I sat next to a fidgety gay couple at my screening of Star Trek, but I thought it was just because I lived in San Francisco. Turns out it was actually part of a broader trend (THANKS, OBAMA). That trend being, that girls and youngins largely stayed away from Star Trek 2: 2 Trek 2 Furious. I guess that’s what they get for building a spaceship that looks like a flying saucer with three penises.

Trek earned $70.6 million for the weekend, which is decent, but not as much as the first, or as much as Paramount wanted or expected. Sucks to be you, bros.

While it’s usually unfair to knock a movie for opening in line with its predecessor, it certainly feels like the “disappointment” label is applicable in this case. All signs suggest the 2009 Trek is very well-liked (it has a strong 8.0 rating on IMDb) and Paramount’s marketing did a decent job walking the sequel tightrope (a balanced approach of promising more-of-the-same and offering something new). Additionally, there was four years of ticket price inflation and the addition of 3D and IMAX premiums. Based on historical comparisons, this should have added up to around $100 million for the four-day weekend, which was what Paramount was publicly forecasting going in to the weekend.

Trek‘s demographics tell an interesting story that contributes to that theory: the audience skewed heavily male (64 percent) and older (73 percent over the age of 25). In comparison, the first movie did a better job reaching women (only 60 percent male) and younger audiences (only 65 percent over 25). [BoxOfficeMojo]

It would’ve had more female viewers, but a lot of girls got left on the curb when they kept calling it “Star Wars.” It’s just as well, they probably would’ve just sat there texting the whole time anyway.

My guess is, they didn’t sell the villain enough. Iron Man 3 made $175 million opening weekend, and that was at least advertised as Iron Man fighting The Mandarin. Star Trek 2 had the crew that we already knew, plus an unnamed British dude with really messy bangs (“Run for your lives! He’s all drippy!”) JJ Abrams likes to keeps his projects all secrety, like he did with his Trek fanboy handjob reveal halfway through this one, but that probably works against you somewhat when it comes to makin’ money. To extend the metaphor, secret handjobs are nice, but you make a lot more cash when you just shout “Hey! Over here! Handjobs!”

Read the rest of this entry »

This statement has a lot of caveats, but we’ll ignore them for now because it’s a fun story: this weekend, a film adaptation of the great American novel earned more than $50 million on the same weekend a Tyler Perry-produced romantic comedy earned less than $5 million. So this is what pleasant surprise feels like. Huh. Neat.

1) Iron Man 3, BV $72,472,000 Total: $284,893,000
2) The Great Gatsby, WB $51,115,000
3) Pain and Gain, Paramount. $5,000,000 Total: $41,608,000
4) Tyler Perry Presents Peeples, LGF $4,850,000
5) 42, WB $4,650,000 -Total: $84,732,000
6) Oblivion, Universal $3,864,000 Total: $81,655,000
7) The Croods, Fox $3,600,000 Total: $173,215,000
8) The Big Wedding, Lionsgate, $2,500,000 Total: $18,288,000
9) Mud, Roadside Attractions, $2,343,000 Total: $8,363,000
10) Oz The Great and Powerful, BV $802,000 Total: $229,985,000 [Indiewire]

I’d like to think the general populace was just too smart for a movie that once was called “Meet the Peeples,” which sounds like a fake Tyler Perry movie name generated by computer, and that sat on the shelf for a few years before it was released and generally looked pretty horrible, but let’s be honest, none of those things have ever slowed Tyler Perry down before. More than likely, his cultish fan base just didn’t realize or recognize it as a “Tyler Perry movie,” since he didn’t really do much to it creatively beyond stick his name on it. Peeples reportedly cost around $15 million, and almost certainly won’t make that back. It’d be nice if this slowed Tyler Perry down at all, or forced him to try to make better movies, but shit rolls downhill, so most likely it’ll probably just hurt the talented people who agreed to be in it, like Craig Robinson and David Alan Grier and Kerry Washington. Hopefully it won’t hurt much, because Craig Robinson is awesome. He nodded “sup” to me once at the Hollywood Improv. Cool story, huh.

Read the rest of this entry »

Haha, quit playing around, you guys.

Laremy jumped off to a commanding lead in this year’s Fantasy Summer Box Office contest, as his first pick Iron Man 3 hand rocketed its way to a $175.3 million opening in North America, good for second all time behind The Avengers $207.4 million last summer. But we all saw this coming, let’s not start acting like Laremy is some kind of sage here. Iron Man 3 is to this summer’s box office what Barry Sanders was to Madden ’92, and any butt-fingering chimpanzee worth his own back ticks would’ve chosen it first. (Look, you do not want Laremy to get a big head, trust me on this).

Iron Man 3‘s $175.3 million debut is a huge leap over Iron Man 2‘s $128.1 million [and Iron Man's $98.6]. That’s a remarkable achievement given the dodgy history of three-quels—nearly all of them decline from their predecessor—and Iron Man 2′s questionable reputation. The main reason for this is simple: audiences viewed Iron Man 3 more as follow-up to The Avengers, which is almost universally beloved, than as a sequel to Iron Man 2. [BoxOfficeMojo]

I guess I can buy that the public saw it as a follow-up to The Avengers, since the average Joe Buttcrack and Charla Cheesesnack don’t think about stuff like Shane Black coming on to direct. Though for me, there’s a nice synergy to the idea that the best of the three Iron Man movies is also the highest opening. (*tattoos “SHANE BLACK 4 EVA” on chest with exacto knife*)

Weekend Top Ten and Fantasy standings below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a fun fact to share with your disbelieving friends/cats: Before this weekend, do you know what was the highest-opening baseball movie of all time? ANSWER: The Benchwarmers, starring David Spade, Rob Schneider, and Napoleon Dynamite. Tread not on mine monocle friends, for in my surprise it has fallen. See? This is why I hate baseball. Anyway, 42 has since stolen the title (just like Jackie Robinson stealing a base!), which is nice, as it seems by all accounts to have been a perfectly fine movie. A nice movie for nice people.

1. 42 (Warner Bros.) – $27.3 million
2. Scary Movie 5 (The Weinstein Company) – $15.1 million
3. The Croods (Fox/DreamWorks) – $13.2 million ($143 mil.)
4. G.I. Joe: Retaliation (Paramount) – $10.8 million ($102 mil.)
5. Evil Dead (Sony) – $9.5 million ($41 mil.)
6. Jurassic Park 3D (Universal) – $8 million ($31 mil.)
7. Olympus Has Fallen (FilmDistrict) – $6.8 million ($81 mil.)
8. Oz: The Great and Powerful (Disney) – $4.8 million ($219 mil.)
9. Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor(Lionsgate) – $4.3 million ($45 mil.)
10. The Place Beyond The Pines (Focus) – $3.8 million ($5.1 mil.) [Indiewire]

Meanwhile, while 42 was out-pacing expectations, Scary Movie 5 was “bombing” or “tanking” depending on who you asked. True, $15.1 million is well down from Scary Movie 4‘s $40.2 million and Scary Movie 3‘s $48 million, but it also only cost $20 million to make, and even that was probably only because Lindsay Lohan was in it and robbed them blind. $15 million is a step in the right direction, but I don’t want to live in a world where Simon Rex lazily regurgitating jokes from 7 years ago earns its budget back. I want to live in a world where everyone wears foam cowboy hats with their names on them and cats are currency, but that’s another story.
Read the rest of this entry »

As we all know, 2012 was the year C-Tates broke, with the hardest twerkin man in show business scoring huge hits with The Vow ($196 million worldwide), 21 Jump Street ($202 million), and Magic Mike ($167 million). Who would’ve thought 21 Jump Street would get a sequel? People liked him so much that Paramount pushed the release of GI Joe: Retaliation back almost a year just five weeks before its originally-scheduled opening. Well guess what? It made $41.2 million over the weekend and Paramount has already ordered the sequel. He is risen.

The G.I. Joe sequel grossed an estimated $41.2 million this weekend, which ranks as the second-highest Easter debut ever behind 2010′s Clash of the Titans ($61.2 million). Including Thursday, the movie has earned $51.7 million; that’s a bit below G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra‘s $54.7 million three-day start in August 2009. For its three major stars, this is also a potent opening: it ranks third-highest for Channing Tatum, second-highest for The Rock, and it’s remarkably the top debut ever for a Bruce Willis movie.

I don’t what part of that last sentence is more incredible, that Bruce Willis’s highest-opening movie is GI Joe 2, or that Channing Tatum already has two higher-opening movies than Bruce Willis. Bruce Willis! That’s incredible. He’s been a movie star since C-Tates was sagging his diapers.

Elsewhere, Tyler Perry continued to print money with Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor, starring Kim Kardashian, which earned $22.3 million. Can you believe that’s not a joke? I’m still not convinced.

It’s also Perry’s ninth movie ever to open over $20 million; the only two other directors who have that many $20 million debuts are Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis. [BoxOfficeMojo]

Read the rest of this entry »