Do You Believe in Miracles?
10 Exercises to Stay Spiritually Fit
20 Scriptures That Bring Hope to Any Situation
5 Ways to Revive Your Dream!
7 Ways to Plant Seeds of Greatness in Your Life
20 Powerful Declarations to Fight Discouragement
5 Ways to Stay Healthy This Summer
5 Tips for Better Sleep
7 Top Health Issues Facing Today’s Women
Celebrities Who Won't Back Down
A Conversation with Minnesota Wild Center Matt Cullen
Yes, Gratitude Works!
10 Ways to To Handle Life Changes With Courage
The Fruits of Desire
Nurturing a Healthy Marriage
10 Ways to Get Over a Hurtful Past
Ten Things Every Dad Should Tell His Son
I hear there is some sort of sporting event going on this weekend. So it makes sense that studios decided it would not be a good time to release big-budget movies with hopes of big box office. If Sunday will be devoted to Superbowl XLII, much of the potential theater-going audience will be at home. I got that.
But I still don’t understand why that means that the studios did not let critics see three of the four new releases in time to write reviews. Movies not screened for critics are called “cold opens” because they open without any reviews, which means no exclamation-point-studded blurbs for ads. Jessica Alba has been everywhere promoting the thriller “The Eye,” but they did not show it to critics. There are ads all over television for the comedy “Strange Wilderness,” starring Steve Zahn, from Adam Sandler’s production company. But no blurbs from critics because no one has seen it. And what possible reason could there be to keep critics (except those from LA and NY) away from the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus concert film? Are they afraid we’ll give away the surprise ending? (She’s both! It’s a wig! And it’s in 3D!) Here is a clip of the concert film, which is more than critics got to see.
posted February 1, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Lately, these cold openings have hit it fairly big at the box office (“Meet the Spartans” is the latest example). Which means we’ll see more cold openings in the weeks to come.
posted February 1, 2008 at 4:05 pm
One word. Teenagers. For the most part, they support movies, and for the most part, they don’t know what is a good movie and what isn’t. Also, prices have gone up a lot, so it doesn’t take much for a movie to pull in a few million bucks.
If you ask me, there should be some type of law against “cold openings”. If a studio is dumb enough to take a script, then they should have to show it to critics, it’s that simple.