Since I've been wondering lately about the eventual fates of the Harry Potter stars, I thought this was as good a time as any to get back in the Tracking the HSX groove.   

First off, though, lets look at the stock for the new movie, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Shares today, the Monday before opening, are up just over a point to $254.81 on midday volume of over nine million traded. That's a new high since the movie became available in November of 2001.

A couple of years ago as part of their fascinating Present at the Creation series, NPR's Morning Edition took a look at The Graduate. The piece itself (which you can listen to here) explores, not surprisingly, the creation of the film, from Charles Webb's source novel to early casting ideas ( Doris Day as Mrs. Robinson, Robert Redford as Benjamin). What's most valuable about the page linked below, however, is that it pulls together six different NPR stories that touch on the movie, including the relevant segments of stand-alone interviews with director Mike Nichols, star Dustin Hoffman, and screenwriter Buck Henry.

The page may be slightly old news, but it's a treasure trove of information on a fan-freaking-tastic movie. Anyway, it's never the wrong time for The Graduate.

[via 92YBlog]

Not only have the geeks invaded the earth, they're clearly having their way with the HSX this morning as what seems like a large percentage of stocks are sci-fi/fantasy related.

On the leader board the highest mover is When Worlds Collide, the sci-fi remake which hack director Stephen Sommers was going to helm but which now will reportedly be led by Steven Spielberg. It's obviously that news that has shares up five points to $36.25 on volume of over seven million shares. Amazing what the news of an Academy Award winning director whose films rarely loose money coming aboard will do to a share's price.

There are bad days, there are depressing days and then there are days where the first thing you see when you go to the Hollywood Stock Exhange is that The Smurfs is the IPO of the Day. We first told you about this last month and honestly I just don't think my brain was willing to accept this as fact. I mean, I've got other serious things going on in my life and the idea that someone was making a 3-D animated feature film of the friggin' Smurfs was something I couldn't handle. Unfortunately, now I guess I have to deal with it as fact. Not only is it debuting on the exchange today but at midday it's already up three points on volume of over 44 million shares traded.  

This morning's big mover and shaker seems to be Beowulf, the Sony-financed adaptation of the 10th century epic poem. Director Robert Zemeckis is helming this one using the same motion-capture technology he used previously on The Polar Express (which I didn't see, so can't comment on how well it worked or not). Shares in the movie, starring Anthony Hopkins, Crispin Glover and Alison Lohman are up six points on trading of about 1.4 million shares. This one's sure to at least draw interest from the English-major crowd and such but will probably be marketed as a straight fantasy/adventure flick.

 

What the...? I mean... I can't even... How....Who...?

The above sentence (if you can call it that) encapsulates my entire thought process when I saw that shares for The Fantastic Four, the critically lambasted movie that still was credited with saving the box-office (you'll have to excuse me while I spit up some blood), was up six-and-a-half points this afternoon. Umm...err.... Didn't this movie open weeks ago and hasn't it been falling in the box office ever since? If someone could explain the logic of this one to me please do because, as with the continued career of Jimmy Fallon, I don't get it.

Today's surprising big mover is Rush Hour 3, which last I had heard was mired in negotiations with star Chris Tucker. Seemed Tucker felt he needed a bit more green in order to once again go toe to toe with Jackie Chan. Granted, I only passingly pay attention to news on this flick since I had - and continue to have - no interest in the first two. Actually, I have little interest in any of Jackie Chan's movies and definitely felt him teaming up with Tucker (whom I only found somewhat amusing in The Fifth Element) and hack director Brett Ratner might have been an all-time low or, more accurately, lows. Anyway, somebody must know something I don't since stocks for the third installment are up four points at mid-day. 

So I was all set to begin this feature (which has fallen victim to time crunches and such) and logged onto the HSX. The first thing that caught my eye almost made me blow a snot bubble in laughter and I was very glad I had already swallowed the glass of milk I had with luch.

HSX's homepage always features the "IPO of the Day", a movie which is just starting or was just greenlit. Well, today's IPO was of a fund containing star bonds for actors/actresses over 50 years of age called The Golden Years Fund II. What really got me laughing was that the ticker symbol for the fund is AARP. It's a dumb joke but really caught me off guard and struck me as funny. Unfortunately there's no list of stars included in the fund, but apparently it's setup to maximize short-term profits instead of being a long-term investment.

I'm sorry, but Ice Nine sounds like something Sydney Bristow would have to recover from Bulgaria on Alias. In actuality, it's what all the characters in Cat's Cradle, the Darren Aronofsky-helmed adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut novel, are trying to get their hands on. The reason I bring it up is that stocks for Cradle are up almost four points at midday. I'm wondering if this isn't a junk bond, though, since the title doesn't even show up in the IMDB and there's not an entry on anything like this on Aronofsky's page. Any trading on this should be done with extreme caution. The stock's been active for over two years and there's no movie? Doesn't inspire confidence.

Barnyard, an animated comedy from director Steve Oedekirk, is up a little over half-a-point on volume of over three million shares. So why does that get top billing on the movers chart on the front page of HSX? No idea. It's been on the market for over eight months now and I don't remember reading anything recently about it. Nonetheless it's poster is right there on the homepage. Could it just be that anything CGI animated is newsworthy? If that's the case when will that end because I'm getting quite tired not only of the genre but of the breathlessness these films are promoted with.

 I ask again: Who is Willam Fichtner? And (and here's the real reason I'm asking) what has he done that he's among the biggest movies on the HSX today? I vaguely recognized his face, but it wasn't until I started poking around his IMDB filmography that I figured out he was the shuttle captain in Armageddon. He also played the blind friend of Jodie Foster in Contact. So - and I'm just going to ask this one more time - why is his bond up three points on trading of over 4.5 million shares? He's in a couple decent movies now, Crash and Chumscrubber but on the other side of the ledger he's also in The Longest Yard. This one is going to bug me.

Perhaps on news of it's $46 million weekend, people seem to be dumping Batman Begins shares - its price is down a whopping 9.45 points to $146.12 on heavy trading of over 85 million shares. Almost all of the actors associated with the current Bat-pic are also down with the exception of Liam Neeson, whose bond remains unchanged despite trading volume of 2 million shares. It's hard to figure out why it's down so much right now. None of this week's new releases are likely to knock it from it's perch at the top. It's not until War of the World on June 29 that the Dark Knight will see any serious competition. Perhaps it's more of a statement on the general suckiness of this year's box-office numbers than any specific commentary on the movie.

I'm in the middle of rewatching Sports Night on DVD and got to wondering what co-star Felicity Huffman's Star Bond was doing. This is an actress, after all, who gets pretty consistent praise from critics and has been in some good movies (as well as currently starring on Desperate Housewives). So I was extremely disappointed to find her bond is labeled "inactive" and doesn't have any trading activity since October, 2001. What makes it even weirder, as Editor Karina points out, is that Huffman won the Best Actress award at the Tribeca Film Festival just two months ago for her role in Transamerica. Guess we'll have to wait for trading to resume when Houswives: The Movie gets greenlit. Too bad.

The Hollywood Stock Exchange provides an outlet for people to stop just talking about movies and lets them "invest" in them.  Through Movie Stocks and Star Bonds, players use virtual dollars to bet on the success (or failure) of a movie or actor. To help traverse these sometimes murky waters, Chris Thilk makes like CNBC and gives you the lowdown on what's up and down today.

Despite not yet appearing on the IMDB, this morning's big mover in movie stocks is Meet the Little Focker. Based on a Google search it looks like this title was speculatively used around the time of Meet the Fockers as a potential third entry in the series. HSX doesn't even have a valuation history on this title so I can only assume it was newly IPO'd and isn't something that has been confirmed or even rumored by the studio. The movie doesn't even appear under Ben Stiller's or Robert De Niro's Star Bond entries so this should be treated as extraordinarily tentative. Considering the Meet the Fockers did $279 million in business though, a sequel of some sort should be expected.