Adam Sandler As Dracula In 'Hotel Transylvania'

Hotel Transylvania, the new animated picture from director Genndy Tartakovsky, who directed episodes for some of the greatest cartoons of my generation such as Dexter’s Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack, and Star Wars: Clone Wars, has just picked up Adam Sandler to voice the lead of the film.  

The film is about classic monsters, such as Dracula, Frankenstein and his Bride, and the Mummy, hiding out in a hotel in Transylvania because of being made completely irrelevant by technology; sounds pretty hilarious. 

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Box Office - 'Avatar' Steamrolls, '2012' Rules China

More big news for Avatar at the box office: James Cameron's flick took in just under $20 million on Monday, taking its total to $232 million in 11 days. No, it's not record-breaking (Dark Knight did three bills in ten days last year), but the film has earned twice as much in the week following its wide release as it did in its debut. A $77 million opening has been followed $155 million in the week since.

When will it slow down? Well, I think it's starting to, at least in terms of percentages. But the film still has almost two full weeks before it faces more new competition, having effectively stared Sherlock Holmes into submission. It will probably cross $300 million on Saturday, maybe Friday, and there's another full week after that for the film to really, really cash in. By the weekend of January 15th, we're almost certainly closing in on $400 million unless the bottom just drops out. It gets tougher after that, just as it did for Dark Knight and every other blockbuster released in the past decade. A lot depends on how many theaters Fox decides to keep, and then there are the massive number of movies coming out between January 15th and Valentine's Day (a baker's dozen in at least 1,000 theaters). So, mid-January to mid-February should see a noticeable drop-off, as you would expect, which is why it's so tough for anything to even dream about catching Titanic.

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Roland Emmerich Made $100 Million Off '2012'

We've been paying attention to the box office performance of 2012 ever since it was released in mid-November. I think we've probably been more aware of it than a lot of movie sites, simply because I'm intrigued by the way Sony manipulated the overseas markets, so I am perhaps less suprised than others might be by the news that director Roland Emmerich is cashing a hefty, hefty check.

The Wrap reports that because Emmerich agreed to a deal paying him an advance of $20 million as writer-producer-director against 20% of the gross, the film's $650 million-plus in worldwide ticket sales has secured him roughly $100 million. That's Michael Bay money, by the by. According to one rival studio executive who passed on the movie because of the script, "Roland’s deal was really rich. And you had to believe the film would do north of $600 million to make it worth your while.”

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Box Office - 'New Moon' Narrowly Beats 'Blind Side'

Just about any other weekend, $66 million might seem like a powerful number, but pull back a bit and you'll start to see a different kind of writing on the wall. The Twilight Saga: New Moon did win the weekend - but not by much - and that $66 million figure, a steep 64% drop from its debut stanza, is actually the five-day total. Over three days, the sequel only made $42.5 million, which reflects a 70% fall and, symmetrically, a $100 million decline from its opening weekend.

The movie has still earned $230 million in ten days, and that's plenty. But the freebies of a five-day holiday weekend are behind us, and this movie is in a real battle right now with The Blind Side, which nobody saw coming. That probably indicates a rougher road ahead for New Moon than the pic's $142 million start would indicate. Certainly, it looks close to impossible for this to push for a whole lot more than $300 million. Speaking of The Blind Side, it trounced expectations for the five-day session, trailing New Moon by only $9 million. That means outside of Wednesday, when New Moon made $14 million and change, The Blind Side played the teenage vampires about even...in 1,000 fewer theaters. That's terribly impressive. More importantly, the second weekend, five days or not, was much, much stronger than its debut, and as a result, the film has already crossed the $100 million mark.

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Box Office - '2012' Sets New Record in Russia

Only because it's been an eyebrow-raising international run, we've followed the progress of 2012 in the foreign markets for the past couple of weeks. At first it was impressive that the film made over $200 million worldwide in its debut weekend, thereby canceling out its production cost, and then the next weekend, the total gross doubled, meaning the film was very near the break-even point, including marketing and those other costs.

Yesterday, Variety provided yet another update: 2012 just set a record in Russia for a foreign feature film, hitting $30 million there in just two weeks. That's more impressive when you look at the per-screen averages, which are about $36,000, because the film was only on 840 screens. The last movie to make $30 million in Russia was the homegrown Day Watch.

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