barnesgonzo: Identity Thief steals opportunity to top US box office in Oscar week

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Identity Thief steals opportunity to top US box office in Oscar week

Oscar weekend means a quiet week at the box office – and a chance for independent movies to take some of the limelight

Box office is usually dead in the water on Oscar weekend and this year was no exception. A particularly weak session that fell roughly 22% against the same period in 2012 enabled the Melissa McCarthy comedy Identity Thief to creep back up to number one as Summit's crime drama Snitch failed to capitalise. The latter stars Dwayne Johnson, the versatile former wrestler. The man occasionally known as the Rock plays a small business owner who cuts a deal to infiltrate a criminal organisation in order to free his son who got caught up in a drug deal.

Snitch is a classic example of how the increasingly influential independent space can make, acquire and distribute movies that, at the right time, can compete with anything the traditional studios have to offer. The movie was produced by Exclusive Media, the ambitious US-based operation led by British veterans Nigel Sinclair and Guy East. Exclusive produced the project and financed it alongside Participant Media and Imagenation, two significant funds backed by big money. Exclusive's international sales arm raised a big portion of the production costs by pre-selling international distribution rights at Cannes back in 2011, when the parent company also licensed US rights to independent powerhouse, Summit Entertainment.

The top 10 contains more independent stories. Safe Haven is released by the "independent studio" Relativity Media and would not have come to light were it not for the participation of New York-based FilmNation, which oversaw the licensing of international rights. FilmNation did the same on Steven Soderbergh's Side Effects, which is released in the US by the fledgling distributor Open Road Films. Warm Bodies is another independent production generated by the mighty sales operation run by Summit International and distributed in the US by its counterpart, Summit Entertainment. The aforementioned sales company also licensed territories on Beautiful Creatures, which Warner Bros distributes in the US.

And let's not overlook The Weinstein Company, whose far-reaching financing, production and sales nous single-handedly brought Oscar-nominated Silver Linings Playbook to life, as well as the animation Escape from Planet Earth. The Weinsteins' genre label Dimension Films was behind the weekend's new release Dark Skies, produced by genre specialist Jason Blum. All told, there are only two movies in play this weekend that hail from the traditional studios – Universal's Identity Thief and Fox's A Good Day to Die Hard.

It won't be like this in the heady summer months of blockbuster season, although don't be surprised if a few big independent movies sneak in there. Without them the US distribution landscape would look quite anaemic at a time when the major US studios are cutting back their annual distribution slates to focus on tentpoles.