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YESTERDAY'S POLL
What was the BEST FILM of 2008?
The Dark Knight - 50% WALL-E - 11% The Wrestler - 10% The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 9% Iron Man - 8% Slumdog Millionaire - 6% Doubt - 4% Frost/Nixon - 3% Twilight - 2%
Hollywood studios are scaling back production, but you wouldn't know that by looking at the multiplexes in the first part of 2009.
The first few months of the year were once a graveyard for the least promising fare, but 2009 is seeing a flood of titles entering the marketplace.
There are numerous reasons for the glut. With the summer and holiday frames jam-packed, the majors can no longer afford to save their best titles for those key dates. And studios are using the January-April period to open a cluster of pics that were put into production before the 2007-08 writers strike.
Studios' investment and returns on these pics are more modest than on summer and year-end tentpoles, but profit margins can be substantial. Take two films released in March 2007: Warner Bros. 300, with a budget of $65 million, grossed $456 million worldwide, and Disney's modestly budgeted comedy Wild Hogs took in $170 million in North America.
Every studio wants to replicate such first-quarter successes, which means that in 2009, studios are slating like-genre films on virtually the same weekends that worked in the past.
n For example, if legal issues can be resolved, Warner Bros. is planning to open Watchmen in March, hoping to replicate the success of 300.
SAG DEALING WITH INNER CIVIL WAR
The Screen Actors Guild is starting 2009 with a civil war raging over a possible strike.
SAG's moderate wing plans to replace the guild's negotiating committee -- and possibly fire national exec director Doug Allen -- in hopes of breaking the contract stalemate with the majors.
While much of the town's been shut down for the past two weeks, SAG's internal firefight over its divisive strike authorization vote has escalated. Allen and SAG president Alan Rosenberg have spurned calls to ditch the authorization vote but agreed Dec. 22 to delay it until after a Jan. 12-13 emergency meeting of the national board in order to present a united front to members.
But the moderates have grown increasingly frustrated by what they perceive as a lack of response from SAG toppers and are poised to begin moving to make SAG more pragmatic -- three months after gaining control of the 71-member board over the more aggressive Membership First faction, which still dominates the negotiating committee.
Ned Vaughn, spokesman for the moderate Unite for Strength faction, said he could not comment on specifics of steps to be taken at the meeting. "The board has a choice to make -- either go ahead with the strike authorization vote or move in a new direction," he told Daily Variety.More than one option
New York board member Paul Christie said Allen may be on thin ice if he doesn't change his approach.
"His idea of re-establishing consensus to date has been 'getting you all to agree with me," Christie added. "He will go down in flames if that is his game plan for this meeting."
CLASSIC FILMS
BY GENRE
The Reader
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Valkyrie
Bedtime Stories
Marley and Me
Milk
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Nothing Like the Holidays
Yes man
Slumdog Millionaire
Frost/Nixon
The Day the Earth Stood Still
