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Through two months, 2013 has been a pretty awful year for major motion pictures at the box office thus far. If you look at a rundown of the year’s biggest films to date, you’ll see that only Identity Thief, a comedic caper about Jason Bateman and Rex Reed’s tiny penis chasing Melissa McCarthy all over the place, has topped the $100 million mark this year.
That means that star-driven action movies like A Good Day to Die Hard ($63 million), Snitch ($31 million) and Parker ($17 million) have been big old turkey turds at the U.S. box office, while unusual entries like the comedic zombie tale Warm Bodies ($63 million) and horror films like Mama ($71 million) and Safe Haven ($62 million) have been surprising successes. Wait, what? Safe Haven isn’t a horror film? But it stars Josh Duhamel and Julianne Hough and is based on a Nicholas Sparks novel. I can’t think of anything more terrifying than that.
The biggest concern* lies with the year’s first huge budget film, Jack the Giant Slayer, which had a $195 million budget and has only grossed $43 million through its first two weeks. However, before any Hollywood execs go burying themselves to the neck into mountains of cocaine, Oz the Great and Powerful may have pulled us out of this year’s early funk, grossing $80 million in the U.S. and Canada this weekend, with an additional $65 million overseas. Although, while $145 million might sound awesome, Oz cost $215 million to make, so Disney would probably appreciate it if you took your brats to see it 12 more times.

*The actual biggest concern lies with Side Effects only grossing $29 million. Channing Tatum had three films eclipse the $100 million mark last year, but there was a big difference between this year and last. In 21 Jump Street, The Vow and Magic Mike, C-Tates was the star. He’s only a supporting playboy to Jude Law’s HNIC in Side Effects. This is the same reason I expect GI Joe: Retaliation to bomb. Well, that and the Rock and Bruce Willis in a horrible movie about toys. But at least if they didn’t kill off C-Tates in the opening minutes, GI Jizzy Jeff Deuce: CLICK CLICK BOOM 2 DA DOME would gross about $600 million. I ain’t tryin’ 2 hate the playa, Hollyweird. I B hatin’ da game.



Eh, never underestimate the power of the foreign box office. I was bored yesterday and went to go see Hansel and Gretel: Who Wants to See Gemma Arterton in a Leather Bustier For 90 Minutes and was curious about how much money it’s made. Off a 50 million budget it so far has made 197 million worldwide. Die Hard 5: Proof That It’s Now Just About Getting a Paycheck had made 223 million so far.
Simply put: Hollywood has nothing to worry about because foreign markets whose native language isn’t English can’t tell the difference between a good and bad movie.
On the other hand that wasn’t enough to save John Carter, they must have some discretion.
Actually, John Carter did great overseas.It ended up earning $282M total on a $250M budget. It’s not the catastrophe everyone spells it out to be. That’s just the mob mind in action. Everyone was ready to lynch one of them highfalutin fancy-pantsed Pixar shitbirds. The fate of that movie was decided before it even came out.
And it’s not even close to being a bad movie. My kids love it. I love it. Most people I know who actually saw it liked it quite a bit. It’s no worse than any of the Star Wars movies – in fact, I’d say it’s better than at least 4 of them. It’s just that no one knew what it was. Taylor Kitsch is about as good as Mark Hamill.
It was marketed very, very badly.
I also Loved the Shit out of John Carter so there!
Twin, I want you to become the official creator of honest movie titles henceforth! Also, how was Gemma Arterton in the bustier?
I watched Die Hard 5: Fuck You, Pay Me in a theater in Seoul, and people were pretty pissed when they were leaving. Nobody was happy about that hunk of garbage.
John Carter’s problem was marketing and noone knew what the movie was about (which goes back to the forementioned bad marketing). It didn’t help that the movie ended up going waaay over budget either.
And @DaRooster, Gemma Arterton was fantastic in a bustier, the only issue was that some lame plot involving witches and Jeremy Renner kept getting in the way of looking at her in it.
It would’ve done even better overseas if they’d just replace James Franco with Johnny Depp.
Per Sam Rami, RDJ was choice #1, obvs. 2nd choice was Mr-overseas-boxoffice-king himself Johnny Depp, but he was too busy with overseeing Bird Hat CGI for Lone Ranger.
I took my daughter to see it this weekend. We liked it – well, she really liked it. But I really liked plenty of mediocre shit when I was kid just because it was time with my pops.
Really, the weakest parts of the movie were Franco and Kunis. They just felt like… marginally talented sitcom actors in a movie that needed something more. I like ‘em both fine, but not for this kind of picture.
Zach Braff coulda done better in the lead, IMO.
@Fish In A Barrel: I’m still not used to seeing RDJ and thinking Robert Downey Jr. – I still read it as Richard D. James which, as the lead in the next Oz film, would be absolutely mesmerizing if you could get Chris Cunningham to direct. Imagine: the entire Lollipop Guild with RDJ faces.
Hell, I’d sacrifice my firstborn to see Iron Man III recast with the Windowlicker crew.
The thing with movies like this is it will not drop off terribly next week, and I imagine will be in theatres for the next 10 months… at least it will feel that way.
I finally got around to seeing Silver Lining Playbook on the weekend and thought it was pretty damn good. J-Law is amazing.
Side Effects needed much heavier marketing than it received. I’m sure it’s the best movie to come out so far this year, and it has all of the things audiences love.
I totally agree.
Yeah, I hadn’t even heard of it until I read Vince’s review, and by the time I actually saw the listing for it at my local theater, I had already forgotten the movie even existed. I also don’t recall ever seeing a single commercial or trailer for it. It’s a very solid movie – Greed, you’re probably right that it’s the best movie of the year so far. I hate when movies like that bomb, because it just discourages studios from making more of them.
I will say though, they kind of had a Catch-22 with the marketing. If they heavily advertised Tatum, it would have drawn in one crowd while alienating the other (as well as there being one other issue with that strategy). If they didn’t heavily advertise him, they’d be wasting his name power. Still, both of those would be preferable to no marketing. Especially when a large portion of people would see Tatum’s name and instantly write it off.
GI Jizzy Jeff Deuce: CLICK CLICK BOOM 2 DA DOME
All movies should be named this.