“Yooooooooou arrrrrrrrren’t funnnnnnnnnny…”

When the original Scary Movie opened on July 7, 2000, it earned a very respectable weekend total of $42 million in the thick of the summer movie season, on its way to a lifetime gross of more than $157 million. Unfortunately, the sequel and second collaboration between the Wayans Brothers and Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg didn’t fare as well, earning just $20 million on its opening weekend and about $71 million overall. So when it came time for the third installment, Dimension wised up and pushed the release back to October.

The studio also pushed out the Wayans brothers and brought in David Zucker, Charlie Sheen and Simon Rex, while allowing Seltzer-Freebird to stay on as the writers, and Marlon Wayans has been pissed off about that to this day. Back in January, Marlon told TMZ that he wipes his ass with Scary Movie residual checks, and he also told Hitflix that Scary Movie 5 looks like an episode of Celebrity Rehab, which, to be fair, is accurate.

But Marlon’s angst toward his old franchise also stems from his belief that “there’s an art to comedy” and he is correct. So then why the hell is he making A Haunted House 2?

Read the rest of this entry »

Did you think I’d forgotten about This Week in Posters this week? No such luck, punks! We’re back, with the latest in indies, Jason Statham, Vince Vaughn, Fake Vince Vaughn, and the latest trend in posters: stripes!

Afternoon Delight: Penis! Vagina! Bukkake double team! No wait! Two chicks going ass to ass with a tranny! Hold on, is this not a Rorschach? Anyway, I’m hoping this has lots of sex. But knowing Sundance, it’ll probably just be a sad French lady with a giant muff who smokes lots of cigarettes.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Just relax and let the laziness take you, I learned this from the Happy Madison guys.”

Not surprisingly, Zero Dark Thirty waterboarded surfed a wave of good and bad publicity that’s been building for months to a $24 million gross for the weekend. Analysts say an eventual gross near $100 million is a possibility, though Sony shouldn’t start patting themselves on the back just yet, considering that other Navy SEAL movie, with no famous actors, directors, awards or acclaim, actually out-opened Zero Dark last February, with $24.5 million.

Meanwhile, remember the trailer for that Wayans spoof that we’ve been bombarded with all they way through the holiday season? The one with jokes such as “fart,” “that kitchen has a lot of pots,” “the psychic is a gay,” and “Yeah, I kicked you in yo ghost balls!”? That one? Yeah, that one made $18.8 million dollars. I don’t even know anymore, man.

In second place, A Haunted House grossed an estimated $18.8 million from 2,160 locations (which translated to a higher per-theater average than Zero Dark Thirty). [!!! -Ed.] That’s the best start for a spoof movie since 2006′s Date Movie ($19.1 million), though it’s generally in line with Epic Movie ($18.6 million) and Meet the Spartans ($18.5 million) as well. Using these as comparable titles, A Haunted House should ultimately wind up with between $35 and $40 million, making this a solid early-year performer for distributor Open Road Entertainment.

The audience was 58 percent female, 48 percent African American, and 30 percent Latino, and they gave the movie a weak “B-” CinemaScore. [BoxOfficeMojo]

That’s right, even a self-selecting group that thought seeing A Haunted House was a good idea, based on all the fart beds and ghost balls, even those people thought it was just so-so. Let us remember, Kevin James’ Here Comes the Boom received an A cinemascore. Simply stunning. If you want to make lots of money writing comedy, just remember two things: never self-edit, and never spend more than 30 seconds writing a joke.

Read the rest of this entry »

The latest installment of ScreenJunkies’ Honest Trailers series hit today, celebrating the release of Paranormal Activity 4 with an honest trailer for Paranormal Activity. Having never seen one of these movies, it seems like an accurate critique, based on the negative things I thought about it while watching the trailers. Maybe? I dunno. I’ll be honest, I haven’t devoted a ton of thought to the Paranormal Activity series. Those two douches on the Discovery Channel forever ruined grainy ghost footage for me. Also, you know what’s scarier than ghosts? Just being dead after you die.

Meanwhile, on the same day, we have a new trailer for Marlon Wayans’ Paranormal Activity parody, A Haunted House. How often do we get to compare Hollywood and the internet head to head like this?

Read the rest of this entry »