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M O N D AY, N O V E M B E R 0 6 , 2 0 0 6Box Office Prophets -- Maybe NotBy the way, there were lots of odd comments and mistakes in theusually spot-on analysis by Box Office Prophets of the weekend boxoffice. They expect "a lot of Borat lookalikes in the months and yearsahead." What could that possibly mean, since this movie is such aone-off, unique phenomenon? How could another studio rip off theidea of "Borat?" Show an Uzbekistan reporter visiting Canada?("Jackass" was a similar oddity and you don't see the movies filled withlow-budget reality rip-offs do you?) They speculate that Fox changedthe number of venues in order to generate buzz about the movie. That'sgiving Fox way too much credit since all the buzz was negative: Fox wastelling the industry that the movie wasn't tracking, no one seemed toknow "Borat" was coming out and they were afraid it was opening ontoo many screens. Not exactly the smartest way to build positive buzzfor your movie. Now BOP thinks Fox is right to open it onto as manyscreens as possible, while I think they should keep the phenomenongoing by starting off more slowly and expanding to only, say, 1200screens instead of 2500 or BOP's 3000. They also say "Borat" is thestart of a wonderful franchise. I wonder how comic Sacha Baron Cohencould ever use Borat again now that he's famous. They'll certainly makea sequel and I suppose people could be fooled again, but I think thefuture with Borat is a more purely fictional film. But again, you canalways be surprised that seemingly omnipresent hits like Borat can stillbe under the radar for some. Still, it's not an obvious or easy franchise.Finally, they're wrong when they say FOX bought the sequel for $42.5mil. It was Universal that paid $42.5 mil for Cohen's next movie, andit's not a Borat sequel but a similar road movie starring theflamboyantly gay Bruno. Moving on, they say Martin Short hasappeared in a lot of films that should have done better at the box officeand then they list the animated movies "Treasure Planet" and "ThePrince Of Egypt," and the live action movies "Jungle2Jungle" and"Mars Attacks!" as examples. They really think those movies SHOULDhave done better?POSTED BY MICHAEL IN NEW YORK AT 9:56 AM

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