Weekend Box Office (03/24/13) part II: Olympus Has Fallen rises while Admission fails and Spring Breakers amuses.

No matter what you think of the film, the $30.5 million debut of Olympus Has Fallen this weekend is very good news for those who want their action films to be R-rated.  With Arnold, Sly, and Jason all flaming out and only the terrible A Good Day To Die Hard opening well, we needed an original R-rated action film to reestablish their viability. I may be forgetting something, but this this is among the top R-rated action openings for a non-sequel since the $50 million debut of Wanted back in June 2008 (possible exceptions: Inglorious Basterds which opened with $37 million in August 2009 and the sci-fi drama The Book of Eli which debuted with $32 million in early 2010).  The film is easily Film District's biggest debut ever, with a solid A- from Cinemascore and a strong 3.0x weekend multiplier.  The concept is a pretty obvious winner, so obvious that I'm amazed it hasn't been done before (yet it's only the first of two, with White House Down opening this summer).  The obvious appeal of the narrative plus a game cast of recognizable players (Gerald Butler, Morgan Freeman, Aaron Eckhart, Angela Bassett, Melissa Leo, etc.).  It'll take a hit next weekend from G.I. Joe: Retaliation, but it should recover due to the fact that it's one of the most insanely violent R-rated action films this side of Starship Troopers and thus will provide the kind of carnage that a PG-13 G.I. Joe movie cannot.  Hopefully this finally gets the undervalued Antoine Fuqua onto the various 'hot lists' next time a studio goes hunting for a tent pole director.

Weekend Box Office (02/26/12): Act of Valor scores big, Good Deeds opens low for Tyler Perry, while Wanderlust and Gone tank.

In yet another stupidly crowded weekend at the box office (in such a crowded marketplace where only one new release debuted on more than 2,200 screens), we had yet another solid surprise, as the low-budget Act of Valor topped the box office with a $24.4 million debut.  Relativity bought the $12 million production for  $13 million and then spent another $30-$40 million to market it.  Said marketing campaign highlighted the film's lone quirk - that it starred actual Navy Seals and allegedly presented a more accurate picture of how such soldiers conduct themselves in the battlefield (they also bought a couple Super Bowl ads and screened the crap out of the film all over the country prior to release).  Of course, such lofty attempts at realism didn't prevent a Perils of Pauline subplot (Roselyn Sanchez plays a kidnapped CIA operative who must be rescued by these manly men from torturous bad guys), but the marketing campaign certainly played on the idea that this film was more 'real' than the likes of Navy Seals.  The picture earned an A from Cinemascore, which means that audiences obviously didn't mind the fact that the real life Seals are better at killing people than the whole 'acting' thing.  As somewhat expected, it played best in regions that have military bases and places that certain parties dismissively refer to as 'fly-over country' (don't be that asshole).  

Go big or go home. Why, in an era when mainstream films are stuck in limited release, the relative successes of The Debt and Our Idiot Brother matter.

Normally I would not spend a column championing a small $5 million comedy that is on track to gross over $30 million as anything other than a 'gee, I like when that happens'.  And while there are many reasons to praise the $14 million six-day opening of The Debt, the most surprising thing about it is that Focus Features debuted the film wide enough to achieve that kind of opening in the first place.  In a movie-going world where any number of seemingly mainstream pictures die in the art-house, peaking at 500 screens and unable to capitalize on mainstream buzz or word of mouth, kudos to the Weinstein Company and Focus Features for just opening these movies the old fashioned way.  They may have sensibilities that differ from the most popular versions of their respective genre.  Our Idiot Brother is (allegedly) a bit more painful and quirky than a Judd Apatow film, while The Debt is closer to John le Carré than Jason Bourne.  But they are both damn-well mainstream entertainments, and both films will be quite profitable because their respective studios treated them as such.  

Weekend Box Office (08/28/11): Summer 2011 ends with a Hurricane, kneecapping three new releases (Colombiana. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, Our Idiot Brother) and all holdovers.

It's a tough thing to accurately gauge how well a movie would have done if not for an unforeseen variable, such as in this case a massive hurricane that threatened much of the East Coast of the country and shut down hundreds of movie theaters over the weekend.  As such, it feels a little unfair to pick on movies that didn't open all-that well, since who is to say how they would have performed under normal conditions.  So, for the sake of not kicking people while they are down, this summary will be focused on the positive developments over the weekend.

While it was not number one this weekend, Sony's EuroCorp pick-up Colombiana opened with $10.3 million for a solid second place.  The Luc Besson-produced vehicle would likely have opened between $12-$15 million without the storm issues.  But even that smaller number is worth noting.  Point being, the film confirms the genuine bank-ability of Zoe Saldana, who co-starred in Avatar and Star Trek in 2009 and had supporting roles in The Losers, Takers, and Death at a Funeral in 2010.  Saldana's face was pretty much the entire poster, and the marketing campaign centered entirely around her.  This is among the larger opening weekends that I can recall for a female-led pure action picture (as opposed to sci-fi/horror) that isn't based on a comic book or a video game. Even with the diminished numbers, this is still a larger opening weekend than the far-more high profile Conan the Barbarian, Fright Night, and One Day from last weekend.  Point being, there is indeed a market for action pictures starring minorities and/or women. Maybe the market isn't big enough to support $100 million+ productions, but as long as the budget is reasonable (in this case, $40 million), we damn-sure should be seeing more of this kind of thing.  The film earned an A- from Cinemascore and played 65% over-25 and 57% female.  And yes, it's pretty darn fun and well-crafted, even if the narrative is contrived and the film guts itself for that PG-13.