With Cassandra’s Dream dumped in January and quickly becoming Woody Allen’s lowest grossing film in 20 years, Allen has chosen to place his newest film, Vicky Christina Barcelona, in the hands of the men responsible for that non-effort, Bob and Harvey Weinstein. The film is currently in post-production.
For this one, Allen travels even further away from New York, this time to, of course, Barcelona, where a pair of Americans (Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall) who start hanging out with a local (Javier Bardem), drawing the ire of his girlfriend (Penelope Cruz). This one looks to be more Scoop than Cassandra’s Dream.
As we all know, The Weinstein Company doesn’t exactly have a stellar record since its creation in 2005; they couldn’t even make decent money with Pulse and Grindhouse, and Scary Movie 4 is thus far the only film to open with more than $40 million and not make it to $100 million (Cloverfield may be next, however).
The Weinsteins also distributed four of Allen’s films back in the 90s when they were at Miramax (Bullets Over Broadway through Celebrity minus Deconstructing Harry), and they didn’t handle those so well either. In fact, Miramax was the only company to distribute multiple Allen films while not having multiple $10 million grossers. That was the beginning of a dead zone for Allen at the box office; only two of his next six films released after the run with Miramax broke $5 million.
I expect TWC to hold on to Vicky Christina Barcelona at least until the end of the year as a wild card Oscar bid in case things go as badly for them as they did in 2007. Of course, I assumed they were doing that with Cassandra’s Dream, so what the hell do I know?