TRANSFORMERS SEQUEL BASHES BOX OFFICE

Ticket sales were good but far from spectacular for Tuesday’s late-night screenings of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, studio figures indicated. The movie earned $13.5 million, but only $5.5 million — 41 percent — from 3D screens, suggesting that, given premium pricing for 3D tickets, fewer than a third of moviegoers elected to see it […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON

Reviews for Transformers: Dark of the Moon read like, well, reviews for the other Transformers movies: that is, they’re replete with complaints about a senseless plot, senseless mayhem, and senselessness in general. But a couple of reviewers make the point that that’s the whole point of a Transformers movie. As Betsy Sharkey observes in her […]

TRANSFORMERS DIRECTOR BAY DEFENDS 3D FLICKS

Michael Bay has acknowledged that his film Transformers: Dark of the Moon may be facing a backlash from audiences who have become disenchanted with 3D movies in general. In an interview with USA Today, Bay said that he hopes the latest Transformers sequel will revive interest in the 3D process. “There are many movies that […]

ANALYST WARNS BOX OFFICE FOR 3D WILL CONTINUE FALLING

BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield has urged clients to sell or short shares in RealD, the company that provides 3D technology to most theaters and 3D television manufacturers. Greenfield said that he spoke last week with an executive of RealD who said that he expects 75 percent of movies in theaters will eventually be in 3D. […]

VARIETY WRITER URGES STUDIOS TO CRACK DOWN ON LAX THEATERS

David S. Cohen, who writes about the technical aspects of filmmaking for Daily Variety, claims today (Thursday) that exhibitors are in denial over what many producers and directors regard as the degradation of their work when it finally hits the screens of movie theaters. “This is ridiculous,” he quotes one exhibitor as saying in response […]

DIRECTOR BAY LOOKING TO TRANSFORM 3D

With moviegoers increasingly shunning 3D screenings — only about a third of the audiences for last weekend’s Green Lantern — opted to see it in 3D — director Michael Bay has gone on a media offensive to get out the word that the 3D they’ll get with next weekend’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon is […]

REPORT: SPIELBERG FIRED MEGAN FOX FROM TRANSFORMERS SEQUEL

Steven Spielberg fired Megan Fox from the third Transformers film after she told the British magazine Wonderland that Michael Bay behaved “like Hitler” on the set,GQ magazine reported in its current edition. Spielberg, the producer of the film — and the director of Schindler’s List, which told of one man’s resistance to Hitler — was […]