One of the biggest surprises for the end of the year is the hit that Ben Stiller’s slapstick feature “Night at the Museum” has turned into. The film, which co-stars Robin Williams is a bonafide box office winner in conventional and IMAX theaters. It is always nice to be surprised this time of year and this one did just that.
In another movie surprise, “Eragon”, the film so blasted by American critics and audiences as something less than stellar is being fully embraced by the international movie going crowd. The film was flying high overseas this past week grossing almost $64 million in international ticket sales topping its U.S. sales by nearly $23 million.
One bit of movie news came as no surprise at all. Mel Gibson’s epic “Apocalypto” has fallen off the precipice of a nearby Mayan Temple ruin into near oblivion. It had a a promising start, but viewers couldn’t straddle the hurtles of a story that was totally foreign to them, a language no one cared to read the subtitles for and, well, Mel himself. While the cinematography was some of the most stunning any will ever see on the silver screen, the film simply had far too much going against it from the very start.
Our final movie surprise end-of-year item is the fact that Japanese flicks will have the lion’s share of total U.S. Box Office sales for the entire year of 2006. The last time Japan captured the majority of the U.S. movie viewing market was in 1985. If things continue over the final week of December, Japan will have garnered more than $847 million (Y100 billion) in U.S. domestic box office. These figures are tallied by the Motion Picture Producers Assn. of Japan (Eiren). The big winners in 2006 have been “Tales From Earthsea,” “Umizaru 2: Test of Trust,” “Love and Honor” and “Suite Dreams.” Just the reverse is true of American-made films in Japanese markets. The only U.S. made film to-date to make any kind of serious box office inroads in Japans’ viewing public has been “Pirates of the Caribbean” Dead Man’s Chest.”
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