“THE VOW” WINS PINOY HEARTS, GROSSES P34-M IN 7 DAYS

McAdams and Tatum, The Vow

MANILA, Feb 17 – Columbia Pictures' touching romantic drama “The Vow” stole the hearts of Filipino audiences as it grossed an outstanding P34.08-million nationwide in its first seven days of release (Feb 10-16) and on only 61 screens. This was announced today by Vic Cabrera, managing director of Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. which distributed the film.

Attracting a predominantly date-market, “The Vow's” successful box-office performance benefited from a pre-Valentine and Friday opening – an irresistible formula for the film's target audience.

“Our decision to launch the film on the same date as its U.S. bow has paid off,” said Cabrera. “We've always believed that `The Vow' is a special love story that Filipinos can relate to, given our fondness for sentimental, romantic movies. Add to this the unmistakable screen chemistry of stars Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum, and you have a clear crowd-pleaser.”

In North America, “The Vow” made it to the altar at No. 1 with a sweet $41.7 million gross, outperforming “Safe House” and “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.” It's the biggest opening for Screen Gems (a unit of Sony Pictures) whose previous record-holder, “Dear John,” is also a romance tearjerker that starred Tatum.

Back in the Philippines, Trinoma posted the highest box-office receipts for “The Vow” at P2.79-M, followed closely by SM Mall of Asia (P2.21-M), Greenbelt 3 (P1.66-M), Glorietta 4 (P1.60-M), Power Plant (P1.45-M), SM North EDSA (P1.37-M), SM Megamall (P1.35-M), Ayala Cebu (P1.21-M), Gateway Cineplex (P1.07-M) and Alabang Town Center (P1.06-M).

Rounding out the Top 20 cinemas are Robinsons Ermita (P1.05-M), Greehills Cinema (P 917,490), Newport City (P 914,345), SM Cebu (P 901,280), Shang Cineplex (P 848,402), SM San Lazaro (P 785,797), SM Manila (P 752,793), Robinsons Galleria (P 733,666), Eastwood Cinema (P 706,372) and SM Baguio (P 588,714).

In “The Vow,” Paige (McAdams) and Leo (Tatum) are a young married couple, madly in love and living fulfilling lives as artists in Chicago. One snowy night, the two fall victim to a car accident. Leo survives intact, but a head trauma erases Paige’s entire memory of her relationship with her husband. When she comes out of her coma, Leo is a stranger to her. Suddenly Leo finds himself in the painful position of rebooting the relationship he’s waited his whole life for, and win his wife's love all over again.

CHANNING TATUM MUST WIN HIS WIFE BACK IN “THE VOW”

Channing Tatum in The Vow

One of Hollywood’s most sought after young actors who have established themselves among the next generation of leading men, Channing Tatum (“G.I. Joe,” “Dear John”) now stars opposite Rachel McAdams in Columbia Pictures' inspiring romantic drama “The Vow.”

             In the film, newlyweds Paige (McAdams) and Leo (Tatum) were struck by tragedy shortly after their marriage. A car crash puts Paige in a coma, where she is cared for by her devoted husband. When she comes to, without any memory of her husband or their marriage, the husband must woo her and ultimately win her heart once again. 

             Tatum is a self-proclaimed hopeless romantic, and felt the script told an authentic story about a once in a lifetime love and what people will do to hold on to that. “Falling in love is the easy part!” notes Tatum. “Getting on with your life together and making sure you stay in touch and connected because life can get in the way sometimes, that’s the tough part. I think that a huge part of Leo and Paige’s journey is based on the fact that not only do they make each other intensely happy and support each other, but that they pushed each other to grow and when you do that it really does take you to the next level in a relationship and in life.”

             The actor admits that he found the role emotionally difficult at times because, as a young husband himself, he couldn’t help but imagine himself in this situation: “I hope I would be as brave as Leo is; it’s heartbreaking for him, but he has the faith to let Paige find her own way. And this role is great because Leo is so truthful about his love, he doesn’t hold it back, and I can relate to that. I love love! It’s harder to play than running around with guns and being physical, but it’s very satisfying.”

             Tatum says it made total sense to him to work so hard to win Paige back: “If my wife (actress Jenna Dewan) lost her memory of me, I wouldn’t just be like ‘Okay, alright, well, see you later, good luck’. No. I’d be fighting tooth and nail and plug away at this until it comes back. No matter what.”

             He continues: “It’s so frustrating for Leo because there’s nothing visibly wrong with his wife; she talks like Paige, she walks like Paige, everything is exactly the same, but it’s just her memory of her husband is completely gone. And it’s that much more painful that she remembered other people, her family, but just not her husband and everything they had been together.”

             For director Michael Sucsy, casting Tatum was a case of finding the soldier of love in an established movie warrior. “The Leo role is a knight in shining armor, and prior to this I’d only seen Channing’s work where he’d been in tough, military roles. So I went to meet him, and we sat down, and I called the producers afterward and I said, ‘He is the guy. He’s Leo. It’s perfect for him.’ I got the sense that his heart was bigger than his chest cavity. He’s got a huge heart, Channing does, and so does Leo, and that really comes out when he has to keep sticking with his wife through the ups and downs.”

             From Rachel McAdams’ point of view, “Channing Tatum is the perfect guy for this role because he’s a real renaissance man; chivalrous and gentlemanly. He’s playing someone who would do anything to win back his wife’s heart and that’s very much, I think, who Channing is. He’s a very heroic kind of guy, so yeah, and I know he loves love and really believes in it and I think he made Leo a really stoic character that you just fall in love with and believe that he’s definitely the rock in the relationship throughout. He added such lovely little touches to Leo.”

             All in all, Channing Tatum sums up the core of the movie’s message this way: “It’s a big deal to vow yourself for life to somebody and mean it. It really is something.”

             Tatum will next star in a contemporary motion picture adaptation of “21 Jump Street” opposite Jonah Hill. Tatum and Hill are also executive producers on the project, which is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.

             “The Vow” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit www.columbiapictures.com.ph to see the latest trailers, get free downloads and play free movie games.

RACHEL McADAMS STRUGGLES WITH MEMORY-LOSS IN “THE VOW”

Rachel McAdams

She broke countless hearts in such memorable romantic dramas as “The Notebook” and “The Time Traveler’s Wife.” Now, Rachel McAdams stars in another touching love story – Columbia Pictures’ “The Vow” opposite Channing Tatum.

             "The Vow” is the real-life story of Paige and Leo, a newlywed New Mexico couple, who were struck by tragedy shortly after their marriage. A car crash puts Paige in a coma, where she is cared for by her devoted husband. When she comes to, without any memory of her husband or their marriage, the husband must woo her and ultimately win her heart once again. 

             For director Michael Sucsy, casting Paige was tricky, because it was important for the character not to come off as too distant when adjusting to her post-coma world. “The difficult thing for an actress in approaching the role of Paige is that she comes out and she doesn’t have any connection to her husband. He’s a stranger to her. If she’s too off-putting, it’s hard to root for her. And in the case of Rachel McAdams, she’s the perfect actress to play the role, because she can tread that line of being likeable, but being convincing that she’s going through this process of having lost her memory.”

             McAdams connected with the script and her character from the beginning: “I loved the way the script unfolded. When we first meet Paige, she is a much more actualized version of herself than we see later on in the film, which is kind of a backwards way to go but exactly what I found so interesting.” She explains, “Paige has embraced the life she’s made with Leo. They’re clearly free and comfortable and supportive of each other; she appreciates his music and he encourages her sculpting. But then we find out that she’s cut off from her family and denying a big part of her life.” 

             It’s been said that a common reaction for people with brain trauma and memory loss is for them feel inadequate and frustrated. The people and things they can’t remember become associated with anxiety, frustration and confusion. This aspect also intrigued McAdams. “It stands to reason that a person would feel overwhelmed by it all and want to avoid what is making them feel bad about themselves even though others are trying to help,” she says. “It must be so frustrating for everyone in this situation! So often people have to take a stand about who they are, but then they lose important people in their life. Paige feels inadequate and frustrated by her memory loss and at one point just finds it easier to be away from Leo. This is about bridging the gap between those two things and so many of us can relate to that.”

             “It’s a great romantic love story but also about familial love too,” says McAdams. “When Paige wakes up and doesn’t recognize her husband and learns that she’s estranged from her family, she sees big holes in her life that need to be filled in. I find that idea of not knowing if you will find your way back to your destiny so interesting.” She continues, “Do you naturally gravitate towards all the things you were already going towards in your life, or does it just start from scratch and you have to build yourself up as a person all over again? And I think that’s such an interesting idea that they say you will naturally go where you were. You’ll find your way back there even though you have to relearn everything from scratch. A driving force through the whole movie is you’re waiting for this epiphany, you’re waiting for that light bulb moment and it doesn’t necessarily come.”

             Co-star Channing Tatum is so impressed by Rachel: “Look, she is one of the most brilliant and beautiful people that I’ve ever met. Not just as an actor, but as a person. She cares. She has the true talent to be able to make any line work - and we’ve got some serious big lines in this movie - which can be hard to pull off, but she just does. She has an uncanny ability to make anything sound real and amazing because she commits and believes in it. I’m in awe of her and I’ve learned so much from her.”

             “The Vow” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit www.columbiapictures.com.ph to see the latest trailers, get free downloads and play free movie games.

REDISCOVERING THE LOVE STORY IN “THE VOW”

Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams

In Columbia Pictures' new, poignant romantic drama “The Vow,” Paige (Rachel McAdams) and Leo (Channing Tatum) are a young married couple, madly in love and living fulfilling lives as artists in Chicago. One snowy night, the two fall victim to a car accident. Leo survives intact, but a head trauma erases Paige’s entire memory of her relationship with her husband. When she comes out of her coma, Leo is a stranger to her. 

             Suddenly Leo finds himself in the painful position of rebooting the relationship he’s waited his whole life for, and win his wife's love all over again. Paige has reverted mentally to the young law student she was five years earlier, before she met Leo and became an artist. In seemingly an instant, she is no longer the wife Leo knew, and on top of that, she no longer recognizes her current life. She can’t fathom why she is estranged from her parents (Jessica Lange and Sam Neill), misses her more conservative wardrobe, and doesn’t understand why she would have dropped out of university and a promising career in law. Making matters worse, Paige thinks she's still engaged to charming businessman Jeremy (Scott Speedman), who still wants her, and remains reluctant to embrace Leo, with his less conventional lifestyle making music, as anyone she might have ever loved. 

             When Paige's memory recovery appears to be a hopeless cause, Leo begins to confront his worst fear—that he's lost the love of his life and his only family. Refusing to give up, he decides to start fresh and court Paige as if they've just met, with the hope that since they fell in love once, they can do it again. It’s a challenge that will test everything he’s ever believed about love, about being true to oneself, and about that sacred part of every marriage ceremony: the vow two people make to each other.

             “The Vow” is directed by Michael Sucsy (HBO's “Grey Gardens”) from a screenplay by Abby Kohn & Marc Silverstein and Jason Katims, story by Stuart Sender.

             Everybody loves a good romance, but hasn’t every love story been told by this point in the history of cinema?

             Spyglass Entertainment Co-Chairman Roger Birnbaum admits he’d grappled with this question for years. Then a news story crossed his desk: “I read an article about a couple who’d been in a car accident and the woman never recovered her memories of the man she loved.” Immediately, the unusual nature of the story spoke to him.

             What happened to New Mexico residents Kim Carpenter and his wife Krickitt -- an initially tragic but ultimately uplifting saga of a man and woman who found each other again after a seemingly insurmountable obstacle – touched many lives when it was first reported. The Carpenters would eventually publish a book about their experience in 2000.

             Spyglass producer Jonathan Glickman describes what interested them in the Carpenters’ story. “We got excited by the idea of telling a story of a relationship that was inspired by true events that had not yet been seen, but was also relatable to anyone because of the universal themes about the need to adapt to change for any relationship to last.”

             Krickitt Carpenter, who has been happily married to Kim now for 18 years even though the period of memory she lost never returned, boils down what happened to them this way: “My husband is amazing. He did everything he could to win me back. Life is full of ups and downs and challenges, but you have to dig down and be the best that you can be.”

             Honoring the emotional reality of such an extraordinary incident required coming up with an original story that had the right balance, explains Glickman, “Because the story is so emotional and gripping, we didn’t want to make it a melodrama, but something that could elevate itself to one of those classic love stories like `The Way We Were' or `Love Story.' The script needed to be accessible, with humor and a light touch throughout, so that we don’t take ourselves so seriously.” 

             “I just thought it sounded like an incredible premise for a film,” says director Michael Sucsy. “The fact that two people are already in love when the movie starts, and then they’re ripped apart, and then they have to find a way back to each other, that really touched me. The thing that hit me the most was the fact that this could happen to anybody at any time. A lot of time when we deal with memory loss, it’s about Alzheimer’s and growing old, but I thought this was a really universal way of being able to relate to the problem.”

              “The Vow” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit www.columbiapictures.com.ph to see the latest trailers, get free downloads and play free movie games.

SNEAK PEEK: “THE VOW”

             Columbia Pictures has just released the international posters of its upcoming romantic drama “The Vow” starring Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams.

             "The Vow” is the real-life story of a newlywed New Mexico couple who were struck by tragedy shortly after their marriage. A car crash puts the wife (McAdams) in a coma, where she is cared for by her devoted husband (Tatum). When she comes to, without any memory of her husband or their marriage, the husband must woo her and ultimately win her heart once again.

             Directed by Michael Sucsy, “The Vow” is written by Abby Kohn & Marc Silverstein and Jason Katims, with story by Stuart Sender. The film also stars Sam Neill, Scott Speedman and Jessica Lange.

             “The Vow” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visitwww.columbiapictures.com.ph to see the latest trailers, get free downloads and play free movie games.