Boxoffice® Pro - October 2013

BIG PICTURE > RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
THE BLING RING
Release date: June 14, 2013
Based on events from: fall 2008–summer 2009
Based on a string of robberies of celebrity homes
in Los Angeles, Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring
dramatizes the lives of the teenage robbers behind
the crimes. The film depicts a generation that shares
its exploits through social media, more concerned
about how they appear than getting caught. It’s
the sort of carefree story of directionless partiers
that we would expect from a Bret Easton Ellis
adaptation, but Coppola’s The Bling Ring takes
a less nihilistic approach by piercing through her
characters’ insecurities. There is a vulnerability to the
protagonists in The Bling Ring that goes beyond their
superficial antics. The Bling Ring ran off with $5.8
million at the North American box office.
THE SOCIAL NETWORK
Release date: October 1, 2010
Based on events from: circa 2004–2008
Reductively described as the Facebook movie,
David Fincher’s film looks at the founding of the
world’s most popular social network. The movie goes
beyond the legal battle that acts as the narrative’s
centerpiece, exploring the entrepreneurial drive of a
generation creating a new job market in an economy
on the brink of a recession. The film was released
amid speculation of when Facebook would go public,
an event that wouldn’t occur until May 2012. The
screenplay from veteran scribe Aaron Sorkin picked
up the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay,
and the film went on to gross $96.6 million in North
America.
58 BoxOffice ® Pro The Business of Movies OCTOBER 2013