Sony Pictures Classics is nearing a real milestone with Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris," and the company is pulling out all the stops to get there.
According to exhibitors, SPC co-presidents Michael Barker and Tom Bernard (left, with Allen in 2009) have been unusually assertive and aggressive in calling theaters -- threatening to take exhibitors off service if they don't keep "Midnight" on as many screens as possible.
"I never hear from them," one exhibitor told TheWrap on condition of anonymity. "But I got a call from Michael, and his whole pitch was that this could become Woody's biggest movie ever."
"Midnight in Paris" passed the $35 million mark on Wednesday, and heads into the weekend less than $5 million behind the $40.1 million gross that made 1986's "Hannah and Her Sisters" the biggest grosser in Allen's career of more than 40 years.
"Absolutely," said Barker when TheWrap asked if SPC has been unusually aggressive with exhibitors on the film. "We're always aggressive, but especially with this one, because the word-of-mouth is so good that it's very easy to make a compelling argument to exhibitors that the movie has staying power."
The argument is compelling indeed -- even a certain boy wizard by the name of "Harry Potter" may not be able to forestall what is looking more and more inevitable.
Another decent weekend will more than cut the gap between "Midnight" and "Hannah" in half, quite possibly pushing it past Allen's third-highest-grossing film, "Annie Hall" ($38.3 million), and putting it within striking distance of his number two, "Manhattan" ($39.9 million).
If it continues playing for a few more weeks, even if it drops substantially every week, it's hard to imagine that it won't soon become Allen's top earner, giving Sony Classics significant bragging rights.
"It feels very likely," Barker told TheWrap this week. "The picture has obvious staying power, and is playing equally well in arthouses and in multiplexes that have never played Woody Allen before."
The key to turning the trick is to hang on to as many "Midnight" screens as possible -- and with "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2" already selling out thousands of showings, that film is primed to gobble up enormous amounts of multiplex real estate when it opens on July 15.
The fact that "Midnight" is playing in those multiplexes in addition to Allen's usual arthouses means that it will be fighting for screens with the likes of "Potter," "Transformers" (currently occupying more than 4,000 theaters) and "Zookeeper" and "Horrible Bosses" (which together are debuting in more than 6,000 houses on Friday).
"We seem to have survived 'Transformers' and 'Cars 2,' so we feel confident that we can survive 'Harry Potter' too," said Barker.
