(This is gonna be a hell of a bris)
Inglourious Basterds predictably took the top spot with $37.6 million, but unpredictably took in quite a bit more than expected and earned Quentin Tarantino his biggest international opening weekend so far, according to Nikke Finke. The film has already earned back approximately half of it’s budget. I kind of wish I didn’t want to see this movie, so I could recycle my own joke and say, “I can’t wait to nazi this.”
District 9 dropped almost 50% in it’s second week, earning $18.9 million. It has now grossed 2.5 times its original budget. G.I. Joe dropped 44% in its third week, taking in $12.5 million. It’s now earned back almost 70% of its budget. I kind of want to see this in the cheap theater so I can feel like Luke Wilson in Idiocracy. I’ll just feast my eyes at the human panoply surrounding me and then raise my fists and yell, “I am the king of the windowlickers! Bring me shiny things and gobstoppers, peasants!”
Among the other films opening last weekend, Shorts opened at #6 with $6.6 million, Post Grad was #10 with $2.8 million, and My One and Only opened on four screens with a per screen average of $15,175. IFC sent Five Minutes of Heaven to only one theater last weekend, where it earned $5,200. Liam Neeson reportedly called IFC’s receptionist to leave a message: If you send my film to more screens next weekend, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.
(full top 10 below)
District 9, which cost $30 million to make, earned the top spot at the box office last weekend with $37 million. Here’s the story behind this surprise hit and most-tweeted topic on Friday (la dee da) via Nikke Finke:
District 9 director Neill Blomkamp was supposed to be Peter Jackson’s helmer on Halo, which went down in flames. But Peter and his partner Fran Walsh kept Neill in New Zealand to develop his short film, Alive In Joburg. Jackson then turned it into a hard-cover faux graphic novel. That book went to Peter’s longtime manager Ken Kamins to arrange financing and set it up as a film. Ken made the decision to go indie, [...]. The result is not just another Amy Pascal pic starring Adam or Will but, according to the 88% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, an imaginative, creative, cutting-edge pic made outside the studio system.
That’s right. Another graphic-novel-turned-movie. Oh well, at least it wasn’t a gum wrapper or a board game.
G.I. Joe, predictably dropped about 60% in its second week to take the #2 spot with $22.5 million. The Time Traveler’s Wife took third place with a disappointing $19.2 million weekend (the studio expected at least $25 million).
Among the other films opening last weekend, The Goods opened at #6 with $5.35 million. Bandslam took 13th place with $2.25 million, earning only $1,061 per screen (ha ha). Ponyo opened at #9 with $3.5 million. It Might Get Loud made $14,429 per screen in limited release. (full top 10 below)
Yeah, so there’s going to be a G.I. Joe sequel. And that’s apparently such a minor and unsurprising news item that the LA Times all but breezed through it in a longer article about box office grosses:
[G.I. Joe's box office was] certainly good enough for Paramount to claim victory, however, and start thinking about the future. The studio’s vice chairman, Rob Moore, confirmed that a sequel will soon go into development. The film’s lead actors are contractually obligated to return for another film, though director Stephen Sommers is not.
Well I hope Stephen Sommers doesn’t ask for too much money, and can find time in his schedule between The Mummy 6 or The League of Extraordinary Werewolves or whatever. Otherwise, I don’t know what could happen to this franchise. But as long as Channing Tatums is there to mumble and stare vacant eyed while Marlon Wayans slips on banana peels I’m sure everything will be fine.
Despite their epically sleazy the-soldiers-who-defend-your-freedom-want-you-to-see-it marketing campaign, Paramount made $56.2 million on their G.I. Joe movie. The sad thing about even the most blatantly phony, transparent pandering is that it usually works. Oh hey look, Toby Keith bought a new cowboy hat. Anyway, it’s not Transformers money, but it’s enough for execs to say “well look how well G.I. Joe and Transformers did!” as they try to defend their decision to greenlight the next movie based on a board game or parlor trick. Thing is, though G.I. Joe and Transformers are technically based on a toy, they also both had old cartoons and the accompanying nostalgia on which to draw. If the View-Master movie does anywhere near this kind of business, I promise I’ll chug a pint of hobo piss.
Elsewhere, Julie and Julia was number two with $20.1 million. Surprising that there were so many people that couldn’t just wait to see it on a plane. Hard to tell if it will hold or drop immediately, but critics are already calling it the plane-yest movie of the summer.
Most everything else made a not-particularly-noteworthy $7 or $8 million (though Funny People declined a sharp 65%). And pour a little beer out on a hooker for The Hangover, which dropped out of the top 10 for the first week since its release. Though at -35%, it had the smallest decline for wide releases for the fifth weekend in a row, and still managed the number 11 spot. It just goes to show, people really want to see Zach Galifianakis get blown by an old chick.
New in theaters this week:
G.I. Joe
Paramount hired a director known for making crappy movies to make this crappy movie, then they made G.I. Joe an international police force so they could sell it to foreign markets, and then, to deflect criticism when they wouldn’t show their crappy movie to critics, they all put on flag pins and tried to perpetuate that whole red state/blue state bullsh-t again. Class-y. I will however give them credit for calling the movie “The Rise of Cobra” and then putting out a commercial in which the only line of dialog is “What did you say your unit was called?” I call mine Sergeant Slaughter.
Julia & Julia
Nora Ephron’s film telling the parallel stories of Julia Child (Meryl Streep) working her way up the ranks of French cooking and Julie Somethingorother (Amy Adams) writing a blog about Julia Child. Why do we need to see the second one again?
A Perfect Getaway
Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich are on their Honeymoon in Hawaii. But will their dream vacation (*RECORD SCRATCH*) become a waking nightmare? (*mouthfart*)
I Sell the Dead (limited)
Dominic Monaghan sells corpses to Ron Perlman. Doesn’t look like my cup o’ tea, probably because I only drink whiskey. Whiskey and chainsaws.
Paper Heart (limited)
I keep calling this one “When Harry Meta Sally” because I came up with that a few months ago and someone told me it was clever (thanks, mom). Anyway, Michael Cera and Charlyne Yi fall in love but it’s awkward, because they are awkward people. I don’t know if I’ll end up seeing this this weekend but I kinda wanna go eat hot wings with the little black girl. She seems like my type, and by that I mean I think I could overpower her.
Cold Souls (limited)
Paul Giamatti stars in the Charlie Kaufman-esque story of a guy who sells his soul, because he’s so drained from rehearsals for Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. A character obsessed with Chekhov earns a special, limited edition “dismissive slow wank” from me.
