Alas, the avalanche of mediocre to lousy reviews, along with the continuing strength of Iron Man, dealt a nasty blow to Speed Racer on its opening day. Coming in a measly third place, the Wachowski brothers' epic family racing adventure blew a tire with a mere $6.1 million. Yes, that's right, among openers, it came in second to the inexplicably popular 'What Happens In Vegas', which appears to be a remake of that other Ashton Kutcher vehicle, 'Just Married' (that one co-starred Britney Murphy and opened at number one in January of 2004 with $17 million). This new version took in $7.1 million last night. Apparently swapping Cameron Diaz for Brittney Murphy was worth a few million over the full weekend. Look for a $21 million total. This one shouldn't have cost more than $40 million, so it should be a tidy profit for Fox in the long run.As for Speed Racer, we won't know till tomorrow whether it plays as a kids film or is just an overall flop. Still, even if it performs like Spy Kids (almost double the Friday numbers on Saturday and Sunday), it'll still come in under $30 million, which will be unfortunate for this $125 million gamble. As the title of this post
suggests, I guess Warner Bros. can blame all of their target audience staying home and playing Mario Kart Wii. Hopefully its visual innovation will help it do better overseas (both of the previous recent Warner summer films that opened on this date, Troy and Poseidon, did far better overseas than domestically). Obviously I'm partial, but I really hope that families catch on to this one in the coming weeks.For the two of you that care, Made Of Honor dropped 55% from last Friday for a $2.2 million gross. Moving on...
Number one of course is still Iron Man. Down a shocking 65%, the allegedly popular comic book adventure took in $12.5 million on it's second Friday (I guess that's what passes for legs these days). Regardless, I suspect that it'll even out a bit and possibly top the $50 million mark for the weekend (even if some number fudging has to be done). I may not care for the movie, but, assuming it crosses the $50 million mark, it'll be at least the fifth biggest second weekend that didn't fall during a holiday weekend (for whatever that's worth). It's ten-day total should be just over $175 million (likely sandwiched between The Two Towers and Harry Potter III) so it'll likely cross the $200 million mark next Friday. I really should have bought Marvel stock two weeks ago.Scott Mendelson
Interesting theory about Mario Kart stealing audiences from Speed Racer... seems like it would be true to some degree. It's even more ironic that this happened for Speed Racer and not for Iron Man (with GTA) like so many were predicting.
ReplyDeleteActually, I was being sarcastic, in explicit reference to the nonsense about GTA4 stealing Iron Man's thunder last weekend (obviously, that did not come to pass).
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