FREE ESSAY ON HANNIBAL

HANNIBAL

North American moviegoers were hungry for Hannibal the Cannibal at the weekend.
Hannibal, a thriller starring Sir Anthony Hopkins in a long-awaited follow-up to the 1991
hit The Silence of the Lambs, grossed a record-breaking $58 million in its first three
days of release in the United States and Canada, according to studio estimates issued on
Sunday.
If the numbers hold when final data are issued on Monday, Hannibal will replace 2000's
Mission: Impossible II ($57.9 million) as the third-highest bow in movie history, after
1997's The Lost World: Jurassic Park ($72 million) and 1999's Star Wars: Episode One --
The Phantom Menace ($64.8 million). It also set new records for a non-summer opening, an
R-rated release and for a release by domestic distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.
I must confess I expected it to be big, but not this big, Hannibal producer Dino De
Laurentiis told Reuters from Berlin.
Indeed most industry expectations were in the $35 million- $40 million range. MGM
distribution president Larry Gleason said he had hoped to surpass the $42 million bow of
the 2000 horror spoof Scary Movie, which held the record for an R-rated release.
AUDIENCE LOVES THE VILLAIN
The film stars Hopkins as elegant cannibal Hannibal Lecter. When he's not disemboweling
or dining on his hapless victims, he engages in a transatlantic cat-and-mouse game with
FBI agent Clarice Starling, played by Julianne Moore. Jodie Foster played Starling in
Lambs, but opted not to return, reportedly because of the new film's violence. Ridley
Scott (Gladiator) directed. The original was directed by Jonathan Demme.
De Laurentiis, in Berlin for the film's screening on Sunday night at the German capital's
annual film festival, said audiences have conferred hero status on Hannibal Lecter.
When he's forced to kill, he kills somebody the audience wants to kill too, he said.
'Hannibal' is a picture in its own. It's a picture that will be remembered forever.
He said Hopkins, who received a $10 million-plus salary for Hannibal, had asked to be in
a sequel. This was confirmed by MGM's Gleason. Whereas Silence and Hannibal were based on
novels by Thomas Harris, the new project would probably bypass the book stage and go
straight to script, Gleason said.
As for the violent scenes, both De Laurentiis and Gleason noted that they were staged in
an understated way with irony and humor.
It's playing much more fun than violent, in a weird way, Gleason said. There's a lot of
nervous laughter (among the audience).
WELCOME NEWS FOR MGM
The film, which cost about $80 million to produce, was released in the United States and
Canada by MGM, and will be handled internationally by Universal Pictures, a unit of
Vivendi Universal. Hannibal opened strongly in De Laurentiis' native Italy at the
weekend, and reaches German theaters next Friday. The studios will split profits 50/50.
The Hannibal bow is welcome news for Santa Monica, California-based MGM, which scores big
hits only with its James Bond franchise. Its previous record opening was $35.5 million
for the 1999 Bond film The World Is Not Enough. The previous non-summer record was $57.3
million for Toy Story 2, a November 1999 release. (The Phantom Menace came out May 19,
which is considered summer in Hollywood.)
Elsewhere at this weekend's box office, the romantic comedy The Wedding Planner (Columbia
Pictures) slipped to No. 2 with $7.8 million after two weekends at No. 1. The 17-day haul
for the Jennifer Lopez, Matthew McConaughey vehicle stands at $38 million.
Saving Silverman, a low-budget teen-targeted comedy also released by Columbia, opened at
No. 3 with a modest $7.4 million.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Sony Pictures Classics) rose one place to No. 4 in its
10th weekend with $5.1 million. With $60 million banked so far, the Chinese-language
martial arts romance has surpassed the $57.6 million total of Oscar- winning Italian
comedy Life is Beautiful to become the highest-grossing foreign-language film in North
America.
Columbia and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.
Rounding out the top five was Tom Hanks' Cast Away with $5.0 million. The survival saga's
total stands at $209.7 million. It was released by Twentieth Century Fox, a unit of Fox
Entertainment Group Inc.
The top 12 films grossed about $107.6 million, up 49 percent from last weekend, and up 43
percent from the year-ago period, when Scream 3 enjoyed its second weekend at No. 1.