STUDIO BRIEFING: June 24, 2008

STUDIO BRIEFING: June 24, 2008

i>GET SMART TAKES IT TO THE MAX
Get Smart, starring Steve Carell as title character Maxwell Smart, took in $38.68 million over the weekend, well above estimates by box-office predictors and Warner Bros., the studio that released it, according to final figures released Monday by Media by Numbers. The only other film to open wide, Paramount's The Love Guru, starring Mike Myers, found little love among moviegoers as it debuted in fourth place with just $13.91 million. Meanwhile, the second week of Universal's The Incredible Hulk slipped to second place with $22.14 million, while Kung Fu Panda, produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Paramount, brought in $21.93 million in its third week. Meanwhile, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull remained at the top of the international box office for the third week in a row with $25 million. The film has now taken in $392 million overseas versus $291 million at home.

The top ten films over the weekend, according to final figures compiled by Media by Numbers (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date):
1. Get Smart, Warner Bros., $38,683,480, (New); 2. The Incredible Hulk, Universal, $22,136,060, 2 Wks. ($97,055,430); 3. Kung Fu Panda, Paramount, $21,934,716, 3 Wks. ($155,830,875); 4. The Love Guru, Paramount, $13,907,130, (New); 5. The Happening, 20th Century Fox, $10,482,146, 2 Wks. ($50,749,495); 6. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Paramount, $8,540,313, 5 Wks. ($290,961,044); 7. You Don't Mess With the Zohan, Sony, $7,453,215, 3 Wks. ($84,308,418); 8. Sex and the City: The Movie, Warner Bros, $6,532,394, 4 Wks. ($132,452,769); 9. Iron Man, Paramount, $4,030,272, 8 Wks. ($304,816,141); 10. The Strangers, Universal, $2,122,410, 4 Wks. ($49,759,735).

PARAMOUNT EARNS $1 BILLION
Paramount received both good and bad news on Monday from its box-office researchers. The bad news was that its latest release, The Love Guru, flopped over the weekend with just $13.92 million. The good news was that the movie nevertheless helped push total revenue for all of the studio's films past the $1-billion mark in domestic ticket sales in record time. Last week the studio said that it had passed that mark overseas.

P2P SITES DRAW NEARLY HALF OF BANDWIDTH, SAYS STUDY
Peer-to-peer technology, the file-sharing applications like BitTorrent that are generally associated with online music and movie piracy, account for 44 percent of all bandwidth used in North America, according to Sandvine, a vendor of bandwidth-management systems and reported by the online Multichannel News today (Tuesday). The website observed that Comcast, the cable company that is known to be seeking ways to limit the use of peer-to-peer technology, is a Sandvine client. The same study indicated that 14.8 percent of bandwidth used is consumed by streaming technologies, which also primarily deliver movies and TV shows to users, albeit mostly legitimately. Web browsing accounts for 27.3 percent of all bandwidth consumed, the study said.

DREAMWORKS' DEAL COULD BRING IN $2 BILLION FROM INVESTORS
The deal between DreamWorks and potential investors that could enable DreamWorks to become independent again may turn out to be far bigger than originally reported, according to the Associated Press, which cited two people familiar with the negotiations. DreamWorks, headed by Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, is now reportedly looking to raise a total of $2 billion from investors -- about half of it coming from India's Reliance Entertainment and the other half coming from other parties, possibly including Universal Pictures. It will be some time before any deal is signed, one of the AP's sources said.

METROPOLIS TURNS 80
Fritz Lang's classic 1927 epic Metropolis, for years available only on home video only as a scratchy, washed-out print, has been painstakingly restored frame by frame and is due to be released on high-definition Blu-ray disc in 2009, according to Kino International, the New York-based distributor of art-house-type home videos. The film was restored to mark the 75th anniversary in 2002 of the silent movie's original release and included a new soundtrack based on the original score created for the movie.