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American Morning
Robert Downey Jr. Expected to Avoid Jail Time; 'Legally Blonde' No Ditz at Box Office
Aired July 16, 2001 - 11:24 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's check in on "Showbiz" news. And Laurin Sydney is handling that for us.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Laurin.
LAURIN SYDNEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn. And hi, Leon.
Now, as we have been reporting all morning long, Robert Downey Jr. is about to enter a courtroom in Indio, California, where he faces drug charges.
Our Paul Vercammen is standing by live with the very latest -- Paul, what's going on?
PAUL VERCAMMEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Laurin, Robert Downey Jr. is already in that courtroom just awaiting the start of his court proceedings this morning and as we have been suggesting to you, he will enter a no contest plea to the various charges and this will effectively allow him to avoid doing any prison time. He will then continue his rehabilitation at a Malibu drug treatment center.
Now, we have been watching on the monitor to see what was going on in there, basically just sort of the exchanging of pleasantries as they await for this proceeding to begin. We saw a couple of people taking a drink of water, as they'd better. As you know, it's not uncommon for it to get to about 115 degrees here in Indio, California here in the summer. It doesn't seem, though, it'll be that hot today.
Quite a gathering of the news media here. It's as if it rained and up sprouted a whole garden of satellites and satellite trucks. They, too, are awaiting the beginning of this trial and if I look behind me, I think that they might be letting a couple people, including reporters, into the courtroom now. So that's the latest. We're just waiting and standing by and soon Robert Downey Jr. will probably enter that plea, as we said, of no contest -- Laurin?
SYDNEY: Thank you, Paul. And, of course, Paul will keep us posted throughout the day.
Now, blondes had more fun at the box office this weekend, scoring better than "The Score." Our very own movie analyst, Mr. Marty Grove, joins us live from Los Angeles. And Marty, "Legally Blonde" was the big surprise of the weekend.
MARTIN GROVE, "HOLLYWOOD REPORTER": Laurin, it was. It really was the blonde leading the blonde and everybody else, as a matter of fact. MGM really snapping back to life, its third number one opening this year, just over $20 million. It's about $7,800 per theater, a very good showing for the film, which, of course, stars Reese Witherspoon.
This film played not only to the young female audience that you would expect would go for it, but it also played to adult females and it also got a pretty good score from men who were sort of dragged along but once they were there said they didn't mind being there. That means that this picture should be able to dig in and play over the course of what's left of the summer, perhaps even into the fall, MGM very happy with the results.
SYDNEY: I dragged my man. He said that exact same thing, Marty. I think you were sitting next to us.
GROVE: I hear. I hear about these things.
SYDNEY: OK. How did "The Score" score?
GROVE: Well, you know, it scored better, Laurin, than Paramount expected. They thought it would do maybe $15 million to $18 million tops. It wound up doing about $19 million. What was really good here is it's a very different film from "Legally Blonde." So its appeal, mostly to an adult male audience interested in these heist kind of dramas, was very different from the appeal of "Legally Blonde." When movies can carve up the entire audience over the course of a weekend, there's room for everybody.
SYDNEY: And were there fantasy box office numbers for "Final Fantasy" or just a fat name?
GROVE: Oh, well, no. The fantasy was that it would do better. It did about $11.5 million. But it opened on Wednesday, so the five day cum, Laurin, is a little over $19 million. It's not terrible, but this is the picture that the Hollywood radar screens said was going to be number one. It opened to almost $5 million last Wednesday, which was incredibly strong. So what went wrong really is that the fans of the video game were out there on day number one and then, you know, everybody else said well, you know, who cares?
One interesting thing, though, Sony didn't make this picture. The picture cost about $115 million. Sony is only in for prints and advertising and distribution costs. So they can come out OK. They did not finance making the movie.
SYDNEY: And just to remind our viewers, you are looking at a live picture of Robert Downey Jr. in the courtroom while Mr. Box Office and I are having this discussion. And Marty, what about "A.I.?" What's happening? Disappointing numbers.
GROVE: Very disappointing, Laurin, and to me, too, because I really liked this movie and I really would like people to go see it. It's one of Stephen Spielberg's best, sort of an homage to Stanley Kubrick. The picture sank 63 percent this weekend. It's only No. 9 on the chart now, with a little over $5 million. The cum now is about $70 million. Warner says it'll get to about $80 million in the U.S. and Canada. The good news is, it's doing much better abroad. In Japan alone, Warners is talking about maybe a $90 million gross. So this will be one of those films that outperforms the U.S. and Canada in terms of how it does internationally.
SYDNEY: It outperformed and we're out of time, Marty, so we're going to see you next time.
We will have more on these movies a little later as we talk to the blonde bombshell herself, Reese Witherspoon, and "A.I.'s" gigolo robot, Jude Law.
Until then in New York, I'm Laurin Sydney -- and now back to the bombshell and the gigolo. I'm only kidding.
HARRIS: Wrong show.
KAGAN: You're a bombshell? No.
HARRIS: Yes. Is that it?
KAGAN: I'm trying to help you out once again.
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