Welcome to the Box Office Report, where we're not ready for flapper girls to be a thing again. How depressingly 2010.
Two of early summer's mega-blockbusters include major revelations, but the Marvel folks behind Iron Man 3 managed to keep theirs quiet, while the Star Trek Into Darkness crew has been flailing. Here's a free lesson from the fans: Misdirection works better than secrecy.
The New York Times introduced us to Vinny Bruzzese, a "chain-smoking former statistics professor," who is purportedly "the reigning mad scientist of Hollywood" predicting which scripts will succeed and fail based on mathematical analysis. But reporter Brooks Barnes doesn't give us a glimpse at the numbers supposedly backing up his rules (no bowling scenes!) for hit movies.
Welcome to the Box Office Report, where we're ready to declare Marvel the rulers of the summer movie season. No mas. Mercy. We surrender.
Iron Man 3 comes out today, making it the fourth movie featuring Iron Man in the past five years. And as a character, Iron Man seems to be winding down. Meaning, we ought to be in for a lull in the superhero onslaught, right? No. For good or bad, the superhero movie era shows no signs of ending.
It's easy to label the men behind the Star Trek and Iron Man franchises as geeks. They clearly have affection for sci-fi and comic book culture. But they are also, apparently, big Downton Abbey fans, as recent developments would have you believe.
It's already kicked off a big following, legally, across the globe — and, very illegally, on the Internet. Which begs the early question: Can Tony Stark leverage his team effort last summer in The Avengers to beat it at the box office?
Reviews are starting to come in for Iron Man 3, and they are predominantly good. Still, according to one of the reviews, one cameo — by an ABC sitcom star — nearly ruins the whole thing. Who could it be?
The first trailer for Thor: The Dark World begins the post-Avengers attack on the box office with character driven sequels bent on becoming legitimate franchises of their own. And yet, now that Man of Steel looks great again, it's hard not to wonder what the future for Marvel holds.
So last night Marvel released a new 30-second trailer for Iron Man 3 during the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards that will soon dominate your television viewing habits and, thankfully, it seems the old Iron Man is finally back.
We've now got a good look at Kingsley's villain The Mandarin, who shows a serious interest in Chinese culture — but not stereotypically, swears the director! — along with a menacing voice that spouts non-stop philosophical threats and reminds a lot of people of Bane — and/or Chinese stereotypes.
Iron Man is back in a trailer for the third installment of the Marvel franchise, but gone are the days of quippy Robert Downey Jr. and rock and roll.
Today: CBS has a turkey on its hands, Jon Favreau acts again, and ABC, well, has a turkey on its hands.
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