Currently viewing the tag: "GRIST FOR MY MEMOIRS"
Avatar continued its rampage through the box office with a Tuesday gross of $7,327,233, off 9.5% from Monday — a day when quite a few schools were still not in session. This means Avatar has reached a domestic gross of $367,536,685. In the “same number of days in release comparison” to Titanic, Avatar picked […]
The news is out that tomorrow the Obama administration will release an unclassified version of the Flt 253 review ordered by the President. This is good news, although whether the document will really prove useful will depend to a large extent on how severely the classified version is redacted to make it suitable for […]
Today is a crucial day for Avatar box office watchers. The holidays are over and the reality of a ‘regular’ Monday at the box office is about to set in. How “regular” will it be?
Well, first some perspective.
On the first Monday after the New Years Weekend, Titanic dropped 66% from $8M on Sunday, […]
Good news for fight fans who’ve been on a rollercoaster ride all through the holidays as the on-again, off-again Manny Pacquiao–Floyd Mayweather superfight went from a done deal to no deal to a lawsuit and now, finally, mediation with the same Santa Monica based mediator who unsnarled the previous problems between Top Rank […]
EDI Nielsen is reporting this morning that Avatar will earn $68.3M on this, its third weekend in release based on studio estimates on Sunday morning. There is a possibility it might go a bit higher — indeed, every other time there has been a ‘studio estimate’ the figure has been revised upward when final […]
I’ve just finished putting up http://avatarvstitanic.wordpress.com — a daily tracking site to watch how Avatar proceeds in the “beat Titanic” derby I’ve been writing about. I’ll be updating it daily in the coming weeks. I’ll look pretty stupid if all my predictions turn out to be wrong. Anyway, it’s just for fun.
Last week as the week was rolling along, I got the feeling that people were not putting Avatar’s Box Office performance into perspective — that people weren’t studying the trend lines which showed it has a very different trajectory than a ‘typical’ 75m opening weekend film would have. So … dipping my toes into the […]
Well, it seems I hit a nerve with my prediction that Avatar will overtake Titanic and could possibly go as high as $1B domestically. I’ve been getting a lot of heat on some discussion boards. My prediction was called “insane”, “outrageous”, and more. In my original post I gave some of the stats that led […]
Weekend Box Office figures are in and Avatar only dropped off 3% which means Cameron’s film has phenomenal word of mouth as well as the ability to draw viewers back for second and third viewings. Considering that the average dropoff for a blockbuster is around 40%, this bodes extremely well for the longterm prospects and […]
When’s the last time you came out of a movie and just wanted to get in line and see it again right then? When’s the last time you wanted to shout to the people in line waiting to get in –it’s INCREDIBLY AWESOME, PEOPLE? That’s how strongly I felt when I walked out […]
Pretty much everyone out there who knows me, knows that for the past fifteen years or so I’ve been plying my trade as a hands-on film-maker — a writer, producer, and (more recently) director. My most recent film is Beneath the Blue, which is now very close to being finished. I’ve been blogging about […]
Most importantly — this being the season when we want to believe we are connected to one another, and want to feel affirmation of that whether it’s in gatherings with friends or encountering carolers on the street (and I encountered some just after coming out of the movie…couldn’t help but feel it was connected in some way) … this is a movie that provides the kind of uplift and connectivity that we all want and need — perhaps moreso this year than others.
by Michael D. Sellers
The three days since I got back from the Bahamas have gone by in a blur, and I apologize for not blogging on Wednesday and Thursday. I’ve just been going nonstop from 5:30 AM each day……but it’s Friday now and one thing I will try to really always do is put […]
Last stop on our trip to the Bahamas was to screen Eye of the Dolphin for the townspeople of Smith’s Point — the tiny town that is featured in the film. We set it up outdoors just outside the town hall and almos everyone in the town was there. […]
by Michael Sellers
Quick notes is all I have time for…..we’re off an running in fifteen minutes:
Yesterday was another long and fruitful day. We did crew interviews all morning and are finding some good local crew — more than were available the first time. We feel we have found at least a half dozen […]
by Michael D. Sellers
A long and very productive day yesterday — and now a huge one looming today so I’ll have to jam through this pretty quickly.
LOCATIONS
We spent three hours at UNEXSO and were able to nail down a number of location issues. A major one concerns the need this time […]
by Michael D. Sellers
Susan Johnson and I arrived last night and we’re off and running this morning to Smith’s Point, UNEXSO, other locations, as well as looking for crew accomodation, meeting some boat owners and marine suppliers. I will provide a more substantive update later at the end of the day. In the meantime […]
(In Part 1 of this post, we left off at 3am on the morning of the first day of filming of Umiyak Pati Langit, a Filipino film that was my first feature film as a producer. My 50% partner had just driven away after telling me that his money hadn’t […]
Once a decade or so a movie comes along that is so outrageously dumb and filled with folly that the idea pops into your head–could this be the worst movie of all time? 10,000 BC is such a movie. At a minimum its among the most unforgivably dumb movies […]
Someday I’m going to put out a memoir along the lines of “Dispatches from the Trenches of Indie Film Warfare”….so along the way, I’m going to make a point of doing a post about each film–what the experience was like. This is the first installment.
It’s another Friday already — sometimes it’s very hard to believe that another week has gone flashing by. It’s frightening how fast it goes — particularly when you’re trying to get projects like WeEarth.com and Way of the Dolphin up on their feet. Here’s the update as of Friday morning, 7 March.
We’re now about 12 weeks out from the start of filming for MovieBank Studios‘ Way of the Dolphin and so I’m finding that my days are already starting earlier and going longer–no surprise there. Producer Susan Johnson has collected 794 resumes of crew applicants, which gives you an […]
I have established a “working blog” for those of us working on the Way of the Dolphin at http://wayofthedolphin.wordpress.com/ .
Thus far the emphasis has been mostly on research support to Wendell Morris, our writer, but as we go forward toward the May 19 shoot date it will […]
For all of us out in indie outposts like MovieBank Studios, the prospect of legal movie downloads progressing to the point that they become the option of choice for non-theatrical viewing is something of a holy grail….if it happens, really happens, many of the barriers that make our work […]
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
As many of you know, Way of the Dolphin is not the only project on my plate — WeEarth.com is there too and in fact it’s first up. We’ve been working hard on it for a number of months and have now reached a preliminary milestone — we […]
by Michael D. Sellers
It’s with a great deal of pleasure and relief that I’m able to announce that effective February 18, Susan Johnson has rejoined the MovieBank and Quantum team and is now fully in charge of the prep and development for Way of the Dolphin. Susan produced Eye […]
It’s been an enormously hectic at both MovieBank and Quantum, creating a somewhat “crazed” week at the studios, with travel and consultants and writers and more conspiring to keep me from blogging quite as much as usual. I did manage five posts over the week but they were mostly quickies. […]
From Michael SellersLions Gate will be releasing Eye of the Dolphin on DVD in the UK in June…..here is their artwork which just came in. As we have discussed at various times, Adrian Dunbar who plays Hawk is quite a star in the UK and should help the sales there. In Ireland and Northern Ireland […]
by Michael D. SellersOne of you just sent this in to MovieBank Studios. Interesting. It’s a piece on Navy sonar and its effects on whales and dolphins. It’s odd — when we were making Eye of the Dolphin I remember finding quite about about Navy sonar and dolphins — but nothing like the amount of […]
Year of the Spy Book Trailer
Above is the Year of the Spy Book Trailer — for my upcoming non-fiction book about espionage upheavals on the streets of Moscow in 1985.
Below is a “trailer” showcasing the writing and video services I provide to clients.
Michael Sellers — Writing and Video Services
My eBook — Just released Dec 5, 2012
EBook You don't need a Kindle or iPad -- Download Adobe Digital Editions for Free, then read the .mobi (Kindle Format) or .epub (Nook, iPad Format) digital book on your computer. Or order the PDF which is formatted exactly like the print book.Recent Posts
- Arsha Sellers — Today I’m One Big Step Closer to Becoming a Real Forever Dad
- Meet Abby Sellers and Arshavin Sellers — My Wife, My Son, My Inspiration Every Day
- What the Mueller Report Actually Says
- Remembering James Blount, an American Who “Got” the Philippines in 1901
- America the Beautiful? You Mean America the Pitiful. I Am Ashamed
