John August

News

Big Fish opens at #1

Big Fish, News, Projects

According to Sony’s figures — which agree with most of the others I’ve seen reported — BIG FISH came in at number one for the weekend, earning about $14.5 million, compared to RETURN OF THE KING’s $14.1 million.

Since it’s only now Sunday, how can studios say how much they earned for the weekend? Well, all the numbers you hear discussed are actually just estimates. Based on how well Big Fish did on Friday and Saturday, Sony makes an educated guess about how it will do today. New Line does the same for Return of the King, and so on down the list. Are these estimates accurate? Not necessarily, and there’s often grumbling that studios deliberately over-estimate in order to “win” the weekend. In the case of Big Fish and Return of the King, the movies are certainly very close, so a more conservative analyst might wait until the real box office figures come in Monday.

For today, I’ll just say we did very well — better than expected. I think the obsession with opening weekend box office figures is ultimately damaging to the film industry. All the same, for such a difficult, hard-to-peg movie, it’s nice to be #1, if only for a week.

Big Fish gets four Golden Globe nominations

Big Fish, News, Projects

On Wednesday at about 5:36 a.m. Pacific Time, we found out that BIG FISH received four Golden Globe nominations: Best Picture (Musical or Comedy), Best Supporting Actor (Albert Finney), Best Song (Pearl Jam’s “Man of the Hour”) and Best Score (Danny Elfman). We were happy. Sony was happy. The marketing people were delighted: by that evening, they’d already cut a new :30 second TV spot that trumpeted our nominations. God Bless those busy folks.

Is Big Fish a comedy? Ultimately, it was up to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association — the people who run the Golden Globes — to decide what category to put us in. It’s certainly not a comedy in the way CADDYSHACK is. But for the most part, it’s pretty funny. And it’s definitely not high drama. It gets emotional at the end, but even if you’re crying, it’s a strange kind of happy tears. So I think the “comedy” label fits as well as any other.

The awards broadcast is live on NBC: Sunday, January 25, 2004. 8.00 p.m. Eastern/5:00 p.m. Pacific.

Big Fish gets five Broadcast Film Critics Award nominations

Big Fish, News, Projects

Earlier this week, we were happy to learn that Big Fish got five Broadcast Film Critics Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director (Tim Burton), Best Writer (John), Best Song (Pearl Jam’s “Man of the Hour”) and Best Score (Danny Elfman). Although I never believe it when I hear other people say it, it’s an honor just to be nominated.

It’s a little odd that the category I’m in is called “Best Writer.” Usually, the writing awards are called “Best Screenplay.” But I guess since they give the award to a person, not a movie, it does sort of make sense.

Who knows if we’ll win any awards. One good thing is that we’ll know soon: The awards are going to be held January 10, 2004 in Beverly Hills, and broadcast live on E!. (Do you have to put a period on a sentence that ends with E!? I’ll be sure to ask.)