Fahrenheit 9/11 pulls huge numbers on Friday

[lokheed]

Pundits expected the top movie this weekend to be the Wayans Brothers crap-fest White Chicks, followed by Fahrenheit 9/11, primarily because of the vast difference in the number of screens each is playing on.

The pundits were wrong.

The initial estimates for Friday's box office are in, and the total's are staggering.

Fahrenheit 9/11, playing on only 868 screens nationwide, took in an estimated $8,200,000 yesterday. By comparison White Chicks, playing on 2,726 screens nationwide, took in an estimated $6,760,000.

There may be hope for this world after all.

Comments

[adrianna-colon.livejournal.com]

Did you really think that White Chicks would make it into the #1 slot?! That was as strange a thought that Soul Plane or whatever that came out too was going to be #1.


But seriously, how much do you attribute the "popularity" of Farenheit 9/11 due to the media attention brought up just days before it opened?

[lokheed.livejournal.com]

White Chicks was the only new movie opening wide last week, playing on nearly 3000 screens. I expected, as did most movie pundits, that Fahrenheit 9/11 would do very well on a per-screen basis but that the limited number of screens it was showing on would prevent it from being number one at the box office. The only real question now is whether it will have any legs. Virtually everyone who wanted to see it has already done so at this point. It's also not a film that is going to change anybody's opinions. Either you already dislike the Bush administration and the movie will support your opinions, or you approve of the Bush administration and the movie will play as a liberal screed distorting the facts and drawing unsupported conclusions.

You put popularity in quotes, as if a movie that generates nearly $22 million in it's opening weekend is only pretending to be popular. With a per screen average of $25,115, that is a popular movie by any measure. Did media attention drive up attendance? Sure. And most of that media attention whas whipped up by Moore himself. The whole flap over distribution was spun out of whole cloth. Moore new before he started filming that Disney was not going to distribute the movie. I suspect the whole thing with Ray Bradbury being upset about the title was also planned -- Mr. Bradbury is no stranger to borrowing titles (I Sing the Body Electrid and Something Wicked This Way Comes both spring to mind right off the bat), so I have trouble believing he seriously thought he had an standing to be upset. Moore has always been very good at whipping up controversy to promote his films, and this one is certainly no different.

[adrianna-colon.livejournal.com]

Good points. As for popular being in quotes, I guess I was just thinking as mass apeal. Plus did they spend more to make the movie than it brough in. Just my perspective I guess. But you are correct that amount of money is nothing to sneeze at. :)

[lokheed.livejournal.com]

According to imdb, the movie only had a budget of $6 million. With only having to strike about a thousand printes for a narrow release instead of three thousand for a wide release, and with all the free publicity minimizing the need for traditional advertising, it's safe to guess that the distribution costs were also comparatively low. The movie pretty much broke even sometime on Saturday, and even if (when) it gets buried by Spider-Man this week it is virtually guaranteed to be a huge seller when it comes out on home video this September (Moore is doing everything in his power to influence the election this fall and wants the DVD out with tons of added material long before election day). Believe me, there is a great deal of profit being made here.

[(Anonymous)]

Michael Moore's mockumentary is preaching to the choir. Nothing but more Liberal pornography for their election year circle jerk. Just imagine if Charlies' Angel III had come out this past weekend. We'd all be singing a different tune.

Calling this a documentray is like calling Apocalypse Now a documentary. Mel Gibson's The Passion probably has more factual basis than Jabba's latest offering...

You know who we are.

[lokheed.livejournal.com]

You know I beleive I already said, and I quote, "It's also not a film that is going to change anybody's opinions. Either you already dislike the Bush administration and the movie will support your opinions, or you approve of the Bush administration and the movie will play as a liberal screed distorting the facts and drawing unsupported conclusions."

So what exactly did you add to this conversation other than crude masturbation and fat jokes? Not much.

[(Anonymous)]

Just trying to let a little sunshine in...

What's wrong with crude masturbation and fat jokes?

"So what exactly did you add to this conversation", you ask? That is my point. You don't want anything added to the conversation unless it is an affirmation of Moore's brilliance. No modicum of objectivity will be tolerated. Any recognition Moore's crackpot, propagandist intention to mislead will be dismissed out of hand with you simply pointing to your earlier post, "You know I beleive I already said, and I quote, "It's also not a film that is going to change anybody's opinions. Either you already dislike the Bush administration and the movie will support your opinions, or you approve of the Bush administration and the movie will play as a liberal screed distorting the facts and drawing unsupported conclusions."

[lokheed.livejournal.com]

"You don't want anything added to the conversation unless it is an affirmation of Moore's brilliance."

Funny, I distinctly remember already being critical of one obvious case where Moore invented controversy (the Disney distribution non-controversy) and posited my opinion that the whole Bradbury controversy was most likely contrived as well. I'm not even particularly a fan of Michael Moore's. I haven't read any of his books, I never saw Bowling for Columbine, and I only vaguely remember watching Roger & Me once about a dozen years ago.

If you want to criticize the movie, by all means do so. You might try doing it with a wee bit more civility, though, if you want to be taken seriously.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sorry if I came off a little harsh, and I didn't mean to be uncivil. Forgive me if I mistook you for one of those people who were already totally committed to voting against George Bush in the upcoming election, and found Moore's film to be chock full of "information" that just sounded so good it had to be true. Must have been the "There may be hope for this world after all" that mislead me.

I can not criticize the movie. I will never see it and have never seen or supported any of Moore's work--ever. I can, however, criticize Moore. I'll never put a dollar into the pocket of a man who calls his fellow Americans the "dumbest people on the planet" when he travels overseas. I find Moore and his distributor (Front Row) treasonous because they'll accept help from Hezbollah in releasing the film overseas (I will dig up the link to the news article for you, with quotes from the film's distributor if you request, right now I need to get ready for jury duty very early in the morning).

Moore has been a bastard long before Farenheit 9/11. I don't dislike him because of this film alone. My contempt for him goes back many years. Moore counts on his audience being uneducated about what he's showing (ain't too difficult considering what Americans choose to watch every night) and willing to accept everything in his movie verbatim. Hook, line and sinker.

I don't know. Maybe he's right. Maybe Americans are some of the dumbest people on the planet. I hope to God he's wrong.