I HATED IT

HATED HATED HATED. Hated What? Hated Spiderman 3, that's what. If you have kids I suppose you have to take them and sit with them because if they're under 10 they will probably be hiding their heads (as in my case) because of the seemingly unending computerized fight scenes. Kids love it I guess, although one in our crowd went to sleep. The "story" is pathetic, the acting (when Spiderman cries the kids were laughing) is probably as good as a shitty story allows, and I guess if you buy computerized scenes the rest is very good. Have I liked any of the comic book to movie films? Yeah. Batman One, Superman One and Two; I thought Batman Two was OK, and so on; so I'm not a snob. I just need a good story cleverly done, and this movie has no cleverness at all.

Bottom line: don't go unless you have to. BTW: IMAX is not IMAX and the advertising for Spidy 3 as an IMAX movie is a fraud. It is simply remastered to the film size and after the first few minutes of totally flat picture you finally realize it. And did I mention that the movie had at least three endings, which it makes it 150 movies that didn't know how to shut it down.

Weekend gross: around $255 million world wide, according to Nikki. However she uses the word "made" as in "made" $200 mil, when in fact gross box office is nowhere near "made." Take roughly 55% of the gross and that is what a movie actually "makes." As make a profit.

HOWEVER, It is my past experience that major distribution deals are "sliding scale" so that the producer gets as much as 90% of the gross up to a certain figure, or 90% after a certain figure. In addition, the deals include agreements to book other product with attendant financial arrangements. So it's impossible to discern the studio "net" from box office grosses. Also since theatres routinely hawk movie souvenirs the picture gets even more cloudy and at the massive Century City complex where I saw Spidy the concession stands selling T Shirts, dolls, and other shit were all over the place both inside the theatre and outside. The studio and the theater get pieces from that as well. "Reporters" like Finke are just mouthpieces for special interests inside the business; either she strokes the right ego or she gets no "interviews"; I mean who the fuck reads the LA Weekly (where her column appears) other than the usual Los Angeles Left? She wants to expand.

I once had a picture in which an actor was guaranteed a piece of the "gross." He got jack shit and sued me. The judge ruled that unless gross was spelled out precisely there was no such word in a legal sense since snack bars, product tie ins within the theatre property (property clearly delineated), parking fees in theatre owned parking lots, and other stuff. I don't think that "gross" deals are ever in contracts any more. BTW two theatre chains fucked me on box office receipts thus fucking me out of my gross (I sued and lost but that is another story). We tried to get the actor's attorney to join us in suing the theatre chains but he declined.