Big Sunday shows 'This Is It' isn't performing like a concert film

"This Is It" continues to throw all the old rules about concert movies out the window.

Domestic ticket sales for the Michael Jackson movie totaled $8.3 million on Sunday, nearly $2 million more than the $6.3 million Sony Pictures projected Sunday morning and 17% more than the movie grossed on Saturday. The movie's total domestic gross is now $34.4 million, making the worldwide number $103 million.

Concert movies traditionally see ticket sales decline rapidly after they premiere, as avid fans who turn out on opening day make up most of the audience. But "This Is It" grossed more on Sunday than any day since it debuted, a sign that word-of-mouth is strong and moviegoers who initially may have been hesitant are turning out. There also may be repeat viewing, which is often the case for concert films.

If the trend continues, "This Is It" should enjoy a relatively modest decline next weekend, and what initially looked like a middling domestic performance may actually turn into a pretty good one, albeit not nearly as big as overseas. That's where Jackson is really cleaning up.

-- Ben Fritz

Photo: Michael Jackson in "This Is It." Credit: Kevin Mazur

$20.1 million is it for 'This Is It'

Sony's unusual Wednesday launch for its Michael Jackson movie "This Is It" yielded decidedly mixed results.

The documentary sold $20.1-million worth of tickets around the world, with $7.4 million coming from the U.S. and Canada and $12.7 million from 97 foreign countries.

The United Kingdom was the biggest foreign market for "This Is It," bringing $1.9 million. France was next with $1.4 million, followed by Japan with $1.2 million, German with $1.1 million, and China with $730,000.

A small amount of the total came from night-time shows in the Western United States on Tuesday starting at 9 PM Pacific, but the vast majority is from screenings on Wednesday.

Opening movies worldwide on a Wednesday outside of summer of the holidays is extremely rare. On that basis, Sony can claim a solid launch when measured against any comparable films.

However, given the huge amounts of hype surrounding the movie and the $60 million Sony spent to make the movie, outside of its marketing costs, the opening is none too impressive.

Nighttime shows in the domestic market appear to have been particularly slow, as several studio executives had been expecting the movie to gross over $10 million domestically as of early evening Wednesday. Before the launch, executives at Sony and elsewhere said the movie could easily collect $20 million domestically on its opening day, which turned out to be the global total.

Sony is expecting relatively weak grosses today as well as Saturday, when moviegoers will likely be celebrating Halloween instead of going to theaters. Friday will be the critical day in determining the ultimate performance of "This Is It," because it will demonstrate whether word of mouth brings people who weren't rabid Michael Jackson fans to see the film.

While it's difficult to predict the ultimate worldwide performance of "This Is It" after one day, it appears that the domestic gross through Sunday will end up around $30 million, on the very low end of expectations before the picture launched.

Update (11:06 AM): Jackson fans who turned out loved the film. U.S. moviegoers gave "This Is It" an average grade of A, according to market research firm CinemaScore.

-- Ben Fritz

Photo: There were no lines for the first show of "This Is It" at The Grove shopping center in Los Angeles on Tuesday night. Credit: Brian Vander Brug/Los Angeles Times

Sony's aborted attempt to release 'This Is It' DVD before Christmas

Sony Pictures desperately wanted to release the DVD of the Michael Jackson concert movie "This Is It" for the holiday shopping season, but backed down after movie theater owners balked that it was too soon following the film's theatrical premiere.

"This Is It" opened in 99 countries yesterday and is scheduled for a limited two-week run, though the studio may extend that depending on ticket sales.

Sony had hoped to capitalize on audiences' heightened interest in what turned out to be Jackson's final performance by releasing the DVD in mid-December, about a month after the movie ends its short time in theaters. The disc is now expected to come out in late January or early February.

Selling DVDs before Christmas can be particularly lucrative for studios as they are timed to to capture the holiday gift giving season.

While that made sense for Sony, owners of the nation's cinemas were none too happy at the prospect. They have historically urged studios to wait at least 90 days, but preferably four months, from the day a movie opens in theaters to start selling the DVD, in order to maximize ticket sales. For years, studios have honored that "window," in part out of concern that theaters would retaliate by not booking some of their movies or driving harder deal terms.

Sony executives tried to persuade theater operators to make an exception for "This Is It," given its short life span on the big screen and the uniqueness of the picture.

"We felt we made a pretty good case as to why this movie was different," said Jeff Blake, vice chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, who oversees worldwide marketing and distribution.

However, the movie theater owners refused to budge.

"We had several conversations with Sony and so did our members," said John Fithian, president of the National Assn. of Theatre Owners, an industry trade group. "Anytime we see the window go under three months, we alert our members and raise concerns with the studios."

After hearing complaints from executives at several of his member companies, Fithian said, "I raised a general concern with Sony about the extraordinarily short window."

After talking with theater owners, Sony, whose DVD releases on average come out four months and four days after a movie's theatrical run, reluctantly decided to back off from its request in order to preserve good relations with them.

"We didn't want it to be an issue," said Blake. "At the end of the day, we wanted a big theatrical run and they certainly stepped up and supported that with 6,000 screens in 3,481 theaters."

However, the Sony executive acknowledged that he was sorry the studio didn't get what it it wanted. "It would have made a big financial difference to us," he noted.

All of Hollywood is feeling the pain of an industry-wide decline in DVD sales, which are down more than 13% this year.

Sony is not the only studio that has recently attempted to push up the traditional DVD window. Paramount Pictures is releasing its summer event film "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" in the home entertainment market on Nov. 3, 88 days after it first hit theaters, which raised the ire of many exhibitors.

In 2005, Walt Disney Co. chief executive Bob Iger suggested that the studio might someday respond to consumers' growing impatience to see entertainment when and how they want it by releasing films simultaneously in theaters and on DVD. After theater owners responded in outrage, along with Disney's then-studio chief Dick Cook, Iger went silent on the subject for years.

However, in a keynote address earlier this month, Iger revisited the topic. "In order to keep the DVD business vital, that product has to be perceived as being fresh in the marketplace," the Disney chief said  at a conference at the University of Southern California. "The press to move the DVD window up, be it physical or digital, will grow because of that phenomenon."

--Claudia Eller and Ben Fritz

Photo: Michael Jackson in "This Is It." Credit: Sony Pictures.

'This Is It' headed for $10 million to $12 million opening day

The opening-day box office for "This Is It" is neither a "Thriller" nor "Bad."

According to executives at several studios who have been tracking the returns, the new Michael Jackson documentary is likely to sell $10 million to $12 million worth of tickets domestically today.

Though that number could vary a bit depending on how later screenings perform, executives experienced in tracking box office said the movie had virtually no chance of collecting more than $15 million or less than $9 million.

"This Is It" sold $2.2 million worth of tickets last night; most of that probably occurred after midnight and can be counted in today's grosses.

Comparisons with other movies are difficult, given that the only major releases studios have put out on a Wednesday outside of summer or the holidays are "The Passion of the Christ," a phenomenon that benefited from group purchases by churches, and "The Matrix Revolutions," the third movie in a blockbuster trilogy. Those pictures collected $26.6 million and $24.3 million, respectively, on their opening days.

The movie's big test will come Friday. Ticket sales Thursday are expected to be slow as most hard-core Michael Jackson fans will have come out last night or today. Saturday will also be slow because it's Halloween, historically a dismal day at the box office even though Sony is trying to generate publicity connected to Jackson's album "Thriller."

If word of mouth is strong and moviegoers beyond the most devoted Jackson fans are interested, that is  likely to be evident in healthy ticket sales Friday. If it's a slow day, Sony may be looking at a five-day gross as low as $30 million and a soft two-week run relative to its investment of $60 million in rights to make the movie and tens of millions more in marketing.

Ultimately, however, domestic ticket sales may not be that important. "This Is It" is expected to perform substantially better overseas, where it could be a major hit regardless of how the film does in the U.S. and Canada. Box-office receipts from the 95 foreign countries where "This Is It" opened simultaneously are not yet available.

-- Ben Fritz

Photo: Jermaine Jackson arrives at the premiere of "This Is It" at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles last night. Credit: Jason Merritt / Getty Images

'This Is It' collects $2.2 million from late night shows

Michael Jackson fans beat it to theaters in droves last night.

"This Is It" sold $2.2 million worth of tickets in late night Tuesday screenings in the U.S. and Canada, a strong number for a weeknight outside of the summer, when most adults have work and kids have school the next day.

The healthy debut is good news for Sony, which spent a hefty $60 million to acquire rights to make the movie and has invested tens of millions more in marketing around the world.

Most Sony insiders had expected a solid start, however, since audience surveys showed there was a relatively small but passionate group of moviegoers who wanted to see "This Is It" as soon as possible. The big question is whether word-of-mouth will attract more casual Jackson fans in the coming days and whether those who turned out opening night will return a second (or fifth?) time.

Nonetheless, everybody loves a big launch. And with $2.2 million already in the bank, "This Is It" could easily gross more than $15 million by the end of today.

The big money for "This Is It" will come from overseas, however, where the movie opened in 97 territories last night and today. Sony executives are predicting the movie will collect at least twice as much from foreign countries as it does domestically. International ticket sales aren't yet available, though a studio spokesman said that "early indications already reveal strong late show and early matinee attendance" overseas.

--Ben Fritz

Related:

"This Is It" review

Michael Jackson should have been there

Will 'This Is It' perform like Jackson?

Photo: Young fans watching red carpet arrivals at last night's premiere of "This Is It" at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles. Credit: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

Michael Jackson should have been there

It was just plain weird that Michael Jackson wasn't at last night's world premiere of his concert film "This Is It" at L.A. Live's Nokia Theatre.

"He would have loved this," said Sony Pictures movie chief Amy Pascal, whose studio paid $60 million for the rights to the film that features behind-the-scenes footage that AEG shot of the late singer's rehearsals for the London concerts that never happened.

You could almost picture Jackson moonwalking down the red carpet (it was actually a red dance floor), with crystal chandeliers dramatically swaying over head in a freak windstorm and dancers dressed in sequined body suits performing acrobats in open cages suspended in air. 

As his soulful pop tunes blasted on loudspeakers, some 5,500 guests, including Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, and, of course, Paris Hilton, posed for the paparazzi. Kenny Ortega, who directed and produced the film, stopped Jackson's four brothers on the way into the theater to thank them for "going out of their way to be here tonight." No sign of Janet or Daddy Joe. Even Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made an appearance.

Jackson would have been amused to see Sony's Pascal in her Jackson-like get-up; a white fedora hat with a black ribbon, a white V-neck T-shirt, cropped black military-style jacket and ultra-low black hip-hugger slacks with silver sequenced stripes down the sides and a matching belt. You go girl.

At the after-party, on the roof of a parking lot in a big white tent with a circular bar on a revolving floor, Pascal and others spoke to me about the bittersweet nature of the Jackson tribute. They all loved the film and found it so moving, but of course if Jackson hadn't unexpectedly died in June from the effects of a powerful anesthetic and other medications, the one-hour, 51-minute movie culled from more than 100 hours of his rehearsal footage wouldn't have been made for public consumption. It was originally intended for Jackson's personal archives. What's striking about the film is how committed, physically fit (though way thin) and man-in-charge Jackson the artist appeared in the footage.

"He was at the top of his game and had a message he wanted to spread," said Pascal, referring to Jackson's public plea to spread the love and save the planet. "Kenny Ortega really captured the human being that Michael probably never would have let the public see."

Jackson friend and former "American Idol" judge Paula Abdul also expressed mixed emotion.

"For me the film was great, brilliant, poignant and sad--a totally mixed bag of emotions," said Abdul, recalling how as a Laker girl she was hired to choreograph and direct Michael Jackson's 1984 Victory Tour. "It's a celebration of life and sadness that he's not here," she said of the movie.

Last night's gala event was one of 34 world premieres being held, including half that were simultaneously taking place in cities such as New York, Moscow and London.

The film, which opened last night at 9 p.m. standard time in 99 territories around the globe, by this weekend will be playing on 15,000 screens, including at 3,400 theaters in the U.S. and Canada.

"`This Is It' has always been for the fans," Ortega said when he took the stage at the Nokia to introduce the movie. "Michael, we love you more."

--Claudia Eller

Related:

"This Is It" review

Michael Jackson should have been there

Will 'This Is It' perform like Jackson?

Photos: Top: Michael Jackson fans at the L.A. premiere of "This Is It." Credit: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images. Bottom: Director Kenny Ortega and Sony's Amy Pascal. Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images.

YouTube gets 'Taxi Driver' from Sony's Crackle

You lookin' at YouTube?

Continuing its slow journey to add premium Hollywood content, YouTube has just posted its second major studio film to the site, the 1976 classic "Taxi Driver."

The film, when went on the Google-owned viral video site today and will be available for just a week, comes from Sony Pictures' Crackle video website, which also streamed "Ghostbusters" on YouTube for a week in August. Like that film, "Tax Driver" is playing under a number of limitations intended to benefit Sony: It steams in Crackle's own video player with prominent branding for the site and the video advertising is sold by the studio, which gets most of the revenue.

That hasn't stopped YouTube from spotlighting the film. Beyond featuring "Taxi Driver" on its heavily trafficked home page, YouTube promoted the movie with a series of clues on its Twitter feed yesterday and with a post on its blog.

The company is clearly hoping to convince both consumers and content owners that it's a viable outlet for premium content. Despite significant efforts to attract such content, YouTube has few television episodes and films from major studios. Advertisers have proven to be much more comfortable with Hollywood content than user-submitted videos.

Sony streams "Ghostbusters," "Taxi Driver" and more than 200 other films owned by the studio on Crackle. The partnership with YouTube seems intended primarily to promote Crackle to users of the much more popular Google-owned site.

-- Ben Fritz

Photo: Robert DeNiro in "Taxi Driver." Credit: Beitia Archives

Sony curtails development spending halfway through fiscal year

Sony Pictures has told the Hollywood creative community that it is all but halting spending on developing new movie projects until April 1, the start of its next fiscal year.

That means that for the next six months, the studio will largely hold off from buying new scripts or source material (such as books) to turn into movies and from cutting checks to writers to start work on projects recently set up at the studio.

As with all rules in Hollywood, of course, there are exceptions. Sony will still shell out for existing priority projects and new ones it deems irresistible, as it did this summer when it paid $60 million for the rights to the Michael Jackson documentary "This is It," which unexpectedly became available after the singer's death. The studio also recently engaged Gary Ross to rewrite and potentially direct "Spider-Man" spin-off "Venom."

"We have a healthy development roster and we know our slate for 2010 and well into 2011," Sony spokesperson Steve Elzer said. "In the future, given our needs, we will be buying less but will also step up to the plate when we believe there is great material to be acquired."

Sony is the second studio in the last month to curtail spending on development. In September, Universal Pictures decided to stop spending on new projects through the end of 2009. The fiscal year for Universal's parent company General Electric begins Jan. 1.

Though it's common for studios to run through their annual development budgets earlier than planned, it's somewhat surprising that Sony has done so halfway through its year.

The move comes as every studio is looking for ways to cut costs amid the ongoing decline in DVD sales, the reduced access to outside capital for production and the pressures of the economic downturn.

Sony has already set its releases for 2010 and identified a number of films it is putting into production for 2011. Like other studios, Sony has a pool of hundreds of projects already in development, from which it can pick and choose. With the industry's ongoing belt tightening, though, studios are looking to shrink the size of their project pools. Most are also looking to produce fewer films than they have in the last several years.

Unlike Universal, whose move to stop development spending came amid a dismal year at the box office, Sony has had a strong run recently with such hits as "Julie & Julia," "District 9" and "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs."

Sony is apparently looking to maximize profits from those films by not spending money on projects it might not need.

The studio is also hoping to rake in a fortune with "This is It," which starts a two-week run on Oct. 28 and has already sold out hundreds of screenings via online ticketing services.

-- Ben Fritz and Claudia Eller

Photo: The entrance gate to Sony Pictures' lot in Culver City. Credit: Jill Connelly / Associated Press

Sony repositioning PlayStation 3 as all-in-one entertainment device

Nearly three years after the device launched and quickly fell behind its two major competitors, Sony is attempting to reposition its Playstation 3 video game console as an all-in-one entertainment device.

The Japanese electronics giant is launching a new advertising campaign for the crucial fall and holiday season that places less emphasis on its video game capabilities and more on its ability to play high-definition Blu-ray DVDs and to download movies from the Internet.

One of the ads, showed to The Times by Sony in advance of airing, touts the PS3 as "the greatest gaming, Blu-ray playing, movie downloading system around." Another features a teenager complaining that his grandmother is using the console to watch Blu-ray movies, preventing him from playing video games.

After years of charging more than its competitors, Sony last week cut the price of the PS3 to $299, putting it in line with Microsoft's Xbox 360, which has various models that cost $199 to $299, and the Nintendo Wii, which costs $249.

The device's high price and complex set of features have been cited by many in the industry as key reasons for its slow sales. According to NPD group, consumers in the U.S. have bought just over 8 million PS3s through the end of July, compared with more than 15 million Xbox 360s and over 20 million units of the Nintendo Wii.

That has been a source of particular frustration to Hollywood studios, which have been counting on the PS3 to boost sales of Blu-ray discs, which haven't grown fast enough to make up for an ongoing decline in DVD sales.

"We have been a game company for years and we would never walk away from that, but research confirmed there is a larger proposition under our nose," said Peter Dille, senior vice president of marketing for Sony Computer Entertainment America. "We wanted to reposition as a total entertainment solution. We felt like we can really own entertainment."

Michael Jackson movie opening moved up two days

Now this is really it.

Aiming to create a cinematic happening out of the theatrical release of its newly acquired Michael Jackson movie, Sony announced today that “Michael Jackson: This Is It” will arrive in theaters for a limited two-week run on Oct. 28 — two days earlier than its original release date.

And in an attempt to stoke fan anticipation for the film — which includes more than 80 hours of behind-the-scenes and rehearsal footage shot in the lead-up to Jackson’s sold-out London comeback concerts — the studio is taking the unusual step of putting tickets on sale Sept. 27, more than a month before the film arrives at multiplexes.

“As we began assembling the footage for the motion picture we realized we captured something extraordinary, unique and very special,” said the film’s director, Kenny Ortega, in a statement. Ortega, the director-choreographer behind Disney’s lucrative “High School Musical” TV-movie franchise and the movie “Dirty Dancing,” as well as Jackson’s creative partner on his Dangerous and HIStory tours, worked closely with the performer up until his death as director of Jackson’s This Is It concerts.

“For the first time ever, fans will see Michael as they have never seen him before — this great artist at work. It is raw, emotional, moving and powerful footage that captures his interactions with the ‘This Is It’ collaborators that he had personally assembled for this once in a lifetime project,” said Ortega.

Disney made successful use of a similarly unorthodox release strategy for its 3-D concert movie “Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds.” That film’s limited two-week engagement in February 2008 drove attendance in its opening weekend, resulting in “Best of Both Worlds” becoming a surprise No. 1 hit.

Moving “This Is It’s” release date to Oct. 28 from Oct. 30 also makes solid tactical sense for Sony.

Halloween, which falls this year on a Saturday, typically the biggest day of the week for movie attendance, is one of the toughest weekends of the year at the U.S. box office, although the date finds a natural correlation with one of the songs included in “This Is It”: Jackson’s ghoulishly themed smash hit “Thriller.”

Contrary to earlier reports, the filmmakers confirmed that “This Is It” will not contain sequences shot in 3-D.

— Chris Lee

Photo: Michael Jackson. Credit: Kevin Mazur/AEG Getty Images