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.
