Oscar recognition could yet lie in wait, and surely few could begrudge the Mexican film-maker his time in the spotlight after his movie battled through a terrible extended gestation to eventual box office and critical glory.
"The eventual box office will be in the neighborhood of $250 million -- that is so huge for Japan when you think about the number of screens," said Stephen M. Alpert, international vice president of Studio Ghibli, Mr. Miyazaki's production company.
Johnny Depp spent much of the first half of his career starring in art films that often left critics raving but studios sagging at the eventual box office returns.
Not only do we think showcasing the films at AFW will benefit their eventual box office in the long term, but our founding partner, UPC (one of the leading cable providers in the Netherlands) has its own on-demand channel, and we thought, "Okay, some of the films may be out of the cinema, and they could use the festival as a promotional opportunity to gain some extra buzz for VOD".
In a different ceremony signaling an eventual power transfer, members of the Iraqi cabinet, the first since Saddam Hussein was overthrown, took their oaths of office.
"Chicago", which took best-picture in 2002, picked up 41% of its eventual box-office takings after winning the trophy.
In an interview several months ago, he played down his company's disappointing results, saying that an eventual box-office success would pay for his misses.
But which ones? Hollywood has devised surprisingly accurate yardsticks for predicting a picture's eventual box-office tally, sometimes to within $5m, in the first three days after its release.It was not always so.
That wasn't what audiences wanted that summer from a big commercial comedy (the eventual box-office comedy champ that year was Eddie Murphy's benign remake of "The Nutty Professor"), and "The Cable Guy" — a tortured, sometimes violent, entirely despairing piece of work — received some scathing reviews.
The film opened to mixed reviews from critics and its eventual box-office profit was poor.
