Welcome to Daily Variety, your daily dose of news and analysis for entertainment industry insiders. It's Monday, March ninth, twenty twenty six. I'm your host, Cynthia Littleton. I am co editor in chief of Variety alongside Ramin Setuda. I'm in La He's in New York, and Variety has reporters around the world covering the business of entertainment. In today's episode, in our box office segment, we'll hear from Variety's Brent
Lang on what the weekend brought for Pixar. The imprint looks to have launched its first big original property since Coco back in twenty seventeen. And then I go into the wayback machine to look at a Daily Variety front page from fifty years ago today March ninth, nineteen seventy six. I'm always looking for the parallels to contemporary times, and they are not hard to find. There was so much
cool stuff going on in that bicentennial year. Fans of Jack Nicholson, Robert Altman, Linda Ronstadt and Ruth Engelhardt should stay tuned. But before we get to all of that, here are a few headlines just in this morning that you need to Know. Paramount Skuidance president Jeff Shell is facing a fifty million dollar lawsuit from a self styled whistleblower who claims that Shell renegged on an agreement to
have Paramount produce a TV show with him. Plaintiff R. J. Cipriani also claims he's owed for crisis pr services that he offered to Shell, who left his job as CEO of NBC Universal in twenty twenty three after admitting to having an intimate relationship with a subordinate. Live Nation has reached a settlement in its antitrust fight with the Department of Justice. The Biden administration had been pressuring the concert promotion and ticketing giant to split off its ticketmaster division
from the concert promotion arm. Live Nation has reportedly agreed to make structural changes to its business and to pay two hundred and eighty million in damages to various states. However, my colleague jem Oswad reports that litigation goes on in twenty seven states, including New York and California. AMC Network has renewed The Audacity for season two one month before the series premiere. The show stars Billy Magnuson and Simon Helberg in a drama wrapped around the outsized personalities among
Silicon Valley tech leaders and hopefuls. The series will get a sneak peek on Saturday at the south By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. Good for You, Drew Threw Barrymore Show has been renewed for two more seasons by CBS season seven and eight. That's a feat for a syndicated
talk show in this daytime TV marketplace. All of these stories and so much more can be found on Variety dot com right now and now it's time for conversations with Variety journalists about news and trends and show business. Brent Lang, Variety's executive editor, joins us to unpack what went wrong for Warner Brothers The Bride and what went
right for Disney Pixar's Hopper. As Lang explains, The Bride hails from director Maggie Jillen Hall and features stars Christian Bale and Jesse Buckley, but it is turning out to be a pretty epic misfire. Brent Lang, thank you so much for joining me to talk about the box office.
Thanks for having me.
Well, it seemed like it was a good weekend for furry creatures from Pixar, and not such a good weekend for a reimagining from the great Maggie Jillen Hall pop line Brent, what happened this weekend?
And I think it just really shows you that the box office giveth and it taketh away. In the case of Hoppers, you had a really great performance from the Disney film, and I think there were some concerns that it wouldn't do as well because it's been about a decade since Pixar has had an original movie. Coco was the last one that really took off. But actually Hoppers,
which had some great reviews. I think it was like ninety six ninety seven percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, open to forty six million in the US and Canada, and then it went internationally at eighty eight million, and I think some people within the industry privately are predicting that it could make upwards of five hundred million dollars, which would be a really fantastic result for Pixar and a big shot in the arm because it means that this
is potentially another franchise. Pixar has had a lot of success with sequels to things like Inside Out, and Toy Story not as much success in launching original properties. But then on the other end of the ledger, you had The Bride, which is an unmitigated disaster. I would say it's the year's first really big bomb. It cost about ninety million dollars, It endured about two different rounds of reshoots, and the film itself wasn't excoriated by critics, but it
was not. It didn't get the kind of reviews that really got people in there. And it is very offbeat. It's really a genre mashups. It's kind of a crime film, it's kind of a horror film, it's kind of a comedy, it is kind of a musical. It's kind of a lot of different genres, and that's very hard to sell.
It's very hard to market something like that. And it did have some big stars in Jesse Buckley and Christian Bale and Maggie Jillenhall really impressed with her last film, The Lost Daughter, but I think she just couldn't kind of crack the code here. And this film made only seven million dollars in the US and Canada, and I
think about thirteen million now going into the weekend. Warner Brothers had predicted that the film was going to make about sixteen million dollars domestic, sixteen to eighteen million dollars and about forty million and change internationally. So their projections were wildly off.
What do you think gave them the faith that it would do so well internationally?
I think it maybe had to do with a sense that Bail has a big international following, and maybe in places like the Buckley is a bigger name. I think that always seemed a little optimistic. I do think that Warner Brothers kind of knew they had a bomb here for a while. They moved this movie out of last year. It was supposed to originally open in the fall, and they moved it into March. It had a kind of a stink on it for a while.
Warner Brothers was humble in their statement and noting that they have had an incredible success of number one openings. This is not that weekend.
I always think about something that Sony's Tom Rothman said, which is I'm paraphrasing, but basically that you should be creatively bold but financially conservative. And I think there really was no reason for this film to cost ninety million dollars. I'm assuming everybody kind of got their full faire here, and you really need to get creative talent on a movie this risky, to kind of buy in a little
bit more and maybe defer more of their salary. And I also just feel that, I mean, to be quite honest, I thought this was one of the worst major studio movie I've ever seen. It is a complete mess. It's kind of an astonishing disaster in my opinion, just purely looking at the timing of it.
Given that Guillermo del Toro has really triumphed in a creative sense, it maybe didn't have the kind of impact that a big theatrical release would have for Frankenstein on Netflix, but nonetheless, especially in the creative community, it was seen as a as a high water mark for him, and I think that anything that perhaps wasn't just flat out farce and a real spoof that would not cost nearly ninety million dollars is going to pay by comparisons.
I think they knew what they had on their hands, and I think they moved the film frankly to have a better twenty twenty five. You know that's smart. Studios do this all the time.
Let's talk about hoppers I'm sure you hear it from producers a lot too, like there is a concern at what point do we run out of things to remake, so something wholly original that the little furry creatures were awfully adorable, and also the kind of things that you can see plush toys selling. So if this really takes root for Disney, the potential in merchandising and even off screen profit potential is huge. I'm sure they are quite
excited to see this open decently. I guess by Pixar standard, it's not off the charts, but for holy original property in this day and age, it's They're pretty encouraged.
You would say, oh, I think this is a pretty pretty good result for them. It's not Zotopia two numbers, but this is showing support for this brand. Also, the thing about family films is they tend to stick around. They have really good multiples, so despite the fact they don't always open as large, they really can have great, strong second and third weekends. And I feel like the
word of mouth here is going to help. And I think just as you said, like, if this could be another franchise for Pixar, that would be extremely important because there's only so many times you can kind of go back to the well with your franchises. So I think they are feeling very confident, and I think they were concerned. I think when we did a story on Josh Tomorrow, I talked to some people at the studio and privately they were saying, you know, Hoppers is great, but it's
a risk. Original films are a risk. So I think they are breathing a huge cyber relief right now.
It really is stark when you point out that the last wholly original property was Coco in twenty seventeen. That's almost ten years ago. Just to button up this weekend to your point about the box office giveth and take it away, it was definitely taketh away time for Scream seven had a great opening led last week, but it was a steep drop of seventy four percent, as Rebecca
Rubin reported. But nonetheless, I think it did its job in opening weekend and probably got people watching the other previous six where they could.
Yes, absolutely think it coasts about half of what the Bride cost. And our films traditionally are very front loaded. They're the opposite of family films. They really make a disproportionate amount of their money on opening weekend. That'll be a very profitable film for Paramount, And unsurprisingly, they're apparently already developing a Scream eight, so they're okay.
With the drop. Let me close out, Brent by asking you, what are you looking forward to coming to the multiplexes. I will volunteer that I went to see Elvis Presley in concert last night thoroughly enjoyed it. Total kudos to Baz Luhrman. I saw a whole bunch of trailers. The trailer for The Odyssey, by far was the one that was like, Okay, Bookmark, we're making a date. What about you?
I mean, I totally agree with you. I think The Odyssey looks like the reason you go to the movies, the other film that it can plug. I was able to see Project Hail Mary, and I think people are going to really dig that. It's a very fun film, a little bit long, but a really great central performance by Ryan Gosling, and it's just sort of demands to be seen on.
A big screen. That sounds good. Brent, Thank you so much.
It's always fun to talk to you.
Thanks And now we're stepping into the wayback machine for the fun of turning back the clock fifty years to see what was going on in our business on March ninth, nineteen seventy six. What's the point of Variety being an amazing, irreplicable and encyclopedic chronicle of entertainment and media if you never take the time to dive back into the past
to look at how it informs the future. In this Vintage Variety segment, we'll also look at a few things that never did happen, but we're definitely being considered and attempted. The stories of the movies and TV shows that got away are also one of the many things that only the Variety Archives can bring you. So here we go, Tuesday, March ninth, nineteen seventy six. Our Banner story is about a legal fight between New York City theater owners over
exclusive bookings of movies. The Walter Reed Organization filed suit against rival exhibit Are Cinema five and Warner Brothers over what Walter Reid claimed was Warner brothers decision to renege on a deal to exclusively license the re release of mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles to Reid's theater on thirty fourth Street. The suit claims that, under pressure, Warner Brothers decided to give it to Cinema Five's theater on fifty seventh Street.
All of this activity over films playing in a handful of New York theaters, it just goes to show the primacy and the importance of the exhibition window. In this time, it was really the only window for a few years until a movie would make it to broadcast television. The Walter Reed organization in its lawsuit also noted that Warner Brothers was putting onerous terms on exhibitors for the revenue split on its buzzy Al Pacino drama Dog Day Afternoon.
Our box office coverage a few pages later in this issue demonstrates just how many movie theaters there used to be in New York City boards of eighty by this story's count. The other page one story that is a sign of the times is an effort to modernize theater listings. A company called Theater Information Systems was desperately trying to sign up studios to pay for its telephone service that would inform callers in the LA area where they can
find specific movies. The phone number was area code two one three t h EA. Tr Live operators would guide callers to the closest movie theater to their location for specific titles. We note that Theater Information Systems founder Alan Mostow had been working for four years just to convince enough distributors to sign up just to do a test. On this day, Variety reported that American International Pictures had agreed to do so for its latest release, The Devil
Within Her. As we turned to page two, there's a ton of action going on in Army Archards just for Variety Cold Michael Douglas and Jack Nicholson are just coming off a grueling international press tour for One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, a movie that is destined to sweep the Oscars in a couple of weeks. Nicholson talked to Army about the wild press conferences in Europe, and he noted that the Italian reporters were the most lively. Here's
a quote that you can absolutely hear Nicholson delivering. But I'm a genius at encountering the Marxist dialectic. Nicholson told Army his next effort was going to be to direct a Western called Moontrop for UAMGM. That movie never happened. A few grafts. Below, Robert Altman is talking to Army about coming off the Rush that was Nashville, his landmark,
critically beloved movie that really cemented his reputation. Altman tells Army that his next priorities include directing an adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Breakfast of Champions and an adaptation of the great El doctor O novel Time. Neither movie came to fruition with Altman, But you know who did bring Ragtime to the screen to great acclaim in nineteen eighty one, director Milos Foreman. That's who. And he just happened to direct One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. You can't make
this stuff up, folks. Some fun other tidbits from the rest of the issue. Ruth Engelhardt has been promoted to full agent at William Morris Agency. If you know, you know, Ruth wrote the book on TV packaging, Doing there All
for the Home. No less of a motley crew than Burt Bacharack, Pat Boone and Clint Eastwood will take part in the seventh annual Le Club International Pro Celebrity Tennis Classic benefit for the Motion Picture Television Fund Home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from March twenty fifth through twenty eighth. Can you imagine stars of that caliber doing that today. Linda Ronstadt did two benefits at the Troubadour this month in support of a state proposition to put more restrictions
around the development of nuclear power in California. The proposition did not pass, but undoubtedly Linda put on great shows. Looking into the classifieds of this issue, Disneyland was recruiting sound and lighting pros to work on various events at the park, and the Whiskey Nightclub on Sunset Boulevard was hiring waitresses from one to three pm on this day. This was advertised in a tiny little box ad on
one of the back pages. They really counted on people reading Variety cover to cover and early in the morning back then, thanks for joining me for a vintage Variety trek through the wayback machine. As we close out today's episode, here's a few things we're watching for. It's gonna be a big week. South by Southwest begins on Thursday, March twelfth. The Oscars arrive at Long Last on Sunday, March fifteenth. We'll have feet on the ground at both events and
much more to come. Elana Glazer's launching a stand up tour. She'll play twenty seven dates, starting May six and Vancouver and ending August nineteenth in Portland, Maine. She has some UK and European dates scattered in between. If you need a little more Plinko in your life, Samsung tv plus has you covered. Samsung tv Plus is launching a streaming channel featuring episodes of The Prices right from Bob Barker's proud thirty five year run as host. Come on down
and don't forget to spay or newt your pet. We love to hear from our listeners, so please send thoughts, scripes, and other feedback about Daily Variety to podcasts at Variety dot com. Before we go, congrats to River Gallo. They are a writer, actor and creator who has just signed a first look deal with Fox Entertainment Studios for scripted TV and movie projects. Gallo is behind the twenty twenty four Sundance Film Festival entry, pony Boy, and other projects.
Thanks for listening. This episode was written and reported by me Cynthia Lyttleton, with contributions from Brent Lang and the Variety editorial staff of nineteen seventy six stick Snick's hick Picks. Please leave us a review at the podcast platform of your choice, and please tune in tomorrow for another episode of Daily Variety.