'Massacre' bloodies box office with $29 mil.
October 20, 2003
BY CINDY PEARLMAN Advertisement
Getting in the face of Leatherface has been very, very good for Jessica Biel, who stars in the weekend's box office slayer, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." The rising star just nabbed the female lead in "Blade Trinity" starring Wesley Snipes. Biel was cast as Abigail, daughter of Kris Kristofferson's Whistler.
As for the plot, vampires might take over the Earth and Blade must stop the blood suckers from snapping up all our prime real estate. To make it even more timely, the solution might be a vampire-killing virus. Snipes says, "I never saw this film as a trilogy, but the fans seem to want it. As long as they're there, I'm going to be messing with all the blood."
ORDER ON THE SET: Forget about a mistrial. It was almost a missed opportunity. In the original script for "The Runaway Jury," Hollywood heavyweights Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman didn't even have one measly scene together. Get me re-write! The buds and onetime roommates would eventually share screen time. "We told the writer to take his time and we decided to make the shot with Gene and I together the last thing we would film," Hoffman says.
Were the vets nervous during their onscreen moment? Hoffman says, "Gene and I admitted to each other that we didn't sleep the night before our scene together. How f------ nervous were we? It was an eight-page scene and honestly we thought we weren't going to get through it." He adds, "We were terrible during the first take and what broke the ice is both of us realized how bad we were. We suddenly embraced each other and then all that intimidation stuff was gone."
BACON BITS: Let's hear it for the boy. "Mystic River" star Kevin Bacon says he won't come cheap if they want him for a cameo in the proposed "Footloose" remake. "I don't know if I'd even do a cameo," says the former dancing fool Ren. "I think it would have to be a pretty big price tag to get me interested."
Bacon does have an uncredited role as a nutcase who might be stalking Meg Ryan in the upcoming "In the Cut." Why no credit? "I kind of felt that this is a movie that's about [Ryan] and Mark Ruffalo. I felt that's the way the film should be marketed. I have only three scenes. What if one of them was taken out -- or two of them taken out and it was still [billed as] a Meg Ryan, Kevin Bacon movie. Then I'm going to look like an a------."
Big Picture News Inc.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Monday at North American theaters:
1. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre $29.1 mill.
2. Kill Bill -- Vol. 1 12.5 mill.
3. Runaway Jury 12.1 mill.
4. The School of Rock 11.3 mill.
5. Mystic River 10.36 mill.
6. Good Boy! 9 mill.
7. Intolerable Cruelty 6.9 mill.
8. Out of Time 4.1 mill.
9. Under the Tuscan Sun 3.4 mill.
10. The Rundown 2.8 mill.