I wrote this for Boxoffice.com but due to a bit of confusion, there were two
Fourth Kind pieces, and the other one was already up before they figured it out. Since it's still a perfectly good piece, I figure I'll run it here instead.
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In late September, the long-delayed independent horror film
Paranormal Activity opened in 12 theaters with a low level of buzz among genre fans. Now, in the final days before Halloween weekend, the film is riding a massive wave of fan-generated hype that's earned the $15,000 film $65.1 million in the US so far and helped it shut out the long-standing
Saw series at the box office last weekend. This week, Paramount announced that international releases are currently on the horizon, and extremely tentative plans for a sequel are being kicked around the studio.
However, at Universal, it's not the film's demonic possession plot that's sending chills down people's spines, it's the striking similarities between
Activity and their upcoming thriller
The Fourth Kind, which opens on November 5th. Both films play with the implication that the events depicted in the movies are either real or based on real events, both dabble in the characters' disbelief before building to some seriously scary phenomena (although
Fourth Kind's creeps are aliens rather than demons), and it's possible that both even contain at least a little low-quality digital-camera tripod footage (a few chunks show up in
The Fourth Kind's trailer, but it's unclear if it's actually in the movie).
It's also probably déjà vu for writer/director Olatunde Osunsanmi, whose 2005 feature directorial debut
WIthIN (aka
The Cavern) bears more than a few passing similarities to Neil Marshall's
The Descent, which was making a stir in UK theaters just over a month before Osunsanmi's cave horror premiered in Los Angeles. In both cases, his competition was a similarly untested director, leaving Universal with very few marketing hooks to hang their hat on that
Paranormal Activity hasn't already laid claim to. "I think
The Fourth Kind marketing is top notch and they're selling the movie quite well, [but] now the audience will see right through their gimmick," says Bloody-Disgusting's Brad Miska (aka Mr. Disgusting). "[And]
The Box also opens that weekend, which I expect to take a small piece of the cake."
Then again, despite movie star Milla Jovovich in the lead role,
The Fourth Kind doesn't look like the kind of epic undertaking that would break Universal or producer Gold Circle's bank; even a flop could probably be counted on to earn $5 million on opening weekend and make the rest back in home video sales and rentals. However, Universal has struggled since the beginning of summer, releasing a string of box-office disappointments that, on paper, probably read like surefire blockbusters, including the Adam Sandler/Judd Apatow collaboration
Funny People and the
Borat follow-up
Bruno. Given that Universal had a pretty good spring (bolstered by the hit reboot
Fast & Furious) and started off fall on the right foot (thanks to their stake in Tarantino's
Inglourious Basterds), the studio is no doubt hoping for at least an even theatrical return on
The Fourth Kind to make their overall 2009 performance sound merely disappointing rather than lackluster.
What that actual magic number is remains a mystery. On IMDb,
The Fourth Kind's production budget isn't listed -- perhaps a PR move on Universal's part -- but the film is being heavily advertised on The Discovery Channel between various ghost hunting and alien abduction programs, so it's clear that the studio has already sunk some money into the film. Had they not already pulled the trigger, it might not be a stretch to think Universal would have considered moving the film to January, where the extremely similar
White Noise (based on the real-life phenomenon of E.V.P.) did very well back in 2005, racking up $55.8 million against a $10 million budget, and where the studio successfully released the $16 million PG-13 horror
The Unborn earlier this year, to tune of $42.6 million.
Meanwhile, the
Paranormal Activity hype train rolls on. Ain't It Cool News founder Harry Knowles Twitters a rumor that a 17-year-old girl had a heart attack at an
Activity screening in Lowell, Massachussets, while Universal remains trapped between a rock and a hard place, unable to make a move. Even if
Paranormal's box office peters out after Halloween, Universal can only hope that audiences are still looking to be scared. Miska is optimistic. "Fans of
Paranormal will probably hate
Fourth Kind, while
Paranormal haters will find what they're looking for in
Fourth Kind," he says. "Our readers are even sick of hearing about it. All of the people who have already seen
Paranormal are excited for
Fourth Kind. I almost think it's helped them. I'm sure Universal is pissed, but I think they should be thanking the Gods of movies."
In six years it will be 2015, and while the world's geniuses are (obviously) hard at work on the flying car, the hoverboard, self-lacing Nikes, self-fitting auto-dry jackets, video waiters, Gray's Sports Almanac, thumbprint credit and identification, Jaws 5-18, timed weather, a faster justice system without any lawyers and inundating the general public with an extreme 80's fetish combined with a total lack of aesthetic taste, someone has invented an amazing Back to the Future mod for Crysis and Crysis Wars.
It's late, and I'm bored, so I'm making this post just for the hell of it, since I've been bad about updating the blog (although Matt Lingo will be posting some AFI coverage soon). For some reason, the recent DirecTV commercial featuring footage from Tommy Boy and some new material with David Spade has been getting flak for trampling on Chris Farley's legacy. I think the ads are kinda clever; they may be crassly commercial (which is probably what turns people off more than anything), but that's because they are f---ing commercials. Had the spot digitized Farley into shilling the service, then perhaps the complainers would have a case, but personally, I find it more startling to see David Spade's chin looking a shade bloated. Regardless, Spade has said he thought of it as a tribute and it was apparently Farley's family's idea in the first place, so if you hate it, I'm letting you know you're wrong.
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