Christopher Nolan may have lit up a black hole in Interstellar, but Ridley Scott makes our own backyard look absolutely wonderful with how beautifully he shot everything.
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The movie has a tremendous potential to retain in the memory of audience. And it seems – with a few major exceptions – to be working. The current mark to beat for best October opening is $55.6 million, which was earned by fellow space epic Gravity.
Coming in second place is “Hotel Transylvania 2″.
This was really one of those weekends where it wasn’t “what would top the box office?” but “how much would it earn?”
The Martian’s Jessica Chastain has admitted that filming in a spacesuit is more hard than you’d think. It also opened 16 percent ahead of the 47.51 million dollars debut of last year’s space film “Interstellar“. “If I then follow that up with a guy stranded on a planet …” “Gravity” shared “The Martian“‘s high-end sci-fi appeal. An idea, as they say, is the most resilient parasite.
That being said, I went in with high expectations. Audience acclaim was high, with an A CinemaScore. Here’s my review of “The Martian“. Remember, there could be sentiment for a Ridley Scott career win.
Damon (who spoke in a recent interview before comments he made about diversity and sexuality drew criticism) took a year and a half off from acting while his family (he has four daughters with wife Luciana Barroso) moved to Los Angeles. Nice territory to be in.
Luckily, the film’s director was on hand to provide reassurance. It was only later that, at the request of his fans, he released an Amazon Kindle edition that went on to sell 35,000 copies in three months and that’s how The Martian eventually caught the attention of publishers.
“Sicario“, a gritty drug war thriller, fared better.
Furfaro also hopes to optimize the greenhouses and crops so they grow as efficiently as possible.
Which brings us to Robert Zemeckis’ “The Walk“. Despite opening in only 448 theaters, Walk’s per theater average was actually lower than Sicario’s after it expanded. The fact that Watney can joke after almost blowing himself up makes the scenes where things turn bleak weigh much more heavily because this character obviously does not despair easily.
But why? There’s certainly no scientific reason to reach such a conclusion.
Perhaps Sony, seeing the technical skill that helped make “Gravity” a phenomenon, thought that such aspirations would stand out in a more limited opening run, and that it would lead to great word-of-mouth and enhance the rest of the dates, including upcoming non-IMAX 3D ones.
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Why did “The Walk” open with about half its predicted take? Whether The Martian reaches Gravity’s $274 million domestic haul is anyone’s guess at this point. With films that examine the entire spectrum of humanity, Sott seems to insist that human beings are capable of both good and evil in equal capacities. The budget was $108 million. Early foreign totals now stand at $59 million. The Walk is a different beast, though – less action-oriented, and doesn’t have a previous similar IMAX release like 1998’s Everest. It has $33.2 million here and $136.5 million worldwide, and should finish with about $50 million stateside.
