This Year In Originality

The year's top hundred flicks by gross (as of 12/30/07), summarily labeled by the relevant information. Rankings courtesy of Box Office Mojo (though they'll be different by the time you check – feel free to ask about any puzzling entries); categorizations by your humble compiler. This is by my own recollection, so caveat emptor. It could always turn out that Fracture was based on a novel, or Mr. Brooks on a pamphlet, or that half of the romantic comedies here were based on Italian originals from three years ago.

"Sequel in works" refers to any stage past general rumor, generally a greenlight or more.

1 Sequel, #3 in series, adapted property, comic book, sequel in talks
2 Sequel, #3 in series, adapted property, book (children's), sequels in works
3 Adapted property, television/toy, sequel in works
4 Sequel, #3 in series, adapted property, amusement park ride, sequel in talks
5 Sequel, #5 in series, adapted property, book (young adult), sequel in works
6 Sequel, #3 in series, adapted property, book (novel series), sequel in talks
7 Adapted property, comic book
8 Original property
9 Previously adapted property, book (novel)
10 Adapted property, television
11 Original property, sequel in works
12 Original property
13 Adapted property, television, sequel in rumors
14 Sequel, #3 in series
15 Sequel, #4 in series
16 Sequel, #2 in series, adapted property, comic book, sequel in works
17 Original property, true story
18 Sequel, #2 in series, sequel in rumors
19 Original property, sequel in rumors
20 Original property
21 Original property
22 Remake
23 Original property
24 Sequel, #3 in series
25 Adapted property, comic book, sequel in works
26 Original property
27 Sequel, #2 in series
28 Original property
29 Original property
30 Original property
31 Adapted property, book (young adult)
32 Adapted property, book (poetry, epic)
33 Remake, unofficial
34 Adapted property, book (short story)
35 Original property
36 Sequel, #4 in series
37 Original property
38 Adapted property, book (young adult)
39 Original property
40 Remake
41 Original property
42 Remake, adapted property, comic book/television
43 Remake
44 Sequel, #3 in series, adapted property, video game
45 Original property
46 Sequel, #2 in series
47 Original property
48 Original property
49 Original property
50 Adapted property, book (novel)
51 Original property
52 Original property
53 Adapted property, television
54 Remake (Americanization)
55 Original property
56 Adapted property, book (novel)
57 Sequel (tenuous), #2 or #6 in series
58 Adapted property, comic book
59 Adapted property, video game
60 Original property
61 Original property
62 Adapted property, book (young adult), sequel in talks
63 Original property
64 Remake
65 Adapted property, book (memoir)
66 Original property, sequel in works
67 Original property
68 Original property
69 Original property
70 Adapted property, book (true story)
71 Adapted property, book (memoir/true story)
72 Original property, true story
73 Original property
74 Sequel, #2 in series, adapted property, television
75 Original property
76 Original property
77 Original property
78 Sequel, #2 in series, sequel in talks
79 Original property
80 Original property
81 Prequel, #4 in series, adapted property, book
82 Sequel, #2, #4, and #6 in series, adapted property, comic book
83 Adapted property, musical, various popular fiction
84 Adapted property, book
85 Original property
86 Original property
87 Adapted property, book (young adult)
88 Adapted property, book (novella)
89 Original property
90 Original property
91 Original property
92 Adapted property, back catalog
93 Original property
94 Original property
95 Original property
96 Original property
97 Adapted property, book (young adult)
98 Adapted property, book (true story)
99 Sequel to remake, #2 in series
100 Remake (Americanization)

The breakdown.

Sequels: 19%
Second installments: 8%
Third installments: 7% (but 5 of those in the top 20)
Fourth installments: 3%
Fifth installments: 1%
Films with widely rumored or confirmed sequels upcoming: 15%
Remakes: 7%, including Americanizations of foreign films, 2%
Original properties: 48%
Plenty of original properties, although it should be noted that many of those are Good Luck Chuck and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.
True stories: 5% (6%, if you want to count 300)
Adapted properties: 35%
Television adaptations: 7%
Video game adaptations: 2%
Comic book adaptations: 7%
Book adaptations: 20%, including
Young Adult, 6% (not counting The Water Horse, too new, and The Seeker, which just plain flopped)
Non-fiction/memoir, 4%
Novel/la, 7%
Short story, 1%
Children, 1%
Epic poetry, 1%

PvP

Just happened to catch an ad over the weekend for a Sci-Fi original movie currently airing. The plot of Showdown at Area 51 seemed a little familiar from the 30-second spot: evidently two warring factions of interstellar invader meet up on Earth and clash, with humans caught in the crossfire. Sci-Fi channel watchers will know Gigi Edgley from Farscape, along with vets Christa Campbell (Mansquito) and Jason London (the recently discussed Dracula II: Ascension and Dracula III: Legacy).

It's not I Am Omega-level borrowery, but with Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (Alien Vs. Predator 2: Survival of the Fittest last time I wrote about it, back in June) opening Tuesday, neither is it coincidental. For those thinking I'm paranoid about such things, consider briefly the scrapped title: Alien vs. Alien. Also, it's got three writing credits and no director.

Happy Xmas/Festivus/Aliens vs. Predator Day!

*Neither the final nor the most thrilling chapter.

Additional shooting of The Eye

One more note on that Eye remake, particularly relevant in light of recently mentioning the Pang brothers not being involved in the Messengers reshoots. A Pang-related curse?

Lionsgate asked for two weeks of reshoots on The Eye, but ominously chose not to invite David Moreau and Xavier Palud back, opting instead to retain the services of Wes Craven's sometimes editor and affiliate Patrick Lussier, who may sound French, but seems to be Canadian, residing in Los Angeles.

Though I posted a while ago about Lussier's upcoming White Noise 2: The Light, his sequel-heavy repertoire should merit him at least a mention by name on this blog, if not a post of his own. White Noise 2 is Lussier's fifth film as director, and fourth sequel.

Lussier's feature debut was a sequel: 2000's straight-to-video Prophecy 3: The Ascent.* His second film was an original, or at least "an original," the Wes Craven exec-produced Dracula 2000. Lussier shares a story credit with Joel Soisson, so there's no telling which of them came up with the bizarre, inspired plot twist that sets Dracula 2000 apart from its crummy modern vampire brethren. I've never been able to tell whether it's genius or ludicrous, but I still remember it clearly seven years later. In fact, it's the only thing I remember about the movie, which makes it significantly more memorable than a cast including Gerard Butler, Christopher Plummer, Jonny Lee Miller, Justine Waddell, Danny Masterson, Omar Epps, Jeri Ryan, Shane West, and Nathan Fillion.

Dracula 2000 opened poorly but struggled to a domestic total about $5 million past its $28m budget, which means Lussier's third and fourth films were Dracula II: Ascension (cf. Prophecy 3: The Ascent) and Dracula III: Legacy. All I can tell you about Wes Craven Presents Dracula II: Ascension is that Jason Scott Lee plays Father Uffizi.

Along those lines, I can also report that Wes Craven Presents Dracula III: Legacy offers Roy Scheider as Cardinal Siqueros.

*A special post on my favorite thing about this film tomorrow.

Cheer Fever

Today's direct-to-DVD sequel about which I have fairly little to say is Bring It On: In It To Win It, the five-card Charlie of film subtitles. BIO:IITWI is the fourth film (in seven years) of the Bring It On series, name-only sequels featuring the world of high school cheerleading competitions. A brief history of the franchise follows.

Bring It On, 2000. Well-received, made about $68 million domestically, and spoken of occasionally as a clever satire, though it didn't do particularly much for me. Contains a handful of teen talent who'd go on to work regularly: Kirsten Dunst as Torrance,
Eliza Dushku, Jesse Bradford, Gabrielle Union. Directed by Peyton Reed and written by Jessica Bendinger, whose 2006 directorial debut Stick It, about a rebellious girl returning to competitive gymnastics, is probably closer to the first Bring It On than any of the subsequent cash-ins.

Bring It On Again, 2004. Direct to video. Stars Anne Judson-Yager (as Whittier) and Bree Turner, so top two billings both put in early work for MTV's Undressed series.

Bring It On: All Or Nothing, 2006. Stars Hayden Panettiere as Britney, and is presumably where Heroes producers decided she could play a cheerleader. Supporting actor Danielle Savre also appears in Heroes with Panettiere. Apparently writers were unable to think of a Southern California city after which to name her, otherwise a trademark of the series. There's no Britney, CA, right? Also stars Solange Knowles-Smith and Rihanna, meaning three of the film's actors will have records available (as soon as the Panettiere CD drops; it's about half a year past its supposed release date). Danielle Savre's been in a couple of singing groups (Sweet Obsession and Trinity), but it doesn't look like they recorded.

Bring It On: In It To Win It, 2007. Working title was Bring It On 4ever. Returns series to form by naming lead (Ashley Benson) Carson. Stars various ex-Power Rangers and siblings of teen-poppers. Rival factions are the Sharks and the Jets. That guarantees a couple knife murders and a rumble, right?

Two nights in Bangkok

Back to the Pang brothers: before they were breaking off to do solo projects to avoid pigeonholing, they were doing solo projects by necessity. The twins teamed up officially for the first time in 1999 as co-directors/writers/editors on Bangkok Dangerous, a Thai thriller that became a moderate hit and gave them a good reputation in Thailand, where they'd continue to work often.

The Pangs are remaking their own flick; the new version is in the can and awaiting a February 17 release date. It shot under the titles Big Hit in Bangkok and Time to Kill before coming back around to Bangkok Dangerous.

The original stars Pawalit Mongkolpisit as a deaf-mute hitman. That's not going to fly with Nicolas Cage in the lead, so the Pangs were 'asked' to change things around in order to give Cage some lines, and in the new version, he's a plain old hitman with a deaf-mute girlfriend (Charlie Yeung of Wong Kar-Wai's Ashes of Time and Fallen Angels). You might wonder if this sort of negates the whole point of the original movie. You certainly might wonder that.

Since the Pangs' budget is more than a hundred times the original ($40-45 million to the 1999 version's $400,000), and the unusual draw of the first film is being sacked, expect this to be more the next Next than a stylish little crime drama. You might or might not be inclined to call it their American debut – officially, that'd be the very poor 2007 Messengers, but since they were replaced with Eduardo Rodriguez for reshoots, it's not a fair approximation of their abilities. One would hope.

Legion of Legends

The #1 movie of the weekend, come Monday, will have been I Am Legend, the third adaptation of Richard Matheson's 1954 last-man-alive novel.

Or should that be the third major adaptation? It's been chronologically bumped to #4 by a likely culprit. Putting aside Soy Leyenda, a 15-minute Spanish adaptation from 1967, it's been almost a month since those rascals over at shyster studio The Asylum beat Will Smith to the punch with their direct-to-video entry I Am Omega. Clearly, the title's a pretty workable amalgam of adaptations #2 (The Omega Man) and #4 (I Am Legend), but I'm disappointed they couldn't work #1 (The Last Man on Earth) in there somehow.

No statement on quality from me, as I haven't seen it; it's hard enough for me to muster enthusiasm for I Am Legend, since I very much enjoy both Last Man on Earth and Omega Man. I don't want to promote any stereotypes, but I will mention that it was written by a stuntman and former pro dodgeball player. He also happened to clash with I Am Omega star Mark Dacascos in Kickboxer 5: Redemption – maybe he did Dacascos a favor on set, and finally called it in?

That's overly snide; Dacascos seems pretty un-stuck-up, willing to put an honest day's sweat into anything from the lowest Codename: The Cleaner-type material to the highfalutin' genre-confounder Brotherhood of the Wolf. The son of two respected martial artists, Dacascos has legit action skills, good looks, and not-embarrassing acting skills, though come to think of it, I can't think offhand of any scene in which he's been asked to use a facial expression.

Who knows what could have become of Dacascos if his scenes hadn't been cut from Wayne Wang's Dim Sum (a career in indie film?), or if potential breakout Double Dragon hadn't been a complete and miserable failure?

3rd Eye Vision

During last week's research into the Pang Brothers' Eye series, I found some odd, mostly negative reviews of the third part of the series, nonsequentially titled The Eye 10 (sometimes The Eye: Infinity), and decided to check it out for myself. Good thing, too – the reviews don't quite do the movie justice. It's no fault of theirs, though; the movie is a jumble. It's part usual ghost story, part comedy, part Hong Kong Final Destination. A group of Hong Kong kids, on a trip to Thailand, start with the ghost stories one boring night; their Thai host brings out a book called The Ten Encounters (hence the titular 10), a primer on ghostspotting. Proceed as expected.

The methods:

1. Haunted eye transplant.
2. Attempting suicide while pregnant.
3. Playing a round of Spirit Glass (translated in the subtitles as "Witchy Board").
4. Bringing a meal for three to an intersection and tapping chopsticks on an empty bowl.
5. Playing hide and seek at midnight, holding a black cat.
6. Rubbing grave dirt on your eyes.
7. Dressing as a policeman and then skipping.
8. Opening an umbrella indoors.
9. Brushing your hair in front of a mirror at midnight.
10. Pretending to be an artichoke but punching people as they pass.
11. Bending over and looking between your legs.
12. Dressing in used formal funeral wear and taking a nap.

The keen mind will notice that #1 and #2 refer respectively to the plots of The Eye and The Eye 2, and possibly that two of these are Woody Allen jokes. The film contains numerous references to the first two Eyes, repeating in semicomic tone the elevator scene and the kid with the report card from the original, and in fact "semicomic tone" might finally be the best way to sum up The Eye 10. I like to think that Danny and Oxide intended it as a spoof, a snarky refusal to make a third Eye in the usual style (which by 2005 was fairly played out in Asian horror), or at the very least, a bored attempt to get out of the horror rut. At the same time, they stick to the ghost-story basics and their basic creepy visual style, retaining cinematographer Decha Srimantra, who shot the first two. It's certainly the scariest film I've seen that includes a breakdancing scene.

This apparent (or invented by me) distaste makes additional installments unlikely.

“If audiences like what they see, we will carry on but there is a possibility that we will be producers rather than directors,” Danny said. A remote possibility.

Bourne, again

More Nakata and Asian horror news to come, but since it's prime shopping season, a brief word on today's sequel releases for holiday shoppers. Today on DVD we get Harry Potter 5, High School Musical 2, and The Bourne Identity 3.

Not much to talk about there. Potter's next installment is well in the works, as is High School Musical 3 - but the note that interests me is on Bourne. Back when the movie was about to release, I prepared and abandoned a post about Matt Damon stating that he was well done with it and had no interest in returning to the Bourne character. This was just before the film's release, at which point it made dough (a plenty solid $69 million opening weekend on the way to over $227 domestically and nearly that much again overseas), was lauded by critics, and Damon was knighted by Forbes magazine, using a complex series of equations, as the most profitable actor in Hollywood, delivering $29 in ticket sales for every $1 you pay him. The Bourne Ultimatum has a critic-based 93% and user-based 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, not only an impressive rating, but an incredibly slight discrepancy for a modern action movie.

Perhaps swayed by the attention, somewhere along the line Damon changed his stance on returning for a fourth Bourne film. To demonstrate:

"We have ridden that horse as far as we can." Damon in Variety, 5/24/07
"It wouldn't be the worst thing" Damon in The Guardian, 8/10/07
"Matt said to me, ‘Look, you hand me a great script, I'm in.'" Producer Frank Marshall in Coming Soon, 12/06/07

There are only three proper Bourne books (the fourth and fifth, The Bourne Legacy and The Bourne Betrayal, were written by sleazemeister Eric Van Lustbader), but as all three films primarily use material from the first installment, it seems moot.

N.B.

I'm not a manga guy, but high recommendations led me to pick up the first half dozen or so installments of Death Note, a fun, sometimes clever detective story set among absurdly overachieving Japanese high schoolers. A bored god of death drops a notebook into the human world; the document allows its bearer to inscribe and thus describe the time and method of death of a given victim, provided the victim's face and name are known. The (manga's) reader is given a new rule for the book's operation at the start of certain installments, when the notebearer learns it through scientific or serendipitous method.

A high school kid (later dubbed "Kira," or the Japanese approximation of "killer") finds the note; his efforts bring him into a battle of wits with a teen supersleuth called L. Soon, the rules multiply, new death gods appear, dropping new death notes, people are trading for super-eyes, the detective enrolls in the killer's university and is revealed to be a tennis superstar, and the whole thing uzumakis rapidly out of control. It's fun, but if the pace of the first six or seven issues are any clue, it must all be an unholy mess by the end, if an enjoyable one.

Death Note has a sizable following, and last year was made into a pair of live-action films, Death Note and Death Note: The Last Name, both directed by Shusuke Kaneko. Shortly after the manga completed its serialized run (December 2003 through May 2006 ), the first film premiered in June. The second hit mere months later in November, meaning it's more properly a two-parter than a film and a sequel. Both hit #1 in Japan, with The Last Name winding up the year's #4 grosser. An anime series premiered just before The Last Name hit theaters and ran through June of this year.

In production now: a prequel, featuring the earlier days of the detective L before his foray into the world of perfect-bound supernatural murder books. Announced as L: Change the WorLd and now being referred to as The Last 21 Days of L, it'll be helmed by Hideo Nakata, the director of Ringu. After seeing the first two Death Note flicks, Nakata hoped to work with the actor who played L, and so Ken'ichi Matsuyama will return in the lead. It looks like we won't see the return of Takeshi Kaga, who played the lead cop (and, of course, father of the prime suspect) in both installments, but there're always Iron Chef reruns.

Grunion run

Hey, do you think if Alexandre Aja's upcoming Piranha remake does well, the folks in charge'll remake Piranha II?

Probably not. Like The Hills Have Eyes II (2007), it'll be Sequel to Remake and not Remake of Sequel, and blamelessly so.

A throwaway mention of Lance Henriksen yesterday, in combination with recent Piranha research, made me think a mention of his leading turn in Piranha Part II: The Spawning was due. He'd been friends with James Cameron for some time; after Piranha II, Cameron wrote The Terminator with the intent of placing Henriksen in the cyborg role. Tricia O'Neil (he'd put her on a boat again in Titanic) plays Cameron's first heroine in these pre-Ripley, pre-Brigman, pre-Connor days.

Piranha II is basically Private Resort with a few fish scenes. A medley of comic buffoons are occasionally interrupted for a gay joke or fish attack. Also, the fish can fly now.

It's mostly known for being James Cameron's first directorial effort, and while it's a pretty mediocre exercise, don't hold it against Cameron. A Dutch-financed Italian production in English, it was mostly out of Cameron's hands, and he took over mainly to get a DGA credit. He had minimal communication with the Italian-speaking crew, frequent conflicts with executive producer Ovidio Assonitis, and no control over the editing – at least until he broke into the editing room and started working on it himself at night.

New World Pictures was sold midway through the production of Piranha II, and the resulting distribution was sloppy, largely drive-ins and second-run theatres. Unlike the genetically engineered, cross-bred fish, it proved quite unable to fly.

Deader

The case studies keep coming in the week's ongoing discussion. If you're arriving via Google and not following along, the gist is that the excellent new wave of European and particularly French horror is having its talent snatched up immediately and brought to the States, and usually jumped in with a horror remake or sequel.

Exhibit J: Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, whose Inside (À l'Intérieur) opened in France in June after a strong showing at Cannes. Starring Béatrice Dalle and Alysson Paradis, reputedly gory and scary, it's made the festival rounds to great acclaim, but won't see a theatrical release here, instead hitting DVD in early March.

Would have liked to see it a bit sooner, not only because of the good word but to fit in with a current moment of pregnancy-anxiety films: both Jason Reitman's interestingly cast Juno and Cristian Mungiu's Romanian drama Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days should both be hitting scattered critical top ten lists in the next few weeks. Four Months will see a limited release in about six weeks; Juno opened yesterday in limited release and has good word-of-mouth potential - the timing's good, with Michael Cera showing up again in theatres just as Superbad hits DVD.

If anyone's paying attention to the zeitgeist, it couldn't hurt to rush post-production on that mysterious It's Alive remake, which was supposedly shot nearly a year ago. Poster art surfaced, but as it indicates a February 2007 release date, it might not be bankable.

Bustillo and Maury get a higher-profile start than, say, Eric Valette's work on the One Missed Call remake. They'll be handling Hellraiser, a relaunch of the longstanding horror series, which kicked off in 1987 with an interesting start and, by most accounts, made it about one more worthwhile film into the series before devolving into straight-to-video work with #5: Hellraiser: Inferno, on the way to a well-padded eight installments featuring subtitles such as Deader and Hellseeker.

The series has stagnated, to say the least. The latest entry, 2005's Hellraiser: Hellworld, features Doug Bradley's iconic Pinhead character showing up to inflict otherworldly torments on a bunch of computer hackers. Speaking of showing up, hey, Lance Henriksen, thanks. In any case, when your two-decade horror franchise is taking thematic hints from Fear Dot Com, it's time to call it a day. Alternately, reboots are the order of the day, so look for Hellraiser in 2009. Bustillo and Maury are calling their approach different and new: Bustillo offers familiar, famous last words: "It will not be a remake."

Xasthurating

After mentioning (yesterday's post) Eric Valette's Maléfique being his ticket to The Show, I considered checking it out on DVD, but there's no U.S. release yet. Presumably this will be remedied when the remake comes along in 2009.

By then, it probably won't resemble itself too much. I can see some changes to the premise – four criminals locked in a cell find a book of black magic and use it to escape? Sounds a little direct-to-video for a U.S. release. In any case, it'll start with a title change. Maléfique sure doesn't work, and neither does the English translation "malefic," a direct-to-video title if I've ever heard one. Come to think of it, there was a Steve Sessions direct-to-video horror flick called Malefic, dated 2003 to Maléfique's 2002. It's about – hmm – four criminals in a cabin who find a ouija board.

The 2009 release is in early stages, with a script by John Pogue, whose was writing the universally respected Rollerball remake when Valette was making Maléfique. No director or cast, though T.I. – sorry, I guess that's "Tip Harris" since American Gangster – is rumored to star. One can only hope!

Do Not Call list

I didn't bother with the poster for the new Eye remake on the last post, because it's dull. Might as well throw it at the bottom of this entry, if only to put it eye-to-eye with another creepy ocular one-sheet, for the upcoming remake of One Missed Call.

The original (Chakushin Ari) is a fairly straight-ahead entry from Takashi Miike, both in comparison to his wild directorial ways and in terms of its place within the genre. 2003 is a little late to be relevant in the category of Japanese ghost thrillers, and especially the subset of these dealing with Japan's technophobia. Anyone who's been on a Japanese train (and probably those who haven't) might have told you that a cell-phone-based horror film was only a matter of time, but after such flagship subgenre entries as The Ring (Ringu) and Pulse (Kairo), One Missed Call adds little but a particular technological specificity. Even that touch is too little, too late – Ahn Byeong-ki beat Miike to the punch with his own haunted-cell flick, 2002's Phone.

Lateness to the party notwithstanding, One Missed Call did pretty fair business, spawning a ten-episode television show, two sequels (One Missed Call 2 and One Missed Call: Final [more series should name an entry 'Final,' though I guess it didn't work for The Final Chapter, The Final Nightmare, etc. – maybe we can get Final Destination: The Final Destination?]), and a minor craze for the melodic little ringtone bearing bad news. Even today, the IMDb board has numerous threads asking for or supplying the tone; I count eight distinct threads posted in 2007 alone.

Is it too late to invest in whatever company's supplying the ringtone for the U.S. version? On second thought, perhaps it's not wise to expect a particularly high demand – we can expect One Missed Call (in Australia, revealingly titled Don't Pick Up the Cell Phone!) to debut to some tepid reviews and box office in early January. The new version stars Ed Burns, Shannyn Sossamon, and Azura Skye. Margaret Cho is cast as "Detective," so we'll see how that goes.

Director is Eric Valette, another name to add to last week's post about French directors imported to make U.S. projects after a single feature film – in Valette's case, the 2002 thriller Maléfique. Once again, his on-the-job training is a horror remake. Sorry about the inauspicious introduction, M. Valette; hopefully your next project will have a little more to offer you.

Even if it turns out to be an adaptation of a 1990s video game series called Clock Tower.