
Let’s Put a Smile on that Face
The Weekly Box Office Round-Up / Dustin Rowles
Box Office Round-Ups |
July 21, 2008 | Comments (152)
7. Space Chimps ($7.3 million): I don’t know what the rest of you were watching this weekend, but whatever it was, I refuse to believe that it was better than a low-budget cartoon about astronaut monkeys exploring a wormhole, and featuring the brilliant voice work of one Andy Samberg. What the hell is wrong with you people? It was Chimptastic!
5. Hellboy II: The Golden Army ($10 million, $56 million): Guess what happens when you open a superhero movie based on a comic book the week before The Dark Knight is released? Your movie goes from number one in the country to number five, with a 71% drop. The Golden Army wasn’t a great movie, but it deserved a better fate than this. The studio executive who had that bright idea ought to be taken out behind the woodshed and run through a wood chipper, bowels first. Hell: I could probably say the same thing for next week’s big release, The X-Files: I Want to Believe. The Dark Knight may just lay everything to waste over the next couple of weeks. By the time it’s over, the nation’s multiplexes may unintentionally look like they’re preparing for the T4 release.
4. Journey to the Center of Earth: ($11 million, $43 million): Even in the center of the fucking Earth, The Dark Knight is playing on 4,000 sold-out screens, and is expected to pass Iron Man for the top box-office draw of all time, despite the fact that the center of the Earth is largely comprised of iron (Fe) and all of its citizens look like Wall-E.
3. Hancock ($14 million; $191 million): True story: There was a line at the theater I was in, waiting for the previous Dark Knight screening to get out, that was as long as any line I’ve seen in years (granted, I attend mostly midnight or Friday morning screenings, where it’s just me and the fanboys and/or the unemployed). Every few minutes, the ticket taker would yell out, “This is the line for Dark Knight. If you have tickets for anything else, just walk around.” Each time, after she yelled it, two or three people with tickets to Hancock would walk around timidly, with their heads hung in shame, and everyone in line would point and laugh at them. By the end, I think the remaining Hancock attendees (no doubt going because their first choice had been sold out) decided just to stay in line to avoid the ridicule. The lucky ones may have been pushed into The Dark Knight by the momentum of the line, anyway.
2. Mamma Mia ($27 million): Ugh. But Amanda Seyfried sure is pretty, ain’t she?
1. The Dark Knight ( $155 million): Best single-day record of all time. Best IMAX opening of all-time. Record for the top grossing preview screenings of all time. And, of course, the record for biggest opening weekend in the history of mankind now and forever. And the best part about it is, it actually fucking deserved it, unlike the previous holder, Spider-Man 3. It’s early yet, but it also holds the top rating of all time over on IMDb, surpassing The Godfather by a healthy margin. In fact, the only people who seemed to dislike it were New Yorkers: The New York Press, The New Yorker (oh, David Denby), New York Magazine (oh, but Edelstein did love Mamma Mia), and Time Out, New York, not to mention Salon.com (huh?).
Also: Twenty-two million people watched The Dark Knight over the weekend, and my question is: What the hell were the rest of you doing? The demophobia acting up on you again?
Otherwise, there is absolutely nothing I can add that Dan didn’t write in his brilliant review except this: Go ahead and give Heath Ledger this year’s Oscar and next year’s Oscar as well. And while you’re at it, take that 2006 Oscar away from Phillip Seymour Hoffman and give it to Ledger for Brokeback Mountain. And fuck it: Give him the 2007 Oscar, too — his Joker performance was way better than Forrest Whittaker’s in The Last King of Scotland. Hell. You know what — here’s a better idea. Let’s just change the name from The Oscar to The Ledger, and instead of giving an Oscar to Ledger, give the Ledger to the runner-up.
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"Twenty-two million people watched The Dark Knight over the weekend, and my question is: What the hell were the rest of you doing?"
This is the first I'm hearing about that movie. They should have advertised it or something . . .