late--inning rewrites, maintains that Smith
did not throw his weight around on set so much as live up to his
well--documented commitment to excellence. “There’s no doubt it was
challenging and maybe not the easiest,” Cohen says. “But we followed
Will’s lead, in the sense that he was like, ‘If we’re not going to do
the perfect version, it’s not worth doing.’ That’s the kind of work
ethic it’s hard to argue with.”
Luckily for all involved, Men in Black 3
reaches American multiplexes riding a wave of strong prerelease buzz.
And to judge by what’s on screen, the filmmakers not only managed to
overcome their strife, they have created one of the most satisfying
summer popcorn movies in recent memory. It’s a fizzy, funny, intelligent
film shot through with strong performances by Smith and Josh Brolin
(who channels a younger version of Tommy Lee Jones’s granite-faced Agent
K), and an emotional finale that even managed to make some preview
audiences misty-eyed. “We were on a tightrope, but we weren’t working
without a net,” Sony’s Belgrad says. “Yeah, there were some issues. And
you’ve seen some media reports about overages and runaway production and
no script. That was all true. Ultimately, the movie delivers. And the
audience isn’t going to care.”
By MIKE FLEMING | Thursday May 24, 2012 @ 3:18pm EDT
Given the way studios have cut back on lavish movie premieres in recent years, the New York debut of Sony Pictures’ Men In Black 3
was something to behold, and harkened back on to more fun days. The
post premiere party was held at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum
and if that wasn’t lavish enough, the night included a lengthy
fireworks display from the Grucci clan, endless food choices, even a
surprise performance by the rapper Pitbull, who did the film’s
soundtrack. I’m told that he was later joined by Smith and his kids
Jaden and Willow. Most important for Sony Pictures, MIB3 showed itself to be a well constructed summer thrill ride.
Smith, who hasn’t headlined a blockbuster since 2008′s Hancock,
hasn’t missed a beat. I was surprised how satisfying the film was,
particularly after director Barry Sonnenfeld and Smith halted production
partway through the shoot to work on the script. That is often a sign
of trouble, but whatever they did was well worth the trouble. The film
is much better than the first sequel and in a summer that will be
defined by sequels (I consider Avengers to be in that
category), this one holds its own. Whether it reaches profit is another
question, considering all the gross players involved in the film, the
high budget and the extra costs for the production hiatus. Sequels have
proven a lot more rewarding for studios than so-called “branded”
properties, like Battleship, which is on course to lose a lot of money.
In hindsight, I wonder if having a first dollar gross player in Hasbro hurt Battleship
more than helped it. The tie-in to the board game brought mostly scorn,
since the storyline had nothing to do with the brand at all and didn’t
benefit from the name recognition. Had it been an alien invasion movie,
the picture could have been sold differently. It was a big blow for
Universal, which hopes to right the ship with Snow White and the Huntsman. The preoccupation with fairy tales will be tested with that one. The picture tells the Snow White story with a Lord Of The Rings-like flourish, but the question is whether Snow White fans want a dark LOTR-like fairy tale or LOTR fans want a film about Snow White. That conundrum is reflected in the film’s early tracking.
The "Men in Black" franchise has always been a live-action "Looney
Tunes" cartoon, a wacky mix of old school and new school. The
"Alienbusters" premise is totally unique and practically
imitation-proof, as director Barry Sonnenfeld reminds us.
So it was probably inevitable that they would embrace time travel as
the trippy plot device of the latest installment, "Men in Black 3" (in
3-D, of course). It's been a decade since the disappointing "Men in
Black 2," so why not go comically existential in a nod to "No Country
for Old Men" by having Josh Brolin playing K in 1969 and the fate of the
world resting with some sort of catharsis between Will Smith's
energetic Agent J and Tommy Lee Jones' curmudgeonly Agent K?
The challenge was sustaining the right old school/new school balance in
every respect, including Rick Baker's legendary creature makeup and the
VFX prowess of Sony Pictures Imageworks. "We might have some new toys
and new technology, but isn't it a mistake to make it look totally
different than the other films? It's got to have a sensibility that
makes it look part of the trio, so to speak," suggests VFX supervisor
Jay Redd, who collaborated with Ken Ralston, the dean of supervisors at
Sony.
It's all about seamless integration. To this effect, Sony used its new
HDRI technique for set lighting and better integration of animated
characters by shooting with the Spheron digital camera, which spins 360
degrees and shoots at 26 stops of exposure. At the same time, Sony built
an entire digital New York and Cape Canaveral along with other CG
enhancements. But the flashiest sequence is J's Time Jump off the
Chrysler Building, an intricate integration of practical and virtual
elements coalescing into a bravura 3-D experience that leaves both J and
the viewer breathless.
"There's a certain stylization that goes on in a 'Men in Black' movie
and Ken is always nudging me about not being so real all the time," Redd
adds. "And Barry was the same way. There's a whimsy to 'Men in Black.'"
Ralston, who got pulled into the movie completely by Sonnenfield after
thinking he was only going to consult on 3-D conversion, says it's a
full-blown cartoon that nonetheless has to look real. "It was a tough
thing for Jay and me to get. It has a crazy look but you don't want to
pull the audience out of it."
For Smith's return to acting after a three-year hiatus producing movies
with his kids, "Men in Black 3" was like putting on shoes that he knew
would be a comfortable fit. Yet the idea of jumping into the past for an
African American was one of the best jokes. "Right now it's like the
best it's ever been," Smith cracks.
"My first concern with 3-D was my ears because I could see them taking
up the whole screen. Once they didn't look like satellite dishes, I was
fine with it. With [effects], there are no limitations. It's funny
because it's the same thing that happened with the music business when
it went digital. As soon as it exploded, it had a weird, opposite effect
where it gets worse for a while, which is strange. As soon as you get
the tool to do anything, all of a sudden now the movies aren't as good.
How the hell did that happen? I think we're about to turn that corner,
particularly with the 'Men in Black' in 3-D that Barry did. He found the
balance which is more pleasing to the eye."
Meanwhile, Brolin was pleasantly surprised by the effectiveness of the
3-D. It was no scratch and sniff to him. "And I felt it made it more
beautiful and enhances it."
Not surprisingly, Brolin was most concerned about getting the younger
Jones right. He agonized over it. "There are a lot of hives that start
to happen. I was so pleased that it seemed seamless as an experience.
The intention was that within 10 minutes we are not aware of my doing a
caricature of Tommy. The tough thing about Tommy is that he's all over
[the place]. It's like he's improvising his voice and it's still
cultivating into something that we won't know until later. It's like an
instrument that's been played by nobody that somebody says not only will
you learn how to play this but make an album in two months."
But what most intrigued Brolin was stepping back to 1969, especially
entering the Factory with Andy Warhol. He's fascinated by the
experimentation and cultural explosion of the period. He found it a
surreal flashback. "You thought [the experimentation] would carry over
into the '70s and yet it turned into something else completely. So it
was really isolated in breaking that great façade of the '50s."
As for Jones, who doesn't suffer foolish questions from journalists
gladly, this was just another job: pointing ray guns at aliens and
watching them turn to goo and re-establishing a seemingly effortless
rapport with Smith. He doesn't believe acting is instinct; it's hard
work. But what was 1969 like for him?
"It was the year I graduated from college. And that was interesting and
it was a different era. For most of 1969, I was in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and the only way to describe it is the best of times…and
the worst of times."
Given the way studios have cut back on lavish movie premieres in recent years, the New York debut of Sony Pictures’ Men In Black 3
was something to behold, and harkened back on to more fun days. The
post premiere party was held at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum
and if that wasn’t lavish enough, the night included a lengthy
fireworks display from the Grucci clan, endless food choices, even a
surprise performance by the rapper Pitbull, who did the film’s
soundtrack. I’m told that he was later joined by Smith and his kids
Jaden and Willow. Most important for Sony Pictures, MIB3 showed itself to be a well constructed summer thrill ride.
The "Men in Black" franchise has always been a live-action "Looney
Tunes" cartoon, a wacky mix of old school and new school. The
"Alienbusters" premise is totally unique and practically
imitation-proof, as director Barry Sonnenfeld reminds us.
So it was probably inevitable that they would embrace time travel as
the trippy plot device of the latest installment, "Men in Black 3" (in
3-D, of course). It's been a decade since the disappointing "Men in
Black 2," so why not go comically existential in a nod to "No Country
for Old Men" by having Josh Brolin playing K in 1969 and the fate of the
world resting with some sort of catharsis between Will Smith's
energetic Agent J and Tommy Lee Jones' curmudgeonly Agent K?
The challenge was sustaining the right old school/new school balance in
every respect, including Rick Baker's legendary creature makeup and the
VFX prowess of Sony Pictures Imageworks. "We might have some new toys
and new technology, but isn't it a mistake to make it look totally
different than the other films? It's got to have a sensibility that
makes it look part of the trio, so to speak," suggests VFX supervisor
Jay Redd, who collaborated with Ken Ralston, the dean of supervisors at
Sony.
Given the way studios have cut back on lavish movie premieres in recent years, the New York debut of Sony Pictures’ Men In Black 3
was something to behold, and harkened back on to more fun days. The
post premiere party was held at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum
and if that wasn’t lavish enough, the night included a lengthy
fireworks display from the Grucci clan, endless food choices, even a
surprise performance by the rapper Pitbull, who did the film’s
soundtrack. I’m told that he was later joined by Smith and his kids
Jaden and Willow. Most important for Sony Pictures, MIB3 showed itself to be a well constructed summer thrill ride.