Who was anyone kidding? This allegedly summer weekend looked no different than your average March free-for-all. A three-week old kiddie picture vs. a second-tier Judd Apatow offering, an Ashton Kutcher Lionsgate movie, a fifth-rate talking animal picture and a culty horror curiosity. Forecasting any of these movies doing $20 million+ was being, hmm, adventurous, though you couldn’t blame prognosticators, who assumed that the hot weather and lack of school should equal arbitrary big numbers for someone. That’s the dirty secret of box office forecasting now that big movies can open at any point in the year: people either see shit or they don’t. Unless there’s a zeitgeisty, high-anticipation factor these days (exceedingly rare), people won’t go. Unless they do, because there’s nothing to do on a Friday. Marketing helps. Quality, and release date, tend to be irrelevant.
“Shrek Forever After” had a fairly weak debut in comparison to the other films in the series, but after this third weekend, it looks like its legs are stronger than those of any “Shrek” offering since the first. This is a small consolation for Dreamworks, who are looking at what may be the lowest-grossing film in the series, but it’s still potentially face-saving, as is the credit that comes with being #1 three weeks in a row. A deflated marketplace, to be sure – this is looking like the lowest-grossing summer in a number of years – but there’s still Hollywood value in trotting out ads three weeks after the fact trumpeting the “#1 Movie In America” chatter.
At #2, “Get Him To The Greek” opened modestly. This was an interesting picture to forecast, as some felt the Apatow gravy train ended with “Funny People.” Putting Jonah Hill in a leading role was also dicey as, while he was a supporting character in that universe, his only success as a headliner was “Superbad,” where he played, essentially, a kid. As an adult, he’s been matched up with Russell Brand, who, besides an MTV Awards hosting gig, is not much bigger now than he was as a supporting character in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” which “Greek” was spun-off from. Maybe the ads needed to play up a stronger connection to “Marshall,” which opened to almost the same numbers a couple of years ago in a less-crowded spring marketplace? Or perhaps take advantage of the presence of Diddy, a worldwide star more famous than the other two leads who has a role noticeably larger than a cameo? But then, of course, how do you bill him? Diddy? P. Diddy? Puff Daddy? Puffy Combs? Puff? When will any of those names not sound stupid on a marquee?
“Greek” at least outpaced similar competition in “Killers” for the young douchebag audience. The Ashton Kutcher-Katherine Heigl mashup reportedly cost a truly irresponsible amount of money, so a profit may be out of the question, but this project seemed secondhand from the outset with the involvement of director Robert Luketic (“Monster In Law”). Heigl’s audience didn’t show up possibly due to the overly violent nature of the ads (we imagine the soccer mom demo tsk-tsked all those guns) and the Ashton Kutcher fans showed up together for that one screening at the Cineplex 7 in Topeka after a pizza dinner, where five out of nine of them seemed to find it really funny.
The big winners of the weekend might be “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” and “Sex and the City 2.” Those would-be world-beaters would have looked like weak sisters during their second weekends against any real summer competition. Instead, both hung on with less-than-60% falls, which is solid after a holiday period. “Persia” held claim to being the global box office champ during the week, so staying alive in the top five is a nice accomplishment: the bread will be international and DVD after this. “Sex,” meanwhile, has a two-weekend tally of $73 million, underperforming worldwide and domestically compared to the original, but that’s to be expected, and the film still looks like it won’t embarrass in the long run. We question the logic in allowing a third film to happen, but when Kim Cattrall has incriminating photos of you, you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.
Debuting at #6 was “Marmaduke,” proving that some “popular” properties just shouldn’t be made into movies. The comic strip was always the least funny feature of the newspaper, especially during earthquake reports and AIDS outbreaks, so why would it be a surprise that America reacted with a distracted shrug? Anybody expecting the film to do “Garfield” numbers had precious little faith in humanity, and we imagine they have dusty collars, five o’clock shadows, and dead, dead eyes. Our kind of guy. “Iron Man 2” followed, clocking in at $291m at this weekend’s close – by Sunday night, its worldwide numbers will have eclipsed the original. Sam Rockwell: huge in Germany.
The more interesting, original and risky of the four new releases, naturally, did poorly. “Splice,” a Canadian indie picked up at Sundance, was pretty well ignored, and we’d have to say the onus falls on the general public here. The film was largely well-reviewed, especially by us, and it certainly looked different from the warmed-over bullshit being offered this weekend, and yet the few Cinemascore audiences who saw it rated it a D. For every commenter online talking about there not being original, interesting movies being released by studios, there are eight billion corresponding assholes not taking a chance on stuff like “Splice.” We take all this back if it turns out everyone stayed home nursing their Criterion DVDs, but let’s be serious here. “Splice” also stood out as the best-ever offering from Joel Silver’s Dark Castle imprint, a flop-house that hasn’t had a relevant film, or a hit, since their inception in 1999. So yeah, everybody loses here, guys.
Bollywood debut “Raajneeti” scored a per-screen average of $7k, which would have been the best average in the top ten. Opening on 124 screens, the film scored $917k, which is significantly stronger in a per-screen perspective than recent Bollywood film “Kites,” which was almost half the length, and therefore guaranteed more daily screens. “The Secret In Their Eyes” again scored a solid weekend, losing a smidgen of its audience to run its total to $4 million with a $420k three-day, while “Please Give” registered its strongest weekend yet following a solid expansion, taking a $300k tally leading to an overall $1.7 million gross. “Solitary Man” pulled in $8k per screen following a second week expansion into 22 venues, and “Exit Through The Gift Shop” continued its spectacular self-released run, with $131k this weekend and a muscular $2.2 million total.
Last weekend’s indie debut “Micmacs” was quiet in its initial frame, and with a bigger expansion, it still only totaled a $4k per-screen with $140k overall. The best per-screen average went to the historical drama “Agora,” which averaged $10.8k per screen on four screens in its second weekend, bringing its two-weekend total to $97.5k. On a $60 million budget. Maybe you should support your local arthouse…
1. Shrek Forever Shafter – $25.3 million ($183 mil.)
2. Get Him To The Greek – $17.4 million
3. Killers – $16.1 million
4. Unlikely Franchise Starter: The Sands of Time – $13.9 million ($59 mil.)
5. Sex And The City 2: The Quest For Peace – $12.7 million ($73 mil.)
6. Marmaduke – $11.3 million
7. Iron Man 2 – $7.8 million ($291 mil.)
8. Splice – $7.5 million
9. Robin Hood – $5.1 million ($94 mil.)
10. Letters To Juliet – $3 million ($43 mil.)