Reel Suite: September 3, 2008

Happy Ramadan, my Blog-Princes and Princesses.  I had a lost Labor day weekend, not sure what I did between Friday and Monday (I think I went paintballing with my former co-worker Boss Daddy from the Beefcakes male strip club).  But I re-filled my Xanax prescription and I'm rip-roaring ready to take on the autumn financial season here at the best Goddamn movie studio on the planet.
 
Well, it's that time of year again.  Time to assess the Manka Bros. theatrical release report card for Summer 2008.  What a season it was!  If there's one thing I've learned about the maze-like world of Profits and Participations, it's that sometimes the numbers don't tell the full story.  What on the face of it looks like "failure" or "embarrassment" is often actually "encouraging" and "hopeful".  Profits can be found in myriad ways, in the unlikeliest places.  Hey, look under that stone.  What's that?  Why, it's ancillary returns.  Is that a silver lining I see in that cumulo nimbus?  Yes, here at Manka Bros., the glass is half-full... of piss and vinegar!  This studio has what Lou Grant called "spunk".  But we don't hate spunk around here!
 
Runtime Error, the latest Nathan Gerlach computer thriller, had a disappointing opening (up against Indiana Jones, for Cripes Sake!) of $212K on 3,600 screens.  I'll never forget the opening date for the film, because that was the weekend I spent face down in a puddle on a Cannes street corner, mumbling the name Carina.  Upside: Runtime grew a pair of sexy legs to the tune of $940K cume through Labor Day, and pulled in a solid $4 mil internationally, sharing a double bill in most territories with Speed Racer.  This series of Gerlach films has a strong following among viewers suffering from sweaty palm syndrome.  If production costs are kept to a minimum, I see a long, ambivalent future for these nailbiters.
 
We had high hopes for the crowd-pleasing horror-sci-fi epic Cephalopod, which, no bones about it, was our costliest film in years.  With production overruns, star salaries and massive P & A costs, this giant squid movie set us back a cool $429 mil.  Plus the director and two of the actors have backend gross points totaling 65%.  The film has only made $8.3 mil domestic and has not yet been released overseas, due to squids being sacred religious symbols in many countries.  Upside:  During pre-production, the producers of the film fortuitously secured "failure insurance", a first in the industry, in the event of the movie "not connecting with audiences".  The policy is worth $500 mil and there is no deductible.
 
The comedy Tae Kwon Doug proved to be effective counter programming on July 4th.  Costing only $400K, the film has chop-sockied its way to a cool $406K.  We recently threw a kickass, martial-arts themed party on the lot using the 6K profit.  Grandpa and the Argonauts, the innovative stop-motion animation film, garnered some of the year's best reviews, but young people stayed away because of the word "Grandpa" in the title and its four hour running time.  But the DVD extras reportedly include behind the scenes footage of Pamela Anderson recording her vocal performance in the nude, so that should "raise the level of awareness", as the boys in the office say.  Our arthouse entry, Handcuffed in Lace, the erotic, envelope-pushing tale of oral sex and the meaning of life, was shackled by its NC-17 rating and protests by Evangelicals in front of the three theaters that would exhibit it, causing the French director to take his own life.  While we were forced to pull it from cinemas, the worldwide controversy surrounding the film should prove to be its saving grace, as pre-sales for the DVD are through the roof.  If only Jean-Luc could've lived to see the film's success.  And recorded the commentary.
 
All in all, if you take a close look at all factors surrounding the financing and eventual profitability of our releases, I think we deserve a big fat C minus and a giant E for effort.  We're the fat kid who can't climb the rope in gym class, but we'll clean the hell out of the locker room toilets.  Patrick Goldstein of the L.A. Times recently said, "Manka Bros.' track record is second to none.  Their risk-averse, non-creative approach to filmmaking was a template for other majors, like 20th Century Fox".  Nikki Finke, the force behind deadlinehollywooddaily.com, blogged, "You heard it here first: Manka Bros. pays their writers and actors in birdseed, in scraps of kitty litter they find on the floor.  I was the first to report that.  It was reported here before it was reported anywhere else.  In your face".
 
This may be the Xanax talking, but I'm way hot for Nikki Finke.  I've decided she will be my next girlfriend.  She has spunk, just like Manka Bros.  Daddy likes that.  Daddy's gonna break himself off a piece of that.
 
You heard it here first.

Kurt Barnet