A couple of interesting things to look at from the Box Office results this weekend:
1) Rush Hour 3 pulled in $50 million. Horribly undeserved, but not unexpected. It’s an established franchise and (in my opinion) it’s coming off a solid second film. Not quite as much as the studio predicted it would make (they were thinking $60 million) but certainly not bad. But will this movie have legs? No, it won’t. Don’t expect this film to break the $150 million they paid to make it. This weekend just barely covered the cost to pay Chan’s and Tucker’s pay cheques (no, I’m not exaggerating or kidding).
2) Stardust is one of my favorite films of the year so far, which surprised me because the marketing for the film looked terrible. Well, when the marketing looks terrible, it’ll hurt your box office. Sure enough, Stardust only came in with just over $9 million
3) Bourne continues to do well. Playing against Rush Hour 3’s opening weekend Bourne sill pulled in almost $34 million. The movie has already crossed the $130 million mark
4) Transformers passed the $300 million domestically mark, and the $600 million world wide mark this weekend. Not bad for a film that some people insisted to me “will barely crawl over the $100 million point”. (You know who you are). :)
5) Skinwalkers BOMBED. The would be horror film that changed itself into a PG film (they INSISTED this thing was going to be “R” when they were filming it) came in at…. are you ready for this…. half a million. Yup, you read that right. $0.5 million. Ouch… just plain old OUCH.
6) Daddy Day Camp… well… do I need to say anything else really? Opened in 10th spot with $3.5 million
I actually saw Stardust on Sunday not having any idea what it was, who was in it, nor having heard of it before that day. But you know what? I actually came out of it having enjoyed the couple hours spent in this make believe land. It was well worth the price of admission, and even a recommendation or two.
As for Rush Hour 3, I doubt it’ll hit 100 Mil.
Hey Kurt,
Ha! Actually… i wasn’t talking about you… but I DO remember that conversation we had too. :)
And yes… he did make a great movie with the Transformers. And The Rock. but dude makes some awful shite too no doubt.
“4) Transformers passed the $300 million domestically mark, and the $600 million world wide mark this weekend. Not bad for a film that some people insisted to me “will barely crawl over the $100 million point”. (You know who you are). :)”
That would be me. I’m still reeling from how wrong I was on that one. It was the SFX, not the story – I read a quote somewhere about Bay in general that sums the high awareness of Transformers up, and ties in with your comments on stardust. “Michael Bay makes great trailers but not good movies” or something to that effect.
Since I had no interest in ‘Rush Hour’, and a close relative of mine who saw ‘Stardust’ didn’t think I would like it /get into it (note: if it was wasn’t a close relative they’d be off the Christmas List, but then again, these are the same relatives who tried to push a full frame ‘Armegeddon’ a number of Xmas years ago, even though they “forgot” I hated the film…and to give me a 1:33 version to boot…eck)
So I went to …Skinwalkers.
Now, I was going in with less that huge anticipation. But I was curious. As a lover of film, I wanted to see how bad a film can be butchered. I also needed to get off some closed up agnst, eager for a rant…but I also was interested in seeing some work by Stan Winston studios as well. I also like Rhona Mitra. In addition, It has been a long time since I seen B horror cheese on a big screen that isn’t a remake.
To be fair, Gio…it was supposed to be a R, and apparently what the filmmakers promise and what the studio decides to postpone and re-cut are two different things. It was the studio that cut it down to a PG-13 and running time, and it shows. There were some interesting ideas, but the hacked up editing made the film appear more dumb that it should be. I for one didn’t have a problem with the pistol packing gramma. I did, however, have a problem with the notion that if folks can turn into a bunch of man-eating Lon Chaney/Buffy-ish werewolves at night, why bother riding into a near deserted small town with a bunch of guns during the day?
No to little advertising, no advance critic screening, history of reschedules and studio interference.
I dunno…is the second week of August the new Hollywood graveyard?
I saw Rush Hour 3 last night and..man…wow. Just unfunny and like you said undeserving of 1st in the box office. It was predictable tht so many people saw it though.
I didn’t even know Skinwalkers came out. I’ve never seen any commercials or trailers for it. How the hell does a horror flick get a PG rating? That’s hilarious!
And good for Transformers. I hope the sequel is better(i.e. MORE SCREENTIME FOR ROBOTS)but I had a good time with it.
Whoever said TF would struggle to get too 100 million should be taken out and shot for stupidity and ignorance
I hope rush hour makes a tidy profit as i’d like to see another one….. yes i really would :).. and ill probably to impaled for this tucker doesnt really work that much but when he does he’s watchable depending on the role, jackie on the other hand he just the bee-knees and i got a lot of respect for the guy, so ya i hope this film does well