Box office for the Labor Day weekend was slightly higher than last year’s with George Clooney’s modestly budgeted action pic The American taking the top spot over the holiday weekend. Apparently, the generic sounding title didn’t scare off the audience for the movie. Robert Rodriguez’s latest movie, Machete, based on a fake trailer that appeared in Grindhouse came in second place with $14M. The tongue in cheek homage to 70s exploitation movies managed to deliver a better opening than the 2007 mega flop which served as its inspiration and also cost about $50M less. Takers starring Matt Dillon and Hayden Christenson Read more…
The Other Guys had a very strong debut, taking the spot with $35.6M. Will Ferrell’s decision to team up with Adam Mckay, the collaborator on his previous hits Talladega Nights and Anchorman payed off big time. Not only was the movie an audience favorite it received unanimously positive reviews from critics, with most singling both Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg for praise for their performances. After holding on to the top spot three weeks in a row Christopher Nolan’s Inception finally showed signs of cooling down. Read more…
Salt, starring Angelina Jolie as an indestructible secret agent capable of leaping from tall buildings and moving vehicles without a scratch, had a solid opening, taking in $36M for second place. However, the action thriller wasn’t able to out muscle Inception from the top spot. The success of the mind bending drama has cemented Christopher Nolan’s reputation as a director capable of turning out blockbuster films that are both critically and commercially successful. Warner Bros. executives can celebrate the fact that they will be collaborating with the director once again for Batman 3, the hotly anticipated sequel to the The Dark Knight. Read more…
Despite the fact that it had to fight for 3-D screens from The Last Airbender and Toy Story 3, Universal’s Despicable Me came out on top, taking in over $60M. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse failed to stay in the top spot for a second week, dropping 50% to second place. The tween melodrama still made an impressive, $33.7M for a grand total of $237. Robert Rodriguez’s Predators debuted with $25M in third place. The action remake cost a relatively low $40M, proving once again that Rodriguez Read more…
Summit’s strategy to open The Twilight Saga: Eclipse early last Wednesday, to cash in on the long holiday weekend, paid off. The latest installment of Stephanie Meyers‘ tween vampire melodrama took in over $175M. Its weekend total of $69M, though, is a far cry from New Moon’s $142M take in November. Despite unanimously terrible reviews, M. Knight Shymalan’s The Last Airbender was far from a disaster in second place with $40M, and a five day total of $70M. No doubt, Paramount is satisfied with its decision to convert the movie to 3-D at the last minute. The ad campaign labeled it as, “The 3-D event of the year!”; a ludicrous statement, considering the fact that the movie was converted to the format at the last minute, only after the success of Avatar and Alice in Wonderland. Read more…
There was something for kids and adults alike at the multiplex. Despite, the title, Toy Story 3 turned out to be the more mature choice for the older set than the juvenile hijinks of Grown Ups. The Pixar animated sequel easily beat out the rest of the competition for the number one spot for a third week. Adam Sandler’s latest comedy debuted in second place with $41M, thanks to a great marketing campaign that capitalized on the chemistry between the leads, who are also Sandler’s friends off screen. Fox’s big summer losing streak, which has included Marmaduke and The A-Team, continued with Knight And Day. Read more…
With no big new releases, Shrek Forever After easily took the top spot over a weak crop of new releases. Get Him To The Greek, a spin-off of Russell Brand’s pansexual rock star character that he originated in the 2008 film Forgetting Sarah Marshall, came in second with $17.1M, proving that the public’s appetite for Judd Apatow laughers has not waned. Its modest $40M budget stands in stark contrast to the other new comedy released this week. The budget for Killers, starring Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher, clocked in at whopping $75M. It debuted in third with $16.1M, thanks to a weak ad campaign that made it look like a re-run of Heigl and Kutcher’s past movies. Other new releases incuding, Marmaduke starring Owen Wilson and the well reviewed horror thriller Splice starring Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley were dead on arrival. Read more…
Robin Hood was no match for Iron Man 2, which scored another $53M in the top spot. The classic tale, which was given the Gladiator treatment by director Ridley Scott, was a misfire domestically, earning only $36M. However, worldwide the movie is a hit and made over $74M. Still, Universal has plenty of reasons to worry about the drop off in week 2. In spite of its original budget of $130, the troubled production ended up costing over $200M. The romantic weepie Letters to Juliet, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Amanda Seyfried, which scored surprisingly decent reviews, debuted in third and Queen Latifah’s low key basketball themed rom-com, Just Wright, came in fourth. Read more…
Dating back to Spiderman in 2002, the first weekend in May has changed from a dumping ground for new movies to a highly competitive start to the summer blockbuster season. Iron Man 2 continued the tradition and, even though it didn’t break any records, it also didn’t disappoint, taking in $134M. Read more…
A Nightmare on Elm Street took the top spot, with $32.2M in ticket sales. Out all of the recent releases, it’s the second movie released in 2-D, after Date Night, to open at number one. Not surprisingly after the meteoric success of Alice in Wonderland and Clash of the Titans, New Line reportedly attempted to convert the remake of the 80s horror film into 3-D until the producers protested the decision. Director Samuel Bayer told the LA Times:
We pushed back. This was shot in 2-D and was meant to be shown in 2-D. Just like I don’t want to see a lot of great movies remade — I don’t want to see a lot of them in 3-D.
The decision not to use the popular technology (which also meant forgoing the higher ticket prices that go along with it) didn’t hurt its box office Read more…
