Lightning can’t strike the same place twice, but ‘Thunder’ can do it three times in a row. Or maybe that’s something that Simple Jack would come up with. “Tropic Thunder” was the big winner at the American Box Office this weekend, the worst and most dismal box-office haul, in an otherwise extremely successful summer for the movie industry.
Ticket sales were abysmal and fell to a new record while weekend attendance slipped to its lowest point in three years.
‘Thunder’ only dropped $5 million from the second weekend total for a $14.3 mill take. And with it’s domestic cumulative of $83 million and foreign receipts still coming in, it will most likely be able to break even once the DVD is released if not slightly better. (It had a reported production budget north of $125 million.) The Ben Stiller comedy beat out four new awful movies and one decent one as well as many others to the top of the chart. The only other thing really worth mentioning is that “The Dark Knight” rose up one spot from last week, making it the number three movie this weekend. The Vin Diesel disaster, “Babylon A.D.” took the number two spot with only $12 million. “The House Bunny” dropped to number four ($10.2 mil) and surprisingly, the out of place late Summer thriller, “Traitor,” took the fifth spot beating out the three new comedies. “Disaster Movie” opened at number seven with $6.7 million. Thank you pre-teens! Hopefully, once and for all, those fertile grandmothers (Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg) will stop making movies. “College” opened at number 15 and “Hamlet 2” moved up from 22 to 17 on the box-office chart.
