The Grand Budapest Hotel DVD/Blu-Ray Available June 17

Watch the Grand Budapest Hotel in your home theater as soon as June 17. Check it out at Amazon, or wherever you shop.

Wes Anderson’s Highest Grossing Film is The Grand Budapest Hotel

The Grand Budapest Hotel has surpassed $100 million at the worldwide box office, making it the highest grossing film of Wes Anderson’s career. The record is a tremendous success for Anderson, but it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone after the film broke the record for the highest-grossing limited live action debut of all time when it debuted on March 7.

A recent Variety article credits an impressive marketing strategy for helping The Grand Budapest Hotel stand out in the eyes of moviegoers. In the article, Fox Searchlight President Nancy Utley highlighted five elements she believes made the film a hit: Anderson’s world, unique promotions, “viral chow,” “young moonrisers” and universal access. You can read the Variety article on marketing here and you can read more about the box office success here.

Royal Tenenbaums, which grossed $71 million worldwide, is Anderson’s second most successful film.

Record Opening for The Grand Budapest Hotel!

The Grand Budapest Hotel is already a record-breaking film. The movie made a record $200,000 per theater in its opening weekend, making it the highest-grossing limited live action debut of all time and far surpassing Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, which averaged $147,000 per theater during its record-breaking weekend in 2012.

The record isn’t new for Wes Anderson. Moonrise Kingdom owned the record prior to The Master. Moonrise Kingdom averaged $131,000 in four theaters.

In total, The Grand Budapest Hotel made $800,000 in four theaters in two cities (New York and Los Angeles) last weekend. Rave reviews are being written everywhere, so there’s no reason to think the positive momentum won’t continue when the movie expands to 1,000 screens over the next five weeks.

Where and When You Can See The Grand Budapest Hotel

The Grand Budapest Hotel will be in theaters this Friday, but only in New York City and Los Angeles. Fortunately, the movie will be playing in more cities in week two. Here’s a look at where we know the movie will be playing in its first two weeks:

MARCH 7, 2014

NEW YORK, NY
AMC Lincoln Square 13
Union Square Stadium 14

LOS ANGELES, CA
The Landmark
Arclight Hollywood

MARCH 14, 2014

ATLANTA, GA
BOSTON, MA
BROOKLINE, MA
CAMBRIDGE, MA
FAIRFAX, VA
BETHESDA, MD
WASHINGTON, DC
PARAMUS, NJ
WESTBURY, NY
MANHASSET, NY
MONTCLAIR, NJ
RED BANK, NJ
KEW GARDENS, NY
HUNTINGTON, NY
PLEASANTVILLE, NY
BROOKLYN, NY
PHILADELPHIA, PA
ETOBIOKE, ON
TORONTO, ON
VANCOUVER, BC
CHICAGO, IL
EVANSTON, IL
AUSTIN, TX
DLLAS, TX
HOUSTON, TX
MINNEAPOLIS, MN
PASEDENA, CA
SHERMAN OAKS, CA
IRVINE, CA
LA JOLLA, CA
SAN DIEGO, CA
BOULDER, CO
DENVER, CO
SCOTTSDALE, AZ
SEATTLE, WA
PORTLAND, OR
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
SAN JOSE, CA
SAN RAFAEL, CA
BERKELEY, CA
PALO ALTO, CA
CAMPBELL, CA

Wes Anderson’s Next Animated Movie is…. Grand Budapest Hotel?

Not really. But Jeff Goldblum revealed to The Wrap this week that Wes Anderson completed an animated version of Grand Budapest Hotel before beginning production on the live-action version of the film. Goldblum indicated it was a practice likely learned during the making of Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Goldblum said, “It was a beautifully animated version of the whole movie, with all the cuts as they pretty much I think wound up to be. And he voiced all the characters. He called it animatics. I had it on my computer, you could see the whole movie.”

Goldblum didn’t say whether the animated version would ever be released to the public, but he also didn’t give anyone reason to think it wouldn’t be released someday.

“Willem Dafoe even said to Wes, you should release this,” Goldblum said. “You may see it on the DVD extras.

In lieu of an animated Grand Budapest Hotel, check out this featurette on the film, which will be in theaters, beginning March 7.

You can also stream the soundtrack at Pitchfork.

Rave Reviews for The Grand Budapest Hotel at World Premiere

The Grand Budapest Hotel is getting rave reviews after its world premiere at Berlindale. There are too many articles and reviews to share them all here, but I’ve included a few below to get you started. Perhaps most enjoyable, however, is the festival’s full-length press meet ‘n greet with Wes Anderson and several cast members that you can watch online here.

The Daily Beast ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ Review: Wes Anderson’s Best Ever Is a Whimsical Crime Caper 

Indiewire/The Playlist: Trailers For The 6 Films Wes Anderson Says Are Key Influences On ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ 

Hollywood Reporter Wes Anderson on Why Avoiding Awards Season Can Be a Good Thing (Q&A)

What They’re Saying About The Grand Budapest Hotel

It’s February, so we can finally say The Grand Budapest Hotel is coming out next month! Although the film’s marketing is still in its early stages, actors Ralph Fiennes and Bill Murray have been talking about it while promoting their other projects. Here are a couple of quotes they offered about what it’s like to make movies with Wes Anderson:

Bill Murray, in an interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer to promote The Monuments Men, had this to say:

You worked again with Wes Anderson in “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” Have you seen it?

It’s going to blow your mind—it’s really impressive. Wes just keeps getting better. I just saw it. I didn’t compose a letter to him yet, but I said to him, “I think you make these movies just to please me,” because I’m so delighted by the way he works. And the way he writes his movies, obviously he has  an idea. But, the dialogue in them he takes from life. I have seen his movies where I go, “Wait a second…” He will say, “Yeah, you said that.”

Like if we were in this room, Wes would take something that someone said, and it would end up in one of his films. He made the making of the movies the way he lives his life. When we made “Moonrise Kingdom,” we worked in Newport (in Rhode Island). He rented a mansion and lived in it, with an editing room, and the cinematographer, myself and a handful of the actors. It was like a dormitory. We had a cook. It sounds like a great deal that we had a private cook, but it  meant that you could work endless hours because you’d say, “We are going to have dinner waiting for us at midnight.”

Wes wanted to live in Paris, so he edits his films in Paris. He wanted to shoot here, he goes there, he does this. We shot ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ in Germany and rented a small hotel. We had the whole place  to ourselves. It was like the actors’ old folks home. We would pad down in the morning in our robes, have coffee, and the make-up room was just in another part of the lobby. We would get made up and go to work. Wes is really having fun! I believe in having all the fun you can have while  working. The more fun you have, the better you do. He’s made the fun of making movies the fun of his life. He’s doing great work!

Meanwhile, while promoting The Invisible Woman, Ralph Fiennes told The Playlist this:

But as an actor, next up is “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” which seems like it was an awful lot of fun to do. Was it? Or is it twice as much work to give the illusion of it being a lot of fun?

It was fun, but it was challenging because Wes is so deliberate, but in a lovely way. We came to a great way of working together; I realized that he would want a certain thing that he’d been hearing. He wrote the script and he hears the rhythms very precisely of speech. I said, “Please can I just do maybe two or three takes when you just let me do my instinctive version, and then please give me all of the things that you want to see and I can attempt to do. And when you’ve got to the place that you are happy, and you’re happy to say you got it, then if there’s time, give me two more.” Then I feel freedom, but obviously I’ve gone through a little training ground to get there… you never know which is the take he’s going to use. But the process feels satisfactory.

So can you tell which were the takes he mostly used?

I can’t really remember the exact takes, but I can tell you… it was always a part that could lend itself to being pushed too far. It was a high-definition role and you could easily make it too flamboyant, too overstated. Yet you didn’t want to deny a little bit of that. But Wes, always seemed to like it when it felt as real as possible, where it wasn’t underlined too much but has a sort of interior reality. He seems to have just chosen those takes.

Take a Course on The Republic of Zubrowka

What do you know about The Republic of Zubrowka?  Did you know that it is the home of the Grand Budapest Hotel or that it possesses a rich heritage known only to the few who have thought to seek it out?

Few of us know anything about The Republic of Zubrowka, so don’t bother emailing your old History teacher about it. Instead, click here to “explore the detailed political, cultural and artistic world of 20th-century Zubrowka at the Akademie’s Historical Archive. Learn about the military coup of 1935, the involvement of The Grand Budapest Hotel and the roving cast of characters that make up its intricate past.” Or you can just type the website address out if you feel so compelled – www.AkademieZubrowka.com.