Upon hearing the delay of Jurassic Park 4, Sony leaped at the chance to take the vacated weekend for an R-comedy. The studio has placed the much-anticipated sequel to 21 Jump Street on June 13, 2014, one week after its original date. The Channing Tatum-Jonah Hill joint is presumed to be a pretty major release, taking advantage of a summer slot compared to the low-key March bow of its predecessor. Even so, the $42 million production went on to make over $200 million worldwide with much of that coming on the domestic end.
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Our first impression is more along the lines of ’this is what The Watch should have been like,’ however, the trailer for that one was not exactly terrible either (debatable) which makes us wonder if there is any way that a great cast could be squandered once more in the R-comedy sub-genre. We are placing our bets optimistically for This is the End to succeed as Seth Rogen has proven himself a decent writer in the past. Continue Reading
Also new this week was Moviefone’s Unscripted interview with the cast which is always fun to watch. Essentially, it has Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, and Jonah Hill answering fan questions to promote their new movie. Continue Reading
Cast members include Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, and Ben Stiller. Of course, this will be the first Stiller-Vaughn effort since Dodgeball, but the movie could also be billed as Hill’s followup to 21 Jump Street which racked up over $130 million at the domestic box office earlier this year. Nonetheless, expectations are running high.
When not including Knocked Up, Jonah Hill’s current live-action film is the Greg Mottola-directed Superbad which starred the actor alongside Michael Cera and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (McLoven). The movie grossed $121.5 million domestically after opening to $33 million in 2007. While still delivering good week-to-week business, 21 Jump Street should easily top this mark as the current weekend’s weekend’s $10 million haul will place the film about $12 million shy of the actor’s career record. As many who saw the movie already know, 21 Jump Street set up a sequel at the end with the prospects of sending the duo to college, and with box office numbers like this it is an obvious no-brainer that audiences will get to see just that. Sony actually already gave the go-ahead for the second effort right after the movie debuted in theaters with Michael Bacall attached to write. The movie only cost $40 million to make so passing $100 million is just gravy in a boat that is already sailing.
Hill has never been that big a draw by himself as The Sitter managed to gross only $30 million back in December, so many are giving credit to a surging Channing Tatum. Earlier this year, Tatum just starred in The Vow opposite Rachel McAdams which was the box office star in the month of February. Quite possibly what is happening is his new-found celebrity with female moviegoers is helping to shore up the gender gap in terms of audience demographics for 21 Jump Street.
Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here and say this is automatically going to be a 9-figure movie at the box office. It could very well be thanks to the addition of Channing Tatum who is coming off the February box office hit The Vow in which the actor co-starred alongside Rachel McAdams, but any gains from that might be off-set by the perceived lack of star power from Jonah Hill. The actor’s last well received comedy paired him with Russell Brand in 2009′s Get Him to the Greek–a Judd Apatow produced film that only grossed $60 million at the domestic level. While this movie is expected to outperform that, do not be too shocked if it is just by a tad. Moving onto the specific gripes from critics, the ‘rotten’ reviews tend to all say the same thing: They did not get the humor. All of which admit the film is somewhat amusing, but none of them flat out said 21 Jump Street was garbage on wheels. Conversely, the good reviews do not shower the movie with praise. They instead harp on the feature’s surprising adequacy. This is probably the feedback that the studio wanted for 21 Jump Street though because this type of assessment often translates into positive word of mouth which could potentially drive both box office and retail revenues once the film is out of the gate. 21 Jump Street releases in theaters nationwide on Friday, March 16. |
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Last week, viewers got their
Election Day is upon us as the East Coast goes to the polls a mere eight hours from now, and what that means is that Barack Obama’s A-list supporters are going to be badgering people on Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. to go vote. Pretty much any social platform of any kind will be inundated with that stuff throughout the day as young people who tend to favor the incumbent seem to gravitate towards that type of thing. Here is a great example of what many should expect to see all through November 6th, a PSA for voting from Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Ellen Degeneres, and a whole lot more recognizable faces. 
The reviews are starting to come online for Akiva Schaffer’s The Watch as the movie is set to hit theaters less than 24 hours from now. The R-rated comedy enlists Jonah Hill, Ben Stiller, and Vince Vaughn as a neighborhood watch group that stumbles upon an alien invasion–something that is not exactly brilliant, but nothing this all-star comedy trio cannot work around. Essentially, that is the problem though. They are expected to turn garbage into gold and the critics are saying that did not happen as the movie is really your classic clock-watcher. 
The Watch is set to hit theaters nationwide in two days’ time, and The Lonely Isle’s Akiva Schaffer is looking to boost the effort by releasing a rare outtakes trailer to drum of some buzz. It is actually worth the view for those of you on the fence because the lack of red-band promotional material strips this comedy of everything that supposedly makes it good.
This week has graced us with some fairly good news for fans of Nicholas Stoller. Not only is he set to return to adult comedy mode after his work on The Muppets and its upcoming sequel, but he is also headed back to Hawaii. The Forgetting Sarah Marshall director is gearing up to write Aloha for Ben Stiller and Jonah Hill–a team that will hit the big screen for the first time next week in Akiva Schaffer’s The Watch. 
Despite the release of multiple trailers for Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, production chugs on and there is some major casting news to report today in regards to the film’s ever-changing ensemble. 
Today featured the release of the red-band trailer for Neighborhood Watch, and with it came the news that Fox has responded to the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin tragedy by changing the movie’s title. The Akiva Schaffer-directed comedy is now called The Watch which might be best considering the alternative was to delay the release, missing the summer movie season.
It bears mentioning that earlier this weekend the Jonah Hill comedy 21 Jump Street passed the $100 million mark–a key milestone for comedies. For those not familiar with the movie, it pits Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as undercover cops at a high school with the Ice Cube-given mission of bringing down a drug ring. Since opening in mid-March, it has received praise from both critics and audiences resulting in strong retention that could ultimately lead to Hill establishing a new top comedy in his career.