W E D N E S D AY, O C TO B E R 0 4 , 2 0 0 6Martin Scorsese: Foolishly Raising ExpectationsMartin Scorsese's fun-looking gangster drama "The Departed" opensFriday.</p><p> A smart producer or studio executive would always downplayexpectations.</p><p> But what does Marty's producer Graham King tell theDaily News? That he expects the movie to open at $30 million, thatmore than $40 million would make him very happy and that he'd cry ifit made $25 million or less.</p><p> How stupid is he? Scorsese's top-grossingmovie of all time is "The Aviator," which made $102 million.</p><p> Theweekend it went wide, the movie grossed $8.6 million.</p><p> His otherrelatively big openings -- "Gangs of New York," "Casino," and "CapeFear" -- all made between $9 million and $10 million.</p><p> King has set thebar so high, he wants this movie to make more money on its openingweekend than 12 of his movies have made in their entire run.</p><p> If he wassmart, King would have said he hopes the movie makes more on itsopening weekend than Scorsese's last few movies made when they wentwide; in other words, looking for a personal best of $12-15 million.Then, when "The Departed" made more, everyone could crow abouthow much better it did.</p><p> At it's very best, "The Departed" will only(barely) reach the level King has announced as the measure of success.Dumb, dumb, dumb.NOTE: The Departed opened at $26.8 mil -- easily a career-best forScorsese -- and went on to gross $133 million in the US, $290 millionworldwide (incl US) and $140 million on DVD in the US alone, allrecords for Scorsese.EDITOR'S NOTE: I have changed the figures in my article about theopening weekend gross of The Aviator and hence the references toScorsese's personal best opening weekend.</p><p> I based my original figureson Variety but failed to note they were giving me the grosses for theentire week rather than the opening weekend.</p><p> Thus my figures werewrong as pointed out to me by someone who left a comment.</p><p> Thismakes the point of the article even greater: King idiotically called for anopening weekend gross 3 to 4 times bigger than any other Scorsesefilm.POSTED BY MICHAEL IN NEW YORK AT 4:15 PM Next Blog»sal1mineo@hotmail.comSEARCH BLOG FLAG BLOGFOLLOW BLOGP O P S U R F I N G .</p><p> C O MS U R F I N G T H E WAV E S O F P O P U L A R C U LT U R EB Y M I C H A E L G I LT Z & F R I E N D SPOPSURFING.COM: Martin Scorsese: Foolishly Raising Expec...http://popsurfing.blogspot.com/2006/10/martin-scorsese-foolishl... 1 of 37/28/09 6:07 PMFAV O R I T E L I N K SAmericablogFive O'Clock Lightning baseball blogDeep Pop -- Lori Lakin's BlogThe Back Page -- Jason Page on ESPNRadioCine-Blog -- George Robinson's BlogDocuments On Art & Cinema - DarylChin's BlogBrucie G's Wondrous Blog OfAdventure and Mystery -- BruceGreenspan's BlogB L O G A R C H I V E▼ 2009 (17)▼ July (3)1939 -- The Greatest Year ForMoviesSwimming Bans Those Hi-TechSuits!Best Movies Of The Year -- TheMaster List► June (3)► May (1)► March (2)► February (1)► January (7)► 2008 (86)► 2007 (781)► 2006 (2412)► 2005 (5)C O N T R I B U TO R SAaronBiboyMichael in New York POPSURFING.COM: Martin Scorsese: Foolishly Raising Expec...http://popsurfing.blogspot.com/2006/10/martin-scorsese-foolishl... 2 of 37/28/09 6:07 PMPOPSURFING.COM: Martin Scorsese: Foolishly Raising Expec...http://popsurfing.blogspot.com/2006/10/martin-scorsese-foolishl... 3 of 37/28/09 6:07 PM
