"Step Up" Has Hollywood Freaked Out

Posted Aug 15th 2006 12:08PM by TMZ Staff

Despite having spent much of yesterday in bed, ailing, aching and kvetching, yours truly rallied at the end of the day and went to his long-scheduled drinks meeting with a one of his favorite Hollywood talent agents.

No names, of course, but our topic of conversation settled on the rather astonishing performance of "Step Up," the Disney release that cost $12 million and made more than $20 last weekend alone.

Per Box Office Mojo,

"Mixing ballet and hip-hop moves, 'Step Up' brought in a lively $20.7 million at 2,467 theaters. Buena Vista's $12 million dance picture delivered the sub-genre's highest-grossing start since the similarly-themed 'Save the Last Dance' in 2001 and showed a considerable improvement on the previous mash-up, 'Take the Lead,' which disappointed this past spring."

And why was my agent pal so spooked?

As he put it,

"If you'd been here in 2001 and said, 'In five years, Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson's careers will be on roller skates.' I, and everyone like me, would have laughed at you. But look at 'Step Up': What's the lesson here? I'm supposed to sign Channing Tatum? Please. That movie had no one in it, and look what it did. The studios don't want to pay big stars anymore, and signing Channing Tatum just means that the studios will find another nobody. It's a scary time for the movie business."

A quick look at the box office suggest he might be right. Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" - with Nicolas Cage in the lead role - cost five times as much, and made $2 million less this weekend, which was solid, but not spectacular. The Tim Allen vehicle, "Zoom," finished dismally, too.

Disney has already signaled that it plans to do more of the above, while Paramount has reduced Cruise's production deal and tossed him off the lot. MGM is essentially a shell company that releases movies other people paid for.

Which is why I was shocked that as I drank my Heineken, my agent pal was drinking Evian. In this environment, I'd be asking the waitresses at L' Ermitage for something a little stiffer.

Filed under: Movies, The Biz, City Of Industry

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Reader Comments

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1. OH NO, no more ET insider, TMZ, tabloids. What will we talk about?

Posted at 2:38PM on Aug 15th 2006 by John

2. oh my god channing is such a hottie and i loved him in step up and shes the man i bought everything i could find about him and joined his fan club i love him so much if i could i would go to hollywood to meet him and probably end up passing because hes so hott he makes my mouth water i think he is great in no matter whatever he plays in a movie he is a great actor and he should star in more movies watch out brad pitt here comes channing tatum

Posted at 12:23AM on Aug 16th 2006 by kelsey

3. As obvious as this is, I think myspace had alot to do with the films success, as it did John Tucker, The Descent, and other genre pictures which did better than usual at the box office. Maybe its subliminal, or just the feeling of connection you get when you become a friend to a Step Up profile, hell, it could have been that hip hop and ballet thoughts were in the atmosphere this weekend, caused by a manifest expert to the stars like Wayne Dyer or Deepak Chopra. All I know is, if you look at the performance of films advertised on myspace which three years ago would have probably done less business, it's kind of just waiting to be noticed.

Posted at 1:11AM on Aug 16th 2006 by Bill Brophy

4. Let's just get our bearing here gang. This is not the first time that a no-name film has been made with a relatively lower budget that has gone on to do well at the box. Yet, then again, the operative word here is "well."

Making a film for 12 million and getting receipts of 20 million hardly qualifies it for even moderate success. So then...where to from here? Is our esteemed writer alleging that the film is going on to say $100 million? Not on your life! When one looks at what coming up in the line of movies, this film will die out.

Try to look at it in "The Rule of 3s"; If a film cost $12 million, all things being equal, the film doesn't really start making money until it reaches around $35 million. Please don't get me wrong! "Set Up" is off to a good, correction, great start but let's not start counting our money just yet.

As always,

Sir Paulo

Posted at 10:36AM on Aug 16th 2006 by Sir Paulo

5. They were smart to advertise this movie so heavily on "So You Think You Can Dance," a show all about the dance mash-up, with hip hoppers doing Broadway and ballerinas doing 70s disco. The ads emphasized the dance aspect, which the audience must've been hungry for.

Posted at 12:56PM on Aug 16th 2006 by Annie Frisbie

6. Maybe the age of the megaceleb is dead?

Look at who leads the tabloids now, Lindsay, Paris, Nicole. None of them are BO people.

Also, there's Angelina and Brad, and both of them, outside of their tabloid exploits really had one hit, Mr & Mrs. Smith.

Not sure why Hollywood would pay people so exhoribitantly when clearly people don't really LIKE celebs. Sure they like the stories about them, but, in general, people dislike them.

Posted at 5:46PM on Aug 16th 2006 by Interresting

7. Always remember the three rules of celeb stability:

1. Choose venues and events to be in that match your image (Something Harrison Ford did brilliantly as did John Wayne and Jimmy Cagney when they stuck their their respective action/thriller, western/war, and gangster/musical genres. Currently Denzel Washington is doing it perfectly with suspense/thrillers.)

2. Make sure the stuff your in will benefit you in some sort of way, as well as the venue itself (As when Vincent Price would do horror films, making the films have better quality as well as grow his legend. Currently Steve Carrell has been doing a good job with this as he is in well written pieces that fit his lovable corny-guy image.)

3. Biggest rule of all and the hardest to follow: leave ego out of your career decisions and save it for personal situations. This is why Jack Nicholson and Gene Hackman did great roles for decades playing versatile characters in well written stories, whereas Warren Beatty and Kevin Costner fell with vanity projects like every post-1981 film Beatty did other than Bugsy and Costner's Waterworld/Postman.

Now that we have that down pat, you can analyze for yourself why alot of stars have b.o. failures. And of course, all three of those rules require a good story and script or at least improv that works on both the surface and in the deep depths of people's emotional centers.

Posted at 9:37PM on Aug 16th 2006 by Bill Brophy

8. Not only did they advertise heavily on So You Think You Can Dance, the producer and judge Nigel mentioned it several times on air during the show, which I'm sure sent a lot of viewers to the movie theatres.

Posted at 6:20PM on Aug 20th 2006 by Stenar

9. CHanning is creating incredible buzz on the net and he is bound to be a major star. Step Up is up to 60 million dollars. Channing needs to get more leading roles. I think Tom Cruise is just going through a rough patch. Hes the type of star that will still be acting , even in old age.

Posted at 11:08AM on Sep 9th 2006 by emma

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