Brothers Bloom Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Though I enjoyed Todd's post, I actually don't think much of the idea that J.J. Abrams needs to go around rebooting franchises, if only due to my vain hope that some Hollywood talent might ration out a little time for some original programming rather than endless prequels, sequels and remakes. But credit where credit is due. Seven years after Star Trek hit its box-office nadir with Nemesis, Abrams' reboot opened to $72.5 million ($76.5 million including Thursday night "sneaks") -- more than twice the gross of any previous franchise entry -- and, crucially, seems to be enjoying good word-of-mouth even among non-Trekkies.

That falls shy of last weekend's $85 million opening for Wolverine, but I expect Star Trek to hold up better than the generally disliked superhero flick. Wolverine dropped nearly 70% in its second week of release, and will struggle to get to $200 million domestic. (Its drop to $27 million is actually slightly bigger, percentage-wise, than Watchmen's much-discussed deflation back in March.) On the other hand, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past held up well, as the weekend didn't bring any new anti-action counterprogramming.

Summit's Next Day Air, the only other opener, managed $4 million on just over 1000 screens, which isn't too bad -- though I'm hoping Summit can do a bit better with the difficult-to-market Brothers Bloom, opening on just a few theaters next weekend and expanding on the 22nd and 29th.

The full top 10 after the jump.

This had been hush-hush for a mild while now, but it looks like Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom has been bumped back yet again to next May. Back in September, I had mentioned that the crime caper had moved from October to a NY/LA qualifying run next week and a wide release in January. The difference between that post and this one is that I was fortunate to see the film at Fantastic Fest a couple of months back, and it was good enough to make me equally anxious to just see the film again.

Writer-director Johnson confirmed the rumor on his message board, then joking that his own December birthday had been pushed back by Summit to May, when there are less of them to contend with. All kidding aside, Bloom is now scheduled to bow in limited release on May 15th -- opposite DaVinci Code sequel Angels & Demons and Borat follow-up Bruno -- and then wide on May 29th, up against Sam Raimi's return to horror Drag Me To Hell and Pixar's anticipated-by-default Up.

It's tough competition, to be sure, but believe me (and Eugene, and James) when we say that The Brothers Bloom will be well worth the wait.

If I know our Eugene Novikov at all, his face is like mine in that it registers somewhere between the two pictured at the right when it comes to the news that The Brothers Bloom, writer-director Rian Johnson's follow-up to his nifty noir Brick, has been bumped back from October 24th (an admittedly crowded weekend) to a limited bow on December 19th, followed by a wide release on January 16th of 2009.

When the fairly reliable Box Office Mojo first mentioned the change, I balked at the thought, but now Johnson has confirmed it on his own message board, saying "There were a few reasons for the move: October and November are crowded as hell, it's a tough tough market, especially for a smart unique film like ours, and we'd have a week or two at the most to sink or swim. Whereas concentrating on a couple markets for awards consideration in December, then pushing the wide in the more open January slot just seemed like a better use of resources."

Wait -- what's that? Eugene gets to see it in a week's time up at Toronto? Excuse me, but I'm suddenly feeling much more like Bang Bang...

On the heels of some high-profile NYFF announcements, the Toronto International Film Festival has unveiled its fair share of titles scheduled to premiere there next month. According to Variety, the list includes:

• The North American premieres of Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York (pictured), which has been picked up for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics since we last heard of (still) possible trims, and Steven Soderbergh's epic Che, which remains without a distributor -- James Rocchi reviewed both films at Cannes.
  
• The world premieres of Rian Johnson's Brick follow-up, The Brothers Bloom, which looks to be a special sort of con movie, and Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno, which looks to be a special sort of, well, romantic comedy.
  
• The North American premieres of Darren Aronofsky's sports drama The Wrestler and Gavin O'Connor's oft-delayed cop drama Pride and Glory .
  
• The world premieres of Genova, Slumdog Millionaire and Me and Orson Welles, the latest from the ever-unpredictable likes of Michael Winterbottom, Danny Boyle and Richard Linklater, respectively.

Cinematical will bring you early reviews on as many of these as we can, so stay tuned. TIFF runs from September 4th through the 13th.

Over the weekend, we shared the frustratingly sparse details that have hit the web about Brothers Bloom, the next project from Brick writer-director Rian Johnson. All we knew about the film at the time was that it was a globe-trotting con-man flick which, really, is next to nothing.

Thankfully, however, the folks at CHUD just sat down with Johnson, and actually managed to get some concrete information from him about the movie. First all of, despite the very period-looking clothes depicted in the sketches on the movie's website, it is fact a modern piece. Second, the current status of the film is that Johnson is rounding up funding, and also pulling the cast together. In terms of plot, here's what the writer-director had to say: "It's about these two guys who grow up in and out of foster homes as kids and they learn to survive by becoming con men. It starts out with this ten minute sequence of them pulling their first con as kids. ... But in the rest of the movie it's them as adults." For what it's worth, Johnson described that early sequence as "very Paper Moon", and the film's general style as "[owing] more to the earlier part of the [20th] century than the later." The interview as a whole is well-worth checking out; Johnson talks in great details about things like his approach to Brothers Bloom, how he researched the script and which films most influenced the project.

Under the current schedule, the movie will shoot early next year and be released at the start of 2008.

[Thanks, Devin]

Well, this is both exciting and infuriating: An official site has popped up for a movie called The Brothers Bloom, apparently the sophomore effort from Rian Johnson, whose hard-boiled-detective-story-in-high-school debut, Brick, was praised by pretty much everyone. The new film is described on the site as "a con man movie," and the few sketches there place it firmly in the first half of the 20th century. Because the characters are wearing slouchy hats, everyone who is speculating about the film is comparing it to The Sting, which is probably setting it up for spectacular failure -- I mean, the movie could be great and still not come within shouting distance of The Sting's virtual perfection, right?

What's infuriating about the news is that the Brothers Bloom site is essentially just a riddle: It consists of three sketches, a soundtrack and a few short quotes from writers who aren't named Rian Johnson. No information on plot, release date, stars -- nothin'. The only details I can find online come from a couple of interviews Johnson gave back in April. In those conversations, he described the film as "globe-trotting," and indicated that casting was already underway. And ... that's it.

If anyone knows more, please let us know. Meanwhile, we'll all just stew in our own frustration.

[via Solace in Cinema]