"Whatcha thinkin' bout?" "Mmmm, I dunno, fake pot."

Even before Miley Cyrus’s LOL hit theaters this weekend, people were preparing for a bomb. Lionsgate basically never gave it a chance, shelving it for two years (it was shot in 2010), and throwing it up at 105 locations with no promotion. It probably would’ve gone direct to DVD if not for a contract provision with foreign distributors saying it had to be released on at least 100 screens domestically. The result? The film’s entire opening weekend gross came to $46,500. By comparison, The Avengers, whose actual weekend gross of $207 million exceeded the already-record-breaking early estimates, earned $47,698 per theater. Yes, more than LOL‘s entire run. Aw, I hope this doesn’t mean we won’t still get to see Miley in Allan Loeb’s I’m Like, So Undercover (yes, that is a real movie).

Some math: LOL‘s per-screen average was $440. Divide that by $11, which is about your average ticket price, and it comes out to 40 people per theater who saw LOL this weekend. The closest theater to me showing LOL had five showings per day. If we take that as about standard, multiply that by three days, fifteen showings, and that’s 40 people into 15 screenings, meaning, if my math serves (and I fully acknowledge that it might not), that the average screening of LOL had LESS THAN THREE VIEWERS (2.667). Holy shit, you could have a Yanomami take attendance at those.

There undoubtedly would’ve been more viewers if Lionsgate had actually promoted the film at all, but considering it was a movie called “LOL,” in which Miley Cyrus’s character was named “Lol,” and whose stated goal was to LOL (MOVE OVER, TYLER PERRY!), pretending it never happened was probably the smartest thing they did the entire process.

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Well it looks like Ben may have already locked up the win in our Fantasy Summer Box Office pool. Ben had The Avengers, which exceeded even Hollywood’s most coke-fueled delusions, crushing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows‘s previous opening weekend record of $168.2 million last year, and grossing $200.3 million. Reached for comment, my friend Pato, the Amazonian tribesman, said, “Holy shit! More than seven?”

Disney owns Marvel, who made The Avengers, so between this and John Carter, it sounds like they’ll juuust about break even. Nice to see those kids come out on top for a change.

Heading into the weekend, pre-release audience surveys indicated the 3-D film would have a massive domestic opening of at least $150 million, giving it one of the top five highest U.S. debuts ever. Instead, the movie soared beyond expectations, easily surpassing the $168.2 million 2011 debut of previous record-holder “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2.” The picture also raked in more money in its first three days than strong performers such as ”The Dark Knight,” “The Hunger Games” and “Spider-Man 3,” all of which collected over $150 million upon their debuts.

The film also had a phenomenal weekend overseas, where it opened in many foreign countries roughly a week ago. Playing in 52 international markets, the movie collected $151.5 million this weekend, raising its total abroad to $441.5 million. That means that after just two weeks in release, “The Avengers” has already sold $641.8 million worth of tickets at the global box office. [LATimes]

I eagerly await the inevitable shameless attempts to piggyback on this success, such as “Abraham Lincoln: Invulnerable Green Rage Monster.”

Not much of a shock in a year that saw studios release a string of uninspired turds while competing with Netflix instant and an ever-growing number of kick-ass TV shows like Game of Thrones (see also: the year’s biggest flops), but while revenue was only down 3.5 percent from last year, actual attendance hit a 16-year low. To be honest, I’m surprised it was only 16.

The year got off to a dismal start with what could be called an “Avatar” hangover, when revenues lagged far behind 2010 receipts that had been inflated by the huge success of James Cameron’s sci-fi sensation.

“There were a lot of high-profile movies that just ended up being a little less than were hoped for,” said Chris Aronson, head of distribution for 20th Century Fox, whose sequel “Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked” has been part of an under-achieving lineup of family films for the holidays. “The fall was pretty dismal. There just weren’t any real breakaway, wide-appeal films.” [TimesFreePress]

That’s part of the problem! Everyone was busy trying to make “wide-appeal films,” and what most of them ended up with was “zero-appeal films,” like Abduction. You made a dude action movie with a terrible actor only chicks like, brilliant. I’ve ranted on the subject too much already, but between the abundance of watered-down crap and the retarded release schedule where all the “good movies” are packed into the same two-week period (they do something similar with “blockbusters” during the summer but on a smaller scale), the movie studios have some problems that could be corrected fairly easily. Obviously, that’s easy for jackasses like me to type between Cheetos runs.

Also, there’s another problem with my argument: 16 years ago, the cinematic low point we’re comparing 2011 to, was 1995. Some movies that came out in 1995…

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Wifebeaters vs. Rashguards. Go on, bro, make a move.

BoxOfficeMojo released their list of 2011′s highest-grossing movies today (based on domestic box office), so if you’re a studio exec, these are the best films of the year. You may also notice that none of the top 15 are movies released in the last two weeks of the year during the awards season window when studios release all the movies aimed at actual adults at the same time. Weird how that works out, isn’t it? You’d almost think that’s a dumb strategy.

Numbers 11 through 20 below.

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It's funny because you can just never get a taxi in New York City!

This weekend marked the worst overall box office gross since September 19, 2008, as Americans only spent $67.8 million to see such instant classics like New Year’s Eve, The Sitter and some other movies that you’ll never see. Despite finishing first with $13.7 million in revenue, the biggest flop was New Year’s Eve, the insulting holiday collaboration produced by Satan [*cough* AL-QAEDA RECRUITMENT VIDEO! *cough, cough* -Vince]. The film cost $56 million to make, and I apologize if that just cause a vein to explode in your head.

And if you’re upset that New Year’s Eve still made almost $14 million, you can place the blame on women.

The movie, directed by Garry Marshall, stars Michelle Pfeiffer, Zac Efron, Robert De Niro, Halle Berry, Seth Meyers, Alyssa Milano, Jessica Biel and others. Women saw the movie in far higher numbers than men. Fellman said 70 percent of the audience was made up of women.

It is a follow-up to Marshall’s 2010 hit “Valentine’s Day,” which also featured big stars in short vignettes and went on to gross $216.5 million on a $52 million budget. (Via Yahoo!)

On one hand, I’m sort of proud that moviegoers learned from their past mistake of paying to see Valentine’s Day. But on the other hand, I’m concerned that 30% of the people who saw this film were men. I’ll hold out hope that the majority of men who saw this were being punished by their wives and girlfriends for dropping a grand at a strip club on Friday night, because that’s about the only excuse I’ll accept.

More than anything, we should hope that Garry Marshall quits it with these ensemble chick flicks that try to make us believe that holidays can still be magical. If we’re lucky, maybe his next project will be called Thanksgiving, and the entire cast gets trampled to death at a Target the next day. Or at least he can make Saturday Night Live’s The Apocalypse. [It would've done better if they'd taken my suggestion about replacing the cast with Terrence Howard in different hats. -Vince]

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