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Digital
Media FX News Archives
Saturday
- May 19, 2001
- Shrek Enjoys $11.5 Million
Friday Opening!
- Can Tomb Raider
Meet Its Release Date?
- Final Fantasy Costs Square
$137 Million - Secret Project in Progress...
- News Link of the Day
- Keyboard is Closing in on the Paintbrush
Shrek Enjoys
$11.5 Million Friday Opening!
 (by
digitalmediafx.com) On Friday, Shrek grossed an impressive
$11.54 million on 3,587 screens throughout the nation, giving
the movie an average take of $3,218 per screen. While the number
is impressive, it doesn't come close to the Friday opening take
of Toy Story 2, which made $22.6 million on November 26,
1999. Shrek did, however, beat Disney's Friday opening
of Dinosaur last year (during the same time period). Dinosaur,
on Friday, May 19, 2000, made $10.66 million on its way to a $38.8
million opening weekend.
DreamWorks
has been conservative with its weekend estimates, predicting Shrek
would bring in $25 - $30 million in its first weekend. Based on
Friday's opening, the film is likely to bring in close to $40
million. DreamWorks can also celebrate the fact that Shrek
made twice as much in its Friday opening than last year's Chicken
Run, which eventually became the highest grossing non-Disney
animated film of all time.
Click
here to visit the in-depth dFX Shrek Movie Site
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 Can
Tomb Raider Meet Its Release Date?
(by digitalmediafx.com) If you read the May
15 edition of the dFX Animation and FX newsletter then
you are aware of some of the problems plaguing the Tomb Raider
movie, set to open June 15, 2001. Creative and schedule differences
between the directors/producers and composer Michael Kamen led
to Kamen being let go from the movie at the last minute, forcing
a new composer, Graeme Revell, to come on board with only 14 days
to complete 100 minutes of music.
While Revell
met the challenge (some of the music will be synthesized due to
not enough time for a full orchestra to perform it), Paramount
Pictures must still edit the score into the movie, obtain a rating
from the MPAA for the movie, duplicate the film, hold a premiere,
and mail prints to theaters in time for the June 15 launch, which
is only 21 days away.
While Paramount
Pictures appears committed to meeting the release, it is being
pushed very close to the wire and could result in a delay - one
that might actual improve the film by allowing more time to be
put into the musical score and orchestra recordings. [editorialized
comment ahead] In fact, Disney likely would be more than happy
to pay for the Tomb Raider delay in order to have June
15 to itself for Atlantis: The Lost Empire, which has the
most to lose by opening up against Tomb Raider.
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Final Fantasy
Costs Square $137 Million - Secret Project in Progress...
(by digitalmediafx.com) Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
is going to have to make a lot of money this summer to make
up for its $137 million pricetag - an amount bigger than the cost
of Shrek ($70 million) and Pearl Harbor ($135 million).
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within opens in the U.S. on
Wednesday, July 11, and should easily rule the weekend. It will,
however, face tough competition the following weekend with
Jurassic Park III and the weekend after with Planet of
the Apes.
Final Fantasy:
The Spirits Within may only be the beginning, however. Square
has been secretly working on another "movie" project
that it plans on having finished by February 2002. You heard it
here first...
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News Link
of the Day - Keyboard is Closing in on the Paintbrush
According to the St. Petersburg Times:
"There's
something creepy about Princess Fiona, the distressed damsel of
DreamWorks' animated fairy tale Shrek, opening today.
Her complexion
is supernaturally smooth, over an impossibly chiseled bone structure.
Fiona's face is barely more flexible than a mask, with eyes that
lack any spark of humanity. If not for Cameron Diaz's energetic
dubbed voice, Fiona would be little more than an agile Barbie
doll…"
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