posted May 03, 2002 08:29 AM
From Fox News:Can Spider-Man Save Sony From Cameron Diaz?
When Spider-Man comes swinging into theaters today, he'll have his work cut out for him.
First order of business: saving Sony Pictures and, by extension, Cameron Diaz.
Diaz recently took a disastrously wrong turn in her career, and it was made for Sony. After coming off big hits like Charlie's Angels and There's Something About Mary, Diaz sold out and made the execrable non-comedy, The Sweetest Thing.
There was nothing Sweet about it. With a budget of $43 million, this piece of garbage had expenses like $1 million for a script, written on spec, by first timer Nancy Pimental. But the worst miscalculation was paying Cameron Diaz a reported $15 million to repeat her Mary character, only without any sense or sensibility.
As of yesterday, The Sweetest Thing had grossed around $22 million. On Tuesday it pulled in a paltry $230,000 on over 2,200 screens. Eighteen days have passed since it was released, and yet the Roger Kumble-directed shlockfest has never found an audience. This despite outrageous language and dirty jokes that exceed the boundaries of bad taste.
Sony is now in a position to write Sweetest Thing off and start pulling it from theaters. Spider-Man is the only thing that can save them from a dismal spring season. The studio is still reeling from Michael Mann's Ali, a bomb that cost as much as $107 million to make (not counting marketing) and took in a scary $55 million in the U.S.
But Columbia/Sony has traditionally been an up-and-down rollercoaster ride of a studio. They can go through long bleak periods but be saved by occasional, accidental hits.
Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down, for example, saw its release postponed because of September 11. Subsequently it found an audience and should do a little better than break-even with over $105 million in the till. The film's budget was estimated at $95 million.
Still, Columbia can look at decent results from Jodie Foster in The Panic Room ($90 million take on a $48 million budget), and should have good openings with Jennifer Lopez in Enough and Will Smith — returning to commercial form after Ali — with Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black 2.
And what of Spidey? Even if he's as big this weekend as I think he will be — breaking records and whatnot — there's still the issue of how much he cost to begin with. I'm told the answer is upwards of the previously announced $139 million, maybe more than halfway towards $200 million. Let the web spinning begin!