UNIVERSAL REVAMPS FAST & FURIOUS FRANCHISE — WILL IT WORK?

This weekend will reveal whether Universal’s wholesale retinkering of its Fast and Furious franchise will keep it alive. Today’s (Tuesday) Los Angeles Times observed that Fast Five, which opens on Friday, will be more like Ocean’s 11 than the clandestine-racing series that has proved to be a bonanza for the studio for nearly a decade. [...]

SAW 3D CARVES $24M OUT OF BOX OFFICE

Lionsgate’s Saw franchise seemed to get a new lease on death over the weekend (even though the studio had been touting the seventh film in the franchise as the final one), reinvigorated, it would appear, by 3D. Saw 3D took in $24.2 million according to studio estimates, $10 million more than the last installment of [...]

WILL 3D BREATHE LIFE INTO SAW FRANCHISE?

3D technology will undergo another commercial test this weekend when Lionsgate’s Saw VII wages a Halloween box office battle against the second weekend of Paramount’s Paranormal Activity 2 – a purposefully low-tech, 2D affair. Several box-office analysts have observed that last year’s Saw VI left the franchise as bloodied and struggling for life as some [...]