Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig's COWBOYS to Be Beaten by THE SMURFS? Box Office
Cowboys & Aliens should collect between $15-17 million on Friday for a $40-45 million weekend, according to early, rough estimates found at Deadline.com. The Hollywood Reporter, however, says that Friday figures should be close to only $13-13.5 million, which would mean about $38 million for the weekend.
Either way, if budget estimates found at Deadline are correct — we're talking $160-200 million — then DreamWorks (50% of the budget), Universal (25%) and Relativity (25%) have a major box-office disappointment in their hands. For comparison's sake, Martin Campbell-Ryan Reynolds' Green Lantern, an "underperformer" that cost $200 million, opened with $53.17m.
The Western-sci-fi mix stars Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, and Harrison Ford, who has seen better days at the box office. Iron Man's Jon Favreau directed it, while the long list of producers and executive producers includes Favreau, Ron Howard, Steven Spielberg, and Brian Grazer.
According to Deadline, more than a dozen writers messed around with the screenplay. Following arbitration by the Writers Guild, five were credited for the screenplay, two for both the screenplay and the "screen story," and one solely for the screen story, itself an adaptation of Scott Mitchell Rosenberg's Platinum Studios comic book.
Some may say that the presence of Ford, Craig, Favreau, and Spielberg at San Diego's Comic-Con last weekend was a waste of time and gas, but who knows? Perhaps without that trip to the Mexican border Cowboys & Aliens would have opened to the tune of $30 million…
Not helping matters is that Westerns aren't exactly a popular movie genre abroad. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen's True Grit, for instance, earned only 31% of its worldwide take overseas despite ten Oscar nominations, and the presence of Matt Damon and Best Actor nominee Jeff Bridges. Starring Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, 3:10 to Yuma's international box-office percentage was even lower, 23%. Paramount is distributing Cowboys & Aliens overseas.
The other two wide releases in North America this weekend are performing well. Sony Pictures' much-panned The Smurfs 3D should collect a surprising $13-13.5m on Friday and, if it continues to overperform, about $38m over the weekend. In other words, Hans Solo/Indiana Jones and James Bond may be beaten by a bunch of ugly blue toys. Directed by Raja Gosnell, The Smurfs features Neil Patrick Harris, Hank Azaria, Sofia Vergara, and the voices of Katy Perry, Jonathan Winters, Anton Yelchin, and others.
Directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, and starring Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore and Emma Stone, Warner Bros' Crazy, Stupid Love should bring in $6m on Friday and about $19m for the weekend. If estimates are correct, on one weekend Crazy, Stupid, Love will earn about nearly as much as Ficarra and Requa's troubled I Love You Phillip Morris earned during its entire worldwide run.
Last weekend's champ, Joe Johnston-Chris Evans' Captain America: The First Avenger should earn a relatively modest $25m over the weekend in case early estimates of $7.5m for Friday are correct.
Photo: Cowboys & Aliens (DreamWorks / Universal).
http://www.altfg.com/blog/movie/harriso ... ox-office/
Cowboys and Aliens news and tidbits
Moderator: Germangirl
I think this rather blinkered account is overlooking several things.....Sylvia's girl wrote:Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig's COWBOYS to Be Beaten by THE SMURFS? Box Office
Cowboys & Aliens should collect between $15-17 million on Friday for a $40-45 million weekend, according to early, rough estimates found at Deadline.com. The Hollywood Reporter, however, says that Friday figures should be close to only $13-13.5 million, which would mean about $38 million for the weekend.
Either way, if budget estimates found at Deadline are correct — we're talking $160-200 million — then DreamWorks (50% of the budget), Universal (25%) and Relativity (25%) have a major box-office disappointment in their hands. For comparison's sake, Martin Campbell-Ryan Reynolds' Green Lantern, an "underperformer" that cost $200 million, opened with $53.17m.
The Western-sci-fi mix stars Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, and Harrison Ford, who has seen better days at the box office. Iron Man's Jon Favreau directed it, while the long list of producers and executive producers includes Favreau, Ron Howard, Steven Spielberg, and Brian Grazer.
According to Deadline, more than a dozen writers messed around with the screenplay. Following arbitration by the Writers Guild, five were credited for the screenplay, two for both the screenplay and the "screen story," and one solely for the screen story, itself an adaptation of Scott Mitchell Rosenberg's Platinum Studios comic book.
Some may say that the presence of Ford, Craig, Favreau, and Spielberg at San Diego's Comic-Con last weekend was a waste of time and gas, but who knows? Perhaps without that trip to the Mexican border Cowboys & Aliens would have opened to the tune of $30 million…
Not helping matters is that Westerns aren't exactly a popular movie genre abroad. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen's True Grit, for instance, earned only 31% of its worldwide take overseas despite ten Oscar nominations, and the presence of Matt Damon and Best Actor nominee Jeff Bridges. Starring Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, 3:10 to Yuma's international box-office percentage was even lower, 23%. Paramount is distributing Cowboys & Aliens overseas.
The other two wide releases in North America this weekend are performing well. Sony Pictures' much-panned The Smurfs 3D should collect a surprising $13-13.5m on Friday and, if it continues to overperform, about $38m over the weekend. In other words, Hans Solo/Indiana Jones and James Bond may be beaten by a bunch of ugly blue toys. Directed by Raja Gosnell, The Smurfs features Neil Patrick Harris, Hank Azaria, Sofia Vergara, and the voices of Katy Perry, Jonathan Winters, Anton Yelchin, and others.
Directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, and starring Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore and Emma Stone, Warner Bros' Crazy, Stupid Love should bring in $6m on Friday and about $19m for the weekend. If estimates are correct, on one weekend Crazy, Stupid, Love will earn about nearly as much as Ficarra and Requa's troubled I Love You Phillip Morris earned during its entire worldwide run.
Last weekend's champ, Joe Johnston-Chris Evans' Captain America: The First Avenger should earn a relatively modest $25m over the weekend in case early estimates of $7.5m for Friday are correct.
Photo: Cowboys & Aliens (DreamWorks / Universal).
http://www.altfg.com/blog/movie/harriso ... ox-office/
Firstly, no matter that he is now resident overseas, England claims Daniel as their own and there is tremendous loyalty to him here; loyalty tinged with a little bit of guilt over the rough ride he was given before CR, so there is some overcompensation in the press where he is concerned....almost like a permanent apology.
Defiance did much better here than expected and the only reason FOAF didn't do better was because there was not enough Daniel in it. Word got around that he was only in sections and that put some people off.....not enough draw for people to spend hard cash on. QoS did well and was on for weeks and weeks attracting steady audiences.
Secondly, Harrison is also very popular here. The last Indi done much better here than expected and outsold other European countries per rata sales. There is a strong Star Wars fan community here in the UK who will always stand by Harrison.
The combination of the two sets of loyalties will make a difference I think. I have friends who are strictly Sci-Fi geeks and they turned their noses up at the idea of Daniel in it, but were more disposed to the idea of C&A knowing Harrison is in it. His kudos still stands strong - - despite the rather nasty comment in the piece about his declining box office draw!
I was beginning to get a little bit nervous at the lack of adverts - until yesterday! Standing at the bus stop, I looked up at a bus-height advert of Daniel in all his glory, plastered on the side of a London double-decker. That kind of advertising costs big bucks but it works. I took note on the way to work and back and watched other people when a bus passed with Daniel on it. People were looking. You can bet that the premiere will hit the headlines, especially the O2 thing.
As for cowboy films not being popular overseas......not true I think. There were other reasons why True Grit did not do well and the main one is the lingering affection here for John Wayne and the fact that as a nation, we tend to like to leave "the classics" alone, as in Daniel saying he would never re-make Bullitt because "you don't tamper with perfection".
Anyway. Bottom line is I think C&A will do fine. On top of all of the above factors, it doesn't have that much competition and those who will take their kids to see the Smurfs would not take those same kids to see C&A.
-
Elaine_Figgis
- Administrator
- Posts: 7195
- Joined: Sat Jun 16, 2007 7:27 pm
There is a reviewer on a NY tv station that I pay attention to, not blindly of course since we often disagree, but I respect his opinion. I've been waiting for his take on C&A, since he really didn't like QoS, so I was interested.
Well, he loved it and couldn't stop smiling during this mornings report of the Friday box office. Couldn't say enough nice things about the movie in general, and the performances in particular.
Well, he loved it and couldn't stop smiling during this mornings report of the Friday box office. Couldn't say enough nice things about the movie in general, and the performances in particular.
Crazy!
-
Sylvia's girl
- Posts: 11961
- Joined: Thu Oct 08, 2009 11:57 am
Great article and a nice pic
Daniel Craig on quick crosswords and Cowboys & Aliens, taste and Twitter
He’s recently married, arguably our greatest Bond, and a bona fide British movie star. So has Daniel Craig, once famed for his chippiness, mellowed? Only if you don’t mention the internet...
Daniel Craig is attempting to crack the last clue in a quick crossword: “something that’s supposed to bring luck, -A-C-T.
“Locket?” he ponders, those famous ice-blue eyes narrowing in rumination. “That doesn’t fit, and it’s only because I’m thinking of ‘bracelet’, as in ‘charm’.” He tosses the newspaper aside. “Leave it there and it might come to me if I don’t think about it.”
Is he a quick or a cryptic man? “Quick,” he says. “I’m instinctive. I don’t really go in for contemplation.” Those who’ve followed Craig’s career, from his 1996 breakthrough as the spiky Geordie in Our Friends in the North, to his triumphs as James Bond and beyond, will recognise the veracity of that statement. Craig’s quicksilver, mercurial acting style – the panoply of emotions running across his rough-hewn, often flinty face subverted by the glacial cool of his stare – has made him a bona fide British movie star, possibly the biggest there is.
Which, as it turns out, was always Craig’s ambition: “My mum used to take me to the cinema, and I thought, ‘Hell yeah, it would be great to be up there on that huge screen,’” he says, going somewhat misty-eyed at the memory. “Of course, as a working-class kid growing up in West Kirby, I had no idea how I’d get there. Maybe that’s part of the reason that it’s taken me 20 years.”
Craig arrived at the top of the tree via a fairly classic route – joining the National Youth Theatre at 16, going on to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where Ewan McGregor and Joseph Fiennes were among his peers. But self-deprecation is one of his defining traits (“I’m deeply English in that way”), along with a breezy affability and a freewheeling, discursive conversational mien that alights on such topics as Charlie Sheen (“I have no understanding of that situation whatever, especially why he insists on playing it out, seemingly in real time, on TV and on every other platform available to him,” he says, shaking his head), to the musical The Book of Mormon, which he’s just seen on Broadway (“It was great, and I hate musicals generally.”)
One thing he doesn’t – has tried never to – talk about is his private life, and his recent and very low-key marriage to actress and old friend Rachel Weisz. The pair star together in the forthcoming thriller Dream House, and it was reported that they tied the knot in New York state in June before a quartet of witnesses, including Craig’s teenage daughter Ella (from his first marriage, to actress Fiona Loudon) and Weisz’s five-year-old son. A terse confirmation from Craig’s publicist has been the sum total of subsequent elaboration, and Craig’s not about to add to that today.
In the past, any line of questioning encroaching on the personal, from former squeezes (Kate Moss, Sienna Miller) to where he lives (London, but mostly out of a suitcase) has led to grumpy stand-offs and bolstered a “difficult” reputation. He’s also been known to evince a chippy defensiveness that peaked when he was cast as Bond, in the face of a vitriolic internet campaign that pegged him as too blond, too short (5ft 11in), and too old (he’s now 43) to be worthy of assuming the mantle. Two films and $1.1  billion in box-office receipts later, he’s been more than vindicated.
“My only mission, going into it, was not to mess the franchise up, and I think we’ve got beyond that now,” he grins. His off-the-Bond-leash ease is reflected in everything from his face (candid, engaged) to his attire (blue shirt and jeans, the antithesis of regulation ramrod Bond tailoring). “There was all the initial mayhem around the time Casino Royale came out in 2006,” he says, “which I found very confusing and led me to ask what-now kind of questions. I think, five years down the line, I’ve got things in order, in perspective, in my head. One thing I learnt quickly? Success doesn’t automatically confer you with impeccable taste. I still have to read scripts and think to myself, ‘Is this good or not?’”
There is one difference, however, he adds wryly: “I’ve got a few more people around me now to give me advice.” The Craig Commission will have been heavily occupied of late; if all his projected trilogies and follow-ups come off, he should be in gainful employment till around 2020. He brushes off his involvement in Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming Tintin saga – “I’m only Red Rackham in that” – and expresses doubt in the feasibility of further Philip Pullman adaptations, after the anti-Christian allegories of The Golden Compass predictably failed to “take” in the United States. But that still leaves Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy; Craig has taken a break from playing Mikael Blomkvist in David Fincher’s version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo for this interview.
“And before you ask, no, I haven’t seen the Swedish movies,” he says. “We’re calling our one – how did the Coen Brothers describe their True Grit? – a reboot, that’s it. David Fincher is one of my all-time favourite directors, and working with him has not been a disappointment.” Looming on the horizon – after the enforced hiatus occasioned by MGM’s bankruptcy declaration – is the 23rd Bond movie, to be directed by Sam Mendes. Before all that, there’s the small matter of Cowboys & Aliens. “My motivation for this one?” he grins. “Well, I get to play a cowboy. Then, I get to play a cowboy who battles aliens.” He’s beaming like a lottery winner now. “Isn’t that the definition of a no-brainer?”
Indeed, Cowboys & Aliens’ genre mash-up bodes well for its ambition to be one of the summer’s all-conquering event/popcorn/marquee movies. In 1870s Arizona Territory, a stranger (Craig) awakes with no memory of his past and stumbles into the town of Absolution, tyrannised by the sulphurous Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), where he’s regarded with fear and loathing. But pretty soon the town is experiencing malevolent extraterrestrial visitations and, as the stranger’s memory gradually returns, he realises that the natty metal bracelet he’s sporting could give the hapless settlers a fighting chance. The director, Jon Favreau, blends the requisite action set pieces (not unknowing; the ETs capture their abductees with distinctly lariat-like cables) with street-smart dialogue; a mix he’s previously honed in his Iron Man movies. Craig, for his part, name checks Sergio Leone and Steven Spielberg (an executive producer) while expressing the fervent wish that C&A (as people probably won’t refer to it) will scare the life out of people.
“I’m a great fan of popcorn movies when they’re done right, and it’s hard to get them right,” he says, leaning forward in his chair. “With this, we looked at The Searchers and Close Encounters – classic, serious films from both genres, because we wanted to get the feel absolutely right, and fill the scenario with real characters – well, as real as you can make them in a film called Cowboys & Aliens – so that you’re really invested in them when the s--- starts hitting the fan. I love the slow build of films like Alien and The Thing, and you need confidence in your film-making to pull that off – not to break out your entire bag of tricks from the first minute, or treat everything with a geek-boy nod and wink. I hope we’ve done something properly intelligent and thrilling.”
Initial plans to release the movie in 3D foundered, a development Craig welcomes. “It’s actually shot in – what do you call it?– anamorphic, which means the frame’s stretched,” he says. “There’s a lot of stuff to look at, whereas with 3D you’re forced to focus on the bullet or the butterfly or whatever it is that’s about to fly into your lap.” He grimaces. “I’m not sure that 3D’s the future. It’s so hard to make a good live-action 3D movie. Maybe James Cameron’s the only one that can bring it off. What’s that Disney 3D thing that’s just totally bombed? Mars Needs Moms or something? Perhaps that’ll be the death knell.”
There were rumours that Craig was a last-minute C&A substitute for Robert Downey Jnr, Favreau’s Iron Man co-conspirator, who decamped to Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes sequel. Craig puts a Bond-style diplomatic gloss on things. “I don’t know what the score was,” he says. “I know that the writers sent me the script, and I read it and thought, ‘I’d like to see this’, and I also knew they were serious film-makers so there’d be some weight behind it.” The movie also affords him numerous chances to perfect his intense, thousand-yard stare. “Yeah, right,” he grins. “You know what I’m thinking in those long close-ups, and what I guarantee most other actors are thinking? ‘What’s for lunch? Do I fancy the chicken or the beef?’.”
The quotidian turn in proceedings prompts a query as to whether Craig is on Facebook. “No, I am bloody not,” he says vehemently. “And I’m not on Twitter either. They’ve proved pretty useful in Egypt and they might yet prove useful in Iran, but here? ‘Woke up this morning, had an egg’? What relevance is that to anyone?” He’s building up a head of steam now. “Social networking? Just call each other up and go to the pub and have a drink. There’s some talk of a new class-system paradigm – that, in future, the world will be divided between those who ‘get’ social networking and those who don’t. I’m really not bothered. But I hope the generations to come learn to be a little bit cynical and learn how to mess it up a bit.”
Perhaps Craig’s antipathy to social networking is fostered by his need to “shut out enormous amounts of crap” that get posted, texted and Tweeted about him. “Put it this way,” he says, gripping the arms of his chair, “I still get a big kick out of acting, but the other extraneous stuff was never important to me. It wasn’t even a consideration. But, having said that,” he grins, “the truth is that I mistakenly go online occasionally and Google my name.” He shakes his head. “I know. It’s worse than smoking crack. And, oh man, the hating on the internet. Maureen Dowd wrote a good piece about this in The New York Times; no one’s going to question the prudence of it, because of the comment-is-free lobby ensuring that the internet is only tokenly policed, but, if you actually read some of this stuff, it’s like there’s a bunch of sociopaths out there who want to go out and rip you to pieces. It feels like that’s the norm, that the internet has licensed this vitriol. I think there needs to be a big debate about it, some kind of research done into how it affects our actual relations with others.” He pauses, and sighs. “I mean, if people are dealing with their lives by hating, that’s a problem, isn’t it?”
He says that it was the sure knowledge that the gossip/rumour/scrutiny ante would be quantumly upped that gave him the most pause before signing on as Bond. “But you can’t be scared off by it,” he says flatly. “That would be the wrong decision.” He’d previously been known for edgier, outre roles – the sadomasochistic lover of Francis Bacon in 1998’s Love is the Devil, the psychotic gangster in 2002’s Road To Perdition (also directed by Mendes) – so was he afraid Bond would box him in? “Definitely, but that’s also no reason not to do it,” he says. “Plus, I have no responsibility to the part outside of the films. I’m not trying to be a rebel about it, but when I’m not doing it, I’m simply not doing it.”
After a period of not doing it, Craig will soon be doing it again – a prospect he’s genuinely excited by: “The hiatus may prove to be a good thing, because I’m itching to have another crack at it, particularly after Quantum of Solace. We had to cobble that one together because it was made in the midst of the writers’ strike, and it had an effect on the finished product, no doubt.
“With this one, the right things are in place – Sam’s on board and we have the bones of a really good script.”
Will he be doing more after that? “I think so,” he says, somewhat guardedly. He doesn’t know? “I take it one job at a time. Put it this way, if we mess it up, I won’t be asked to do another. The contract goes both ways. I can walk away from it or they can sack me.”
One gets the impression, from the insouciance with which he states this, that Craig retains more than a tad of the contrarian punk attitude he absorbed when growing up in the political ferment of Eighties Liverpool (“I was a little too late for the Pistols and Clash,” he says, ruefully), and which is embodied in director friends like John Maybury (who made Love is the Devil) and Baillie Walsh (who directed Craig in Flashbacks of a Fool, where he played a washed-up, coked-up Hollywood star). His heroes are politically engaged mavericks like the veteran Middle East reporter Robert Fisk, and he worries for the souls of today’s youth or, more specifically, that doggedly apolitical branch of today’s youth who’d rather Tweet about having a sandwich than storm any putative barricades or even “mess it up a bit”.
“There’s very little sense of mixing things up, of sticking your neck out, even of the joy in getting up to mischief,” he laments. It’s something Craig intends to continue doing, even from his current rarefied vantage point. On the way out, he picks the paper back up, and claps his hand to his forehead. “Mascot,” he says. “See? Instinct always comes through for you in the end.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/8667 ... itter.html
Daniel Craig on quick crosswords and Cowboys & Aliens, taste and Twitter
He’s recently married, arguably our greatest Bond, and a bona fide British movie star. So has Daniel Craig, once famed for his chippiness, mellowed? Only if you don’t mention the internet...
Daniel Craig is attempting to crack the last clue in a quick crossword: “something that’s supposed to bring luck, -A-C-T.
“Locket?” he ponders, those famous ice-blue eyes narrowing in rumination. “That doesn’t fit, and it’s only because I’m thinking of ‘bracelet’, as in ‘charm’.” He tosses the newspaper aside. “Leave it there and it might come to me if I don’t think about it.”
Is he a quick or a cryptic man? “Quick,” he says. “I’m instinctive. I don’t really go in for contemplation.” Those who’ve followed Craig’s career, from his 1996 breakthrough as the spiky Geordie in Our Friends in the North, to his triumphs as James Bond and beyond, will recognise the veracity of that statement. Craig’s quicksilver, mercurial acting style – the panoply of emotions running across his rough-hewn, often flinty face subverted by the glacial cool of his stare – has made him a bona fide British movie star, possibly the biggest there is.
Which, as it turns out, was always Craig’s ambition: “My mum used to take me to the cinema, and I thought, ‘Hell yeah, it would be great to be up there on that huge screen,’” he says, going somewhat misty-eyed at the memory. “Of course, as a working-class kid growing up in West Kirby, I had no idea how I’d get there. Maybe that’s part of the reason that it’s taken me 20 years.”
Craig arrived at the top of the tree via a fairly classic route – joining the National Youth Theatre at 16, going on to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where Ewan McGregor and Joseph Fiennes were among his peers. But self-deprecation is one of his defining traits (“I’m deeply English in that way”), along with a breezy affability and a freewheeling, discursive conversational mien that alights on such topics as Charlie Sheen (“I have no understanding of that situation whatever, especially why he insists on playing it out, seemingly in real time, on TV and on every other platform available to him,” he says, shaking his head), to the musical The Book of Mormon, which he’s just seen on Broadway (“It was great, and I hate musicals generally.”)
One thing he doesn’t – has tried never to – talk about is his private life, and his recent and very low-key marriage to actress and old friend Rachel Weisz. The pair star together in the forthcoming thriller Dream House, and it was reported that they tied the knot in New York state in June before a quartet of witnesses, including Craig’s teenage daughter Ella (from his first marriage, to actress Fiona Loudon) and Weisz’s five-year-old son. A terse confirmation from Craig’s publicist has been the sum total of subsequent elaboration, and Craig’s not about to add to that today.
In the past, any line of questioning encroaching on the personal, from former squeezes (Kate Moss, Sienna Miller) to where he lives (London, but mostly out of a suitcase) has led to grumpy stand-offs and bolstered a “difficult” reputation. He’s also been known to evince a chippy defensiveness that peaked when he was cast as Bond, in the face of a vitriolic internet campaign that pegged him as too blond, too short (5ft 11in), and too old (he’s now 43) to be worthy of assuming the mantle. Two films and $1.1  billion in box-office receipts later, he’s been more than vindicated.
“My only mission, going into it, was not to mess the franchise up, and I think we’ve got beyond that now,” he grins. His off-the-Bond-leash ease is reflected in everything from his face (candid, engaged) to his attire (blue shirt and jeans, the antithesis of regulation ramrod Bond tailoring). “There was all the initial mayhem around the time Casino Royale came out in 2006,” he says, “which I found very confusing and led me to ask what-now kind of questions. I think, five years down the line, I’ve got things in order, in perspective, in my head. One thing I learnt quickly? Success doesn’t automatically confer you with impeccable taste. I still have to read scripts and think to myself, ‘Is this good or not?’”
There is one difference, however, he adds wryly: “I’ve got a few more people around me now to give me advice.” The Craig Commission will have been heavily occupied of late; if all his projected trilogies and follow-ups come off, he should be in gainful employment till around 2020. He brushes off his involvement in Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming Tintin saga – “I’m only Red Rackham in that” – and expresses doubt in the feasibility of further Philip Pullman adaptations, after the anti-Christian allegories of The Golden Compass predictably failed to “take” in the United States. But that still leaves Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy; Craig has taken a break from playing Mikael Blomkvist in David Fincher’s version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo for this interview.
“And before you ask, no, I haven’t seen the Swedish movies,” he says. “We’re calling our one – how did the Coen Brothers describe their True Grit? – a reboot, that’s it. David Fincher is one of my all-time favourite directors, and working with him has not been a disappointment.” Looming on the horizon – after the enforced hiatus occasioned by MGM’s bankruptcy declaration – is the 23rd Bond movie, to be directed by Sam Mendes. Before all that, there’s the small matter of Cowboys & Aliens. “My motivation for this one?” he grins. “Well, I get to play a cowboy. Then, I get to play a cowboy who battles aliens.” He’s beaming like a lottery winner now. “Isn’t that the definition of a no-brainer?”
Indeed, Cowboys & Aliens’ genre mash-up bodes well for its ambition to be one of the summer’s all-conquering event/popcorn/marquee movies. In 1870s Arizona Territory, a stranger (Craig) awakes with no memory of his past and stumbles into the town of Absolution, tyrannised by the sulphurous Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), where he’s regarded with fear and loathing. But pretty soon the town is experiencing malevolent extraterrestrial visitations and, as the stranger’s memory gradually returns, he realises that the natty metal bracelet he’s sporting could give the hapless settlers a fighting chance. The director, Jon Favreau, blends the requisite action set pieces (not unknowing; the ETs capture their abductees with distinctly lariat-like cables) with street-smart dialogue; a mix he’s previously honed in his Iron Man movies. Craig, for his part, name checks Sergio Leone and Steven Spielberg (an executive producer) while expressing the fervent wish that C&A (as people probably won’t refer to it) will scare the life out of people.
“I’m a great fan of popcorn movies when they’re done right, and it’s hard to get them right,” he says, leaning forward in his chair. “With this, we looked at The Searchers and Close Encounters – classic, serious films from both genres, because we wanted to get the feel absolutely right, and fill the scenario with real characters – well, as real as you can make them in a film called Cowboys & Aliens – so that you’re really invested in them when the s--- starts hitting the fan. I love the slow build of films like Alien and The Thing, and you need confidence in your film-making to pull that off – not to break out your entire bag of tricks from the first minute, or treat everything with a geek-boy nod and wink. I hope we’ve done something properly intelligent and thrilling.”
Initial plans to release the movie in 3D foundered, a development Craig welcomes. “It’s actually shot in – what do you call it?– anamorphic, which means the frame’s stretched,” he says. “There’s a lot of stuff to look at, whereas with 3D you’re forced to focus on the bullet or the butterfly or whatever it is that’s about to fly into your lap.” He grimaces. “I’m not sure that 3D’s the future. It’s so hard to make a good live-action 3D movie. Maybe James Cameron’s the only one that can bring it off. What’s that Disney 3D thing that’s just totally bombed? Mars Needs Moms or something? Perhaps that’ll be the death knell.”
There were rumours that Craig was a last-minute C&A substitute for Robert Downey Jnr, Favreau’s Iron Man co-conspirator, who decamped to Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes sequel. Craig puts a Bond-style diplomatic gloss on things. “I don’t know what the score was,” he says. “I know that the writers sent me the script, and I read it and thought, ‘I’d like to see this’, and I also knew they were serious film-makers so there’d be some weight behind it.” The movie also affords him numerous chances to perfect his intense, thousand-yard stare. “Yeah, right,” he grins. “You know what I’m thinking in those long close-ups, and what I guarantee most other actors are thinking? ‘What’s for lunch? Do I fancy the chicken or the beef?’.”
The quotidian turn in proceedings prompts a query as to whether Craig is on Facebook. “No, I am bloody not,” he says vehemently. “And I’m not on Twitter either. They’ve proved pretty useful in Egypt and they might yet prove useful in Iran, but here? ‘Woke up this morning, had an egg’? What relevance is that to anyone?” He’s building up a head of steam now. “Social networking? Just call each other up and go to the pub and have a drink. There’s some talk of a new class-system paradigm – that, in future, the world will be divided between those who ‘get’ social networking and those who don’t. I’m really not bothered. But I hope the generations to come learn to be a little bit cynical and learn how to mess it up a bit.”
Perhaps Craig’s antipathy to social networking is fostered by his need to “shut out enormous amounts of crap” that get posted, texted and Tweeted about him. “Put it this way,” he says, gripping the arms of his chair, “I still get a big kick out of acting, but the other extraneous stuff was never important to me. It wasn’t even a consideration. But, having said that,” he grins, “the truth is that I mistakenly go online occasionally and Google my name.” He shakes his head. “I know. It’s worse than smoking crack. And, oh man, the hating on the internet. Maureen Dowd wrote a good piece about this in The New York Times; no one’s going to question the prudence of it, because of the comment-is-free lobby ensuring that the internet is only tokenly policed, but, if you actually read some of this stuff, it’s like there’s a bunch of sociopaths out there who want to go out and rip you to pieces. It feels like that’s the norm, that the internet has licensed this vitriol. I think there needs to be a big debate about it, some kind of research done into how it affects our actual relations with others.” He pauses, and sighs. “I mean, if people are dealing with their lives by hating, that’s a problem, isn’t it?”
He says that it was the sure knowledge that the gossip/rumour/scrutiny ante would be quantumly upped that gave him the most pause before signing on as Bond. “But you can’t be scared off by it,” he says flatly. “That would be the wrong decision.” He’d previously been known for edgier, outre roles – the sadomasochistic lover of Francis Bacon in 1998’s Love is the Devil, the psychotic gangster in 2002’s Road To Perdition (also directed by Mendes) – so was he afraid Bond would box him in? “Definitely, but that’s also no reason not to do it,” he says. “Plus, I have no responsibility to the part outside of the films. I’m not trying to be a rebel about it, but when I’m not doing it, I’m simply not doing it.”
After a period of not doing it, Craig will soon be doing it again – a prospect he’s genuinely excited by: “The hiatus may prove to be a good thing, because I’m itching to have another crack at it, particularly after Quantum of Solace. We had to cobble that one together because it was made in the midst of the writers’ strike, and it had an effect on the finished product, no doubt.
“With this one, the right things are in place – Sam’s on board and we have the bones of a really good script.”
Will he be doing more after that? “I think so,” he says, somewhat guardedly. He doesn’t know? “I take it one job at a time. Put it this way, if we mess it up, I won’t be asked to do another. The contract goes both ways. I can walk away from it or they can sack me.”
One gets the impression, from the insouciance with which he states this, that Craig retains more than a tad of the contrarian punk attitude he absorbed when growing up in the political ferment of Eighties Liverpool (“I was a little too late for the Pistols and Clash,” he says, ruefully), and which is embodied in director friends like John Maybury (who made Love is the Devil) and Baillie Walsh (who directed Craig in Flashbacks of a Fool, where he played a washed-up, coked-up Hollywood star). His heroes are politically engaged mavericks like the veteran Middle East reporter Robert Fisk, and he worries for the souls of today’s youth or, more specifically, that doggedly apolitical branch of today’s youth who’d rather Tweet about having a sandwich than storm any putative barricades or even “mess it up a bit”.
“There’s very little sense of mixing things up, of sticking your neck out, even of the joy in getting up to mischief,” he laments. It’s something Craig intends to continue doing, even from his current rarefied vantage point. On the way out, he picks the paper back up, and claps his hand to his forehead. “Mascot,” he says. “See? Instinct always comes through for you in the end.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/8667 ... itter.html
Last edited by Sylvia's girl on Sat Jul 30, 2011 12:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
-
Sylvia's girl
- Posts: 11961
- Joined: Thu Oct 08, 2009 11:57 am
I'm pretty sure he knows about the forum, but doesn't check it out - but maybe, maybe someone close to him does...guess we'll never know, but it's quite funny to think about itDeeDee wrote:I often wonder if he or any family/friend members know of this forum and take a peek.....well, Daniel, if you ever need a pick me up, you can google your way to this forum and will certainly find a lot of love and well wishers here!!
-
Germangirl
- Moderator
- Posts: 47070
- Joined: Sun Apr 29, 2007 5:05 pm
- Location: Germany
I once send Tim Craig a link and he retweeted it instantly. they know...and obviously its liked.Hannah wrote:I'm pretty sure he knows about the forum, but doesn't check it out - but maybe, maybe someone close to him does...guess we'll never know, but it's quite funny to think about itDeeDee wrote:I often wonder if he or any family/friend members know of this forum and take a peek.....well, Daniel, if you ever need a pick me up, you can google your way to this forum and will certainly find a lot of love and well wishers here!!
The top notch acting in the Weisz/Craig/Spall 'Betrayal' is emotionally true, often v funny and its beautifully staged with filmic qualities..
I think it would be incredible if someone from his circle has not been here, if not Daniel himself.DeeDee wrote:I often wonder if he or any family/friend members know of this forum and take a peek.....well, Daniel, if you ever need a pick me up, you can google your way to this forum and will certainly find a lot of love and well wishers here!!
If he uses Google then DtD comes up third behind his entry on IMDB and Wikipedia.
On the one hand I think - as you say - he would find a "pick me up" because this place exists for everything Daniel, but on the other hand, he may well go
at some of our comments and entries!!
-
cheryl1700
- Posts: 9682
- Joined: Mon Sep 06, 2010 8:25 pm
love that interview, cheers sylvia
love the line, His off-the-Bond-leash ease, I think he has now come into his own with C&A and Tattoo, he knows now he isnt going to be another Sean Connery who couldnt get work after Bond. He knows now he will be around along time I think, either way he's already made his money. He's at the top now, only the oscar needed. He's very confident now (to me).
yep he must be blind if he doesnt know the name, dedicated to daniel when he has googled his name, thing is, he wouldnt be able to get in it without registering, which i dont think he could be bothered to do. He's already got us at fans, he just wants to know what the public in general is thinking. I dont think he will be interested in his unofficial fan site, and he certainly wouldnt authorise one. Just what i think thats all.
I would not want him to know some of our comments, no way!
love the line, His off-the-Bond-leash ease, I think he has now come into his own with C&A and Tattoo, he knows now he isnt going to be another Sean Connery who couldnt get work after Bond. He knows now he will be around along time I think, either way he's already made his money. He's at the top now, only the oscar needed. He's very confident now (to me).
yep he must be blind if he doesnt know the name, dedicated to daniel when he has googled his name, thing is, he wouldnt be able to get in it without registering, which i dont think he could be bothered to do. He's already got us at fans, he just wants to know what the public in general is thinking. I dont think he will be interested in his unofficial fan site, and he certainly wouldnt authorise one. Just what i think thats all.
I would not want him to know some of our comments, no way!
-
SmittenDramaKitten
- Posts: 9942
- Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2007 11:29 am
I hate all you State-siders! JOKE!!!!!!!!! Over the past couple of days I have been thinking 'Damn! C&A is out in America now! And I have got another 3 weeks before I can feast my eyes!' 
Honestly though, I just hope that the movie does well. 36 Million and counting! I'll be looking forward to seeing those opening weekend grosses and hoping that silly little blue men won't hog or steal the limelight from a genuinely original and exciting movie! I'm counting the hours now. Word is the movie opens in the UK on August 17 and not 19. I don't care how soon it is... make it NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
PS. Do you think Daniel really reads this website? Wouldn't even he have to register to get in? Surely, the dear moderators would know who is registered and who not, but then, pseudonyms are used. Anyway, assuming he does read... "Hello Honey!!! I Love You!!!!"
Over the past couple of days I have been thinking 'Damn! C&A is out in America now! And I have got another 3 weeks before I can feast my eyes!' Honestly though, I just hope that the movie does well. 36 Million and counting! I'll be looking forward to seeing those opening weekend grosses and hoping that silly little blue men won't hog or steal the limelight from a genuinely original and exciting movie! I'm counting the hours now. Word is the movie opens in the UK on August 17 and not 19. I don't care how soon it is... make it NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!! PS. Do you think Daniel really reads this website? Wouldn't even he have to register to get in? Surely, the dear moderators would know who is registered and who not, but then, pseudonyms are used. Anyway, assuming he does read... "Hello Honey!!! I Love You!!!!"
I completely agree with what you said here. I also think he wouldn't bother with registering. Maybe his team has access to it and they might peek in to check on things.cheryl1700 wrote:love that interview, cheers sylvia
yep he must be blind if he doesnt know the name, dedicated to daniel when he has googled his name, thing is, he wouldnt be able to get in it without registering, which i dont think he could be bothered to do. He's already got us at fans, he just wants to know what the public in general is thinking. I dont think he will be interested in his unofficial fan site, and he certainly wouldnt authorise one. Just what i think thats all.
I would not want him to know some of our comments, no way!
But him personally somehow I don't see it.
My thought exactly about him reading our comments. On one hand I think it would be nice for him to get the positive vibe from here but on the other I wouldn't want to him to sequester us as a bunch of losers mooning over him , particularly seeing his reaction in interviews when posed with questions about his appeal to women