In what can only be described as a shocking upset, the political documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, topped the weekend box office with an estimated total of $21.8 million (making it the top grossing documentary film of all time in just its first weekend) despite opening in only 868 theaters nationwide.  Fahrenheit 9/11 earned a lusty $25,115 per theater, the seventh highest average in history, made even more impressive by the film's rather lengthy running time and the relative modest size of many of its art house venues.  Fahrenheit 9/11 will add theaters this coming weekend and again on July 9, but although the documentary may continue to do well, the next few weekends should belong to Spider-Man 2.

 

Armed with an array of glowing early reviews from topflight critics, Spider-Man 2 begins its pursuit of current box office champion Shrek 2 on Wednesday.  In its sixth weekend of release Shrek 2 dropped only 24% and earned a solid $10.5 million, running its cumulative total to a stellar $397 million.  It appears certain that Shrek 2 will surpass the original Spider-Man 's$403 million total, meaning that catching Shrek 2 is quickly becoming a nearly impossible task.  Still Spider-Man 2, which is being touted as 'better than the original,' is the one summer film with a chance to overtake Shrek 2 in this war of the sequels, but only if the second Spidey film can out perform its predecessor, the highest-grossing comic book-related film of all time.

 

With Spider-Man 2's opening set for Wednesday, the Sunday New York Times included a profile by Robert Levine of Avi Arad, Marvel's man in Hollywood.  The article begins with an anecdote from Michael Chabon, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, who worked on the Spider-Man 2 screenplay, and who told the Times that Avi Arad was a 'guy who knows Spider-Man backward and forward -- all the minor super-villains and secret identities.  I found myself totally able to talk to him on this ridiculous, wonderful level of, 'Who's tougher, the Lizard or the Rhino?'

 

After comparing Mr. Arad to the immigrant moguls of Hollywood's golden age and briefly chronicling his career from toy designer to major Hollywood power broker, Levine gets right to 'the key to making Marvel films work,' which according to Arad is 'to capture the internal conflicts that have kept the characters compelling through decades of publication.' In contrast to the moral paragons of virtue at DC, Marvel's costumed crimefighters are 'superheroes with hang-ups.'

 

The final portion of the profile discusses Mr. Arad's considerable skills as a negotiator -- he has managed to leverage the success of movies based on Marvel characters into increasingly better deals with the studios, and his power in Tinseltown is now such that he has even been able to renegotiate deals made years ago by Marvel, such as New Line's acquisition of the rights to make a film of Iron Man.  In order to get the participation of Mr. Arad in the Iron Man movie, New Line had to sweeten the deal for Marvel considerably--a prime demonstration of what they refer to in Hollywood as 'clout.'