EXCLUSIVE: 'INDY' LOOKING LIKE A WHOPPER

By Steve Mason

Who is ShogunMaster, and why is the New York Times taking him so seriously?

Someone in the exhibition business attended a trade screening of �Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull� last week and then published a scathing review of the film under the nom de plume of ShogunMaster on Ain't It Cool News. The "old gray lady" then ran a story headlined "Indiana Jones and the Long Knives of the Internet." Should we really trust the word of this one guy? I have not seen the movie yet, and, in the interest of full disclosure, I am an unabashed fan of Steven Spielberg.

My love for movies can be traced back to the summer of 1975 when I saw �Jaws� twice in the first 24 hours the movie was open. After 35 years and 23 films directed, with almost $3.5 billion in domestic and over $7 billion in worldwide sales, after nine Academy Award nominations and two Best Director wins, after countless other filmmakers inspired by and influenced by Spielberg, I am looking forward to seeing the new Indiana Jones movie, and I�ll bet that most of the worldwide viewing audience is going come away satisfied.

The Internet has been good for the movie business, but there is definitely a downside. The World Wide Web has democratized film analysis. Anyone with a blog can become a critic or tastemaker or influential fan. As in the case of ShogunMaster, it also allows people to show off their mean-spirited side. It should be pointed out that the exhibition exec who wrote that anonymous post saw the movie in a theatre filled with other exhibition execs, in the middle of a weekday afternoon. There were no civilians (people not in exhibition), no families, no kids and no rabid Indy fans allowed. It is fair to say that the audience was filled with hard-bitten, somewhat cynical, possibly jaded industry veterans. Maybe not the best room from which to draw a fair opinion.

Steven Spielberg is an American treasure, and, with �Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,� he is returning to his most iconic character. The fedora, the bullwhip, the wisecracking humor, the pro-American sentiment, the love of adventure, the passion for history � these are all pure Indy. The sepia-toned images, the brilliantly orchestrated set pieces, the hanging-by-your-fingertips excitement, all of it harkening back to the Saturday morning movie serials from the late '30s and early '40s � it should be like printing money. There is, however, a certain risk for Spielberg and fellow legend George Lucas in revisiting the franchise.

The bar is impossibly high for any Spielberg movie, and it gets even higher with �Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.� He has, by all accounts, remained faithful to the style and spirit of the original movies, which, by today's standards, and compared to recent Spielberg films like �A.I.: Artificial Intelligence� and �War of the Worlds,� may seem old-fashioned. This is a movie more about storytelling and directorial mastery than modern CGI wizardry. Also, nostalgia can be a double-edged sword. The retro-cool of Indy will lure boomers to theaters with kids in tow, but �Raiders of the Lost Ark� is a classic. Twenty-seven years after first thrilling a generation, Spielberg and Lucas are trying to deliver a new chapter in a franchise that fans hold in almost holy reverence.

My intention is not to review the film, but I have sources who were at the same screening that ShogunMaster attended, and they feel, not surprisingly, that �Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull� falls short of �Raiders,� but it is far stronger than 1984's �Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,� and on par with 1984's �Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.� Paramount and Lucasfilm are keeping this certain mega-hit under wraps until Sunday (May 18) at the Cannes Film Festival with an afternoon press screening and another Sunday night. Critics nationwide are also being shown the movie on Sunday, within hours of its Cannes debut, so real reviews are likely to start flooding the Internet as soon as Sunday afternoon. This movie is, however, critic proof.

A studio exec shared the latest tracking data for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with me, and these numbers are spectacular, especially given that the film will not be in theatrical release for another nine days. �Un-Aided Awareness,� an excellent measure of anticipation, is already at 15 percent, better than �The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,� which opens this Friday. Definite Interest for the movie is a staggering 63 percent, and it has an overall First Choice of 28 percent. This is all a way of saying that Indiana Jones cannot miss.

�Kingdom of the Crystal Skull� opens on Thursday, May 22 at 12:01 a.m. (midnight Wednesday), so this will make for a huge opening day, which I am projecting in the $41 million-$44 million range (that includes the post-midnight Wednesday screenings). Then Friday should be $32 million-$34 million, Saturday will likely tick up to $34 million-$36 million and the Sunday leading into the holiday will be on par with Friday. With a Memorial Day Monday of $22 million-$24 million, I am calling for a five-day gross in the $162 million-$172 million range.

As four-day Memorial Day weekend grosses go, �Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will likely be the all-time second- or third-best in history. If it reaches the high end of my five-day range, the new Indiana Jones movie has a chance to become the all-time No. 1 five-day opening in history, topping George Lucas' Star Wars: Episode III � Revenge of the Sith.