Cinematical

The Hollywood Stock Exchange provides an outlet for people to stop just talking about movies and lets them "invest" in them.  Through Movie Stocks and Star Bonds, players use virtual dollars to bet on the success (or failure) of a movie or actor. To help traverse these sometimes murky waters, Chris Thilk makes like CNBC and gives you the lowdown on what's up and down today.

Despite not yet appearing on the IMDB, this morning's big mover in movie stocks is Meet the Little Focker. Based on a Google search it looks like this title was speculatively used around the time of Meet the Fockers as a potential third entry in the series. HSX doesn't even have a valuation history on this title so I can only assume it was newly IPO'd and isn't something that has been confirmed or even rumored by the studio. The movie doesn't even appear under Ben Stiller's or Robert De Niro's Star Bond entries so this should be treated as extraordinarily tentative. Considering the Meet the Fockers did $279 million in business though, a sequel of some sort should be expected.

Despite speculation yesterday that the continued box-office success of Revenge of the Sith was contributing to the upswing in stocks for George Lucas and others, Samuel L. Jackson and Natalie Portman's bonds are now trending down, dropping 4.5 and 3 points respectively. I get Jackson's move (as I said, his next movie is a formulaic comedy with Eugene Levy) but why Portman? She's got some solid films coming up, most notably V for Vendetta. 

Most of this week's new releases, including Batman Begins, are unchanged with the exception of The Perfect Man, which is down about 2.5 points at midday. More and more people are, apparently, realizing this movie stars both Hillary Duff and Heather Locklear and jumping ship. Co-star Chris Noth's bond, though, is relatively steady, moving down today only half-a-point so investor's must feel he'll emerge unscathed. (As an aside, how long until Duff pulls a Lindsay Lohan and starts hanging out with Nicole Richie? Can I get an over/under on this?)