TobyKeith Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Was it good acting, literary source material, or the prospect of a naked beauty that lured people to this weekend's top box office draw? With a $17,000 per-screen average, Isabel Coixet's drama Elegy easily led all comers, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. Despite Christopher Campbell's negative review, the combination of Ben Kingsley, Penélope Cruz, and a Philip Roth novel evidently proved to be irresistible. We'll see what happens when the film expands to 25 markets in two weeks.

Another film that resonated well in New York, Steven Sebring's doc Patti Smith: Dream of Life, took home $8,080 from its sole Gotham engagement, while wine lovers pushed period comedy / drama Bottle Shock to a per-screen average of $6,145 at 48 locations. The presence of Toby Keith did not scare up very many beer drinkers to come see his comedy / adventure Beer for My Horses, which opened at 91 locales to the tune of $2,483 per screen.

Among the holdovers, immigration drama Frozen River ($8,071 per screen, 7 theaters, 2nd week of release) and adult thriller Transsiberian ($5,192 per screen, 14 theaters, 4th week) did well.

Three other films expanded notably, with predictably mixed results. Wildly acclaimed doc Man on Wire stretched beyond Manhattan into 59 theaters and earned a healthy $4,576 per screen average. In its third week of release, the slick doc American Teen pushed into 76 theaters but could muster only $1,802 at each location. Its expansion will still continue into the Top 60 markets this Friday, per Variety. Period romantic drama Brideshead Revisited unwound into 349 theaters and made $3,034 per screen, giving it a total of $3.3 million in three weeks.

Look out, America: The country music stars are coming! Both Tim McGraw (Flicka) and Toby Keith (Broken Bridges) have movies coming out this fall, and Paramount Classics is planning to sell the hell out of Keith and his film. According to this morning's Variety, Paramount is teaming with Ford Trucks (which is sponsoring the whole thing), Big Screen Concerts and CMT Films for a big fancy world premiere on September 7.

For the small fee of $12.50, fans in about 100 cities (as well as soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, who one assumes will get in for free) will get to see a special screening of the film, preceded by a 30-minute feature consisting of "taped performances by Keith and his co-star Lindsey Haun" and red-carpet interviews with Keith, Kelly Preston, Willie Nelson, Burt Reynolds, as well as other cast members. (The red carpet is outside a theater in Tennessee, where I guess the movie is being show. Or maybe they're all going to see a concert -- is Madonna playing Nashville?)

While this fan-friendly premiere successfully targets Keith's current audience, one wonders how necessary it actually is -- won't his fans go see the movie, even without all these bells and whistles?