Holes Could Conjure Up Some "Potter"-Like Magic
Disney movie stays true to popular kids' bookApril 17, 2003
By CLAUDIA PUIG
USA Today
It's not "Harry Potter", but a children's book turned movie could shovel out a niche at the box office this weekend.
"Holes", based on Louis Sachar's Newbery Award-winning novel of the same name, arrives in theaters Friday. No one expects a "Potter"-size blockbuster, but "Holes" is a literary phenomenon, with 3.5 million copies in print. The 1998 book about Stanley Yelnats, who is accused of stealing sneakers and is sent to detention camp where he's forced to dig holes all day, is No. 5 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list.
Disney would be pleased with a $10 million to $12 million opening weekend for the film, which cost $20 million to make. Most analysts predict a modest hit, with $7 million to $14 million this weekend, but some are more bullish.
"It could surprise a lot of people and do very well," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations. "In terms of movies for kids, there's not much out there."
Brandon Gray, editor of boxofficemojo.com, agrees: "With people so familiar with the title, I don't see how it wouldn't do well."
Kids are buzzing about the movie, which stars the Disney Channel's Shia LaBeouf and Jon Voight.
"I'm going to see it with my middle-school teacher," says 11- year-old Rolando Caceres of Hawthorne, Calif. "I liked how ("Holes") kept going back and forth from the past to the present and how the characters were striving to survive." Phillip Montoya—a fifth-grader from Pasadena, Calif., who has read the book twice—can barely wait. "The yellow spotted lizards look really cool" in commercials.
Librarian Kathy Bullene of Arlington, Wash., where all 70 copes of "Holes" are checked out, says, "It's kind of like 'Harry Potter', where kids come in after reading it and say they want a book like 'Holes'."
Two years ago, Walden Media, which co-produced the movie with Disney, polled teachers and found that Holes was their top pick of a book to become a movie. "What's captivated people is the triumph of the spirit," says Walden Media CEO Cary Granat. Holes also deals with racism, literacy and homelessness.
"You get a lot of kid books that assume kids don't understand things," LaBeouf says. "How often do you see a Disney movie with a juvenile detention center as the core of the film?"
Taking a cue from the "Potter franchise", the movie sticks to the book's basics.
Kids want the movie "to be exactly like the book," says Khleo Thomas, who plays Stanley's pal Zero.
Director Andrew Davis was adamant that Sachar write the screenplay. On a recent tour to promote the movie, the author was treated like "the Mick Jagger of children's literature," says Davis. "He's got a tremendous sense of how kids feel and treat each other."
Sachar did make a few minor changes in the translation to film. "Maybe huge fans will notice," he says. "But I've heard a lot of people say they like the movie better. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that."
