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Fastestest and Furiousest Wins the Giant Ass Panda
The Weekly Box-Office Report /
Dustin Rowles
Box Office Round-Ups | April 5, 2009 | Comments (40)
5. I Love You, Man ($7.8 million; $49 million): Rudd’s latest has had surprisingly strong legs, losing only 38 percent of its 2nd week gross, setting I Love You, Man up to surpass both Jason Segal and Paul Rudd’s previous leading man efforts (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, $63 million; Role Models, $67 million).Can you believe that Rudd is only three movies removed from the two worst movies he’s ever made: Over Her Dead Body and I Could Never Be Your Woman? It could’ve gone either way. Thank freakin’ God for Knocked Up.
4. Knowing ($8.1 million; $58 million): A pretty steep 45 percent drop-off from its opening weekend, Knowing will probably head toward $75 million or so before drifting off to DVD land. That’s good for the 14th best Disaster film of all time, and sets it up to eventually take over the number 11 spot, far behind Godzilla at number 10 with $136 million. I do think, however, that among movies with gross, shoehorned, and lame Biblical metaphors, it leads the pack. Also, among apocalyptic movies with bunnies and meadows.
3. The Haunting in Connecticut ($9.5 million; $37 million): Haunting had the biggest fall-off among the top ten returners this week, dropping 58 percent — par for horror flicks — although it will probably inch its way high enough to surpass Firewall and become Madsen’s second biggest film to date, behind Sideways ($71 million). Does anyone else remember her from 1987’s Long Gone? My God: I wore that VHS, recorded-off-of-HBO tape out when I was 14, although I still couldn’t tell you if it was a good baseball movie. I was too smitten with Madsen to care. That said, Madsen has had 79 film credits to her name, and I’d bet you’d be hard-pressed to find another Oscar-nominated actor (save for Cuba Gooding, Jr.) with as many low-rent projects on her resume.
2. Monsters vs. Aliens ($33.5 million; $105 million): With $105 million after only two weeks, Monsters vs. Aliens, by next weekend, will have surpassed Bolt to become the biggest 3D movie of all time. Of course, according to Michael Bay, 3D is just a “gimmick,” which means all these 3D movies will eventually pass. Like talkies. And digital sound. Also, Michael Bay is an idiot. But you know who the bigger idiots are? The folks at 20th Century Fox, who decided it’d be a good idea to force exhibitors to supply their own 3D glasses to see their movie. Brilliant! (It costs about $1 million to pay for all the 3D glasses, or about .005 percent of a 3D movie’s marketing budget). Great idea. That’ll encourage more theaters to switch over to 3D projection. Just make them pay more, which they can pass along to the consumer on top of the already premium 3D ticket prices. Well done, Fox.
Regal Theaters (the largest theater chain in America) has already said it wouldn’t supply them, stating it’d refuse to run their movies in 3D if it had to pay for the glasses. Nevermind that Regal has a monopoly on theater choices in many parts of the country, which would effectively rule out the possibility of seeing these movies in 3D for a lot of theatergoers.
1. Fast & Furious ($72.5 million): The biggest opening of the year. The biggest April opening of all time. And the biggest Spring opening of all time. What happened, folks? I thought we’d collectively turned a corner last July when The Dark Knight eventually moved to second highest-grossing film, all time. I thought that quality was going to become part of the equation. No? America is still willing, even during a recession, to throw its money at a good marketing campaign? It’s damn shame. I saw two movies on Friday. This one, and on Dan’s recommendation, Adventureland, which is as perfect as Dan described, and one of the best coming-of-age movies to come out in years. How much did it make? $6 million. Six fucking million. Meanwhile, throw a couple of bad actors behind the wheel of a fast car, shake the camera violently, and toss in some thong-ass, and your movie can make 9 times the box-office gross with one-tenth of the thought and effort. Nice.
It’s pathetic. And gross. And sad, because you can pick any five minutes of Greg Mottolla’s movie, and it’s worth more than all four of the Fast and Furious movies. Ridiculous.
Comments
Posted by: kilanoza at April 5, 2009 5:40 PM
Sad... Just plain sad...
Should we blaim MTV?
Yeap...