Careful where you put that hand, Shia.
Okay, whoever picked Paramount Pictures to be the most dominant studio in terms of domestic box office at the half-way point of the year, well, congratulations. The studio was the first to cross $1 billion mark for domestic releases. Pretty impressive considering that its biggest tentpole release of the summer, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, had yet to be released in theaters. This weekend, Transformers once again dominated the box office, despite losing 51.9% of its viewers. A $47 million weekend would be an impressive haul for a first-weekend performer. That’s what Michael Bay and the robots raked in. The good news is that the drop in attendance wasn’t nearly as large as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. That film dropped 61.2% in its second weekend. Its performance this weekend was enough to push it past The Hangover Part II to become the highest grossing domestic film of the year thus far. Worldwide it has accumulated $558 million. Not bad after two weeks in release. That’s good to make it the third highest grossing film of the year, behind Fast Five ($601 million) and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides ($1.01 billion).
Coming in second place this week was the R-rated comedy Horrible Bosses. It grossed a strong $28.1 million for its opening weekend. In a recent interview, director Seth Gordon said that the success of the first Hangover probably helped in its push in attracting viewers. Gordon, who arrived on the scene with The King of Kong documentary, followed that success with the broad holiday comedy Four Christmases, with a sleepwalking Vince Vaughn, Reese Witherspoon, and acting legends Sissy Spacek and Robert Duvall. That Christmas comedy managed to take in $120 million. In between movie directing gigs he busied himself with helming TV episodes of Modern Family, Community, Parks & Recreation, and The Office.
Warner Bros. is no doubt pleased with the comedy’s performance, because it continues a streak of strong openings for R-rated comedies this summer. Bridesmaids opened in impressive fashion with $26 million at the start of May. Weeks later The Hangover Part II opened with the gargantuan figure, $86 million. A month later, Bad Teacher had a $31.6 million weekend.
Hello, my name is Kevin James and I’m a zookeeper.
Kevin James and Paul Blart fans ventured to the theater this weekend to see his latest starring vehicle, Zookeeper. $21 million is okay for a PG-13 rated comedy that was advertised to look like a PG family comedy. It had talking animals and James taking as much damage as Wile E. Coyote in a Looney Tunes cartoon. The opening is much lower than his 2009 release, Paul Blart: Mall Cop. But that was one of those freak January releases that made gobs of money. Same thing happened with Gnomeo & Juliet this year.
Slipping to fourth is Cars 2. By far the weakest Pixar release in terms of attendance, but its box office numbers aren’t as important as the money it’s made for merchandising. The franchise has amassed $8 billion from multiple tie-ins, including stores like Target, not to mention the toys taking up space on store shelves.
Bad Teacher, the only other restricted comedy in the top 10, added another $9 million to its total. Not bad for Sony Pictures and star Cameron Diaz. Considering that the comedy was made for $20 million and is currently sitting at $78.8 million after three weeks, it’s a win for all parties involved. Even with Horrible Bosses trying to attract the same viewers, the comedy’s audience only dropped 38% (the lowest drop in attendance for a top 10 release) from week two to week three. As more comedies enter the marketplace in the coming weeks (Friends with Benefits, Crazy Stupid Love), Bad Teacher should have the legs to cross the $100 million mark easily.
Tom Hanks – what happened, man? Larry Crowne must be the Oscar winner’s sophomore slump as a writer/director. His comedy has only earned $26.5 after two weeks, and more than half of the audience vanished from one week to the next. Maybe he’ll rebound with the December release Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Stephen Daldry’s film adaptation of the Jonathan Safran Foer novel. Instead of being paired with Julia Roberts, Hanks will instead be paired with another box-office star – Sandra Bullock. The film is also written by Eric Roth, who also wrote Forrest Gump.
20th Century Fox is probably wishing it was August 5th right about now so that it could have Rise of the Planet of the Apes in the marketplace. It has two films in the top ten and neither is performing all that well. The Selena Gomez starrer Monte Carlo has only made $16 million after two weeks. Jim Carrey, still trying to show he’s relevant as a comedian, tried to appeal to family viewers with Mr. Popper’s Penguins. After four weeks it finally skated past its production budget of $55 million. Still a long way to go to be considered a successful film. Unless it sells ungodly amounts of DVDs.
So like I was saying. Spielberg – anyone heard of this guy?
Just like last weekend, Super 8 continues to have Green Lantern‘s number when it comes to earnings. J.J. Abrams may have directed the weakest entry in the Mission: Impossible film franchise thus far – in terms of overall box office – but he’s rebounded nicely with Star Trek and now Super 8. It should leave theaters with around $120-$130 million. Green Lantern, on the other hand, may also finish in that range, but its incurred costs (an estimated $200+ million production cost, plus tack on another $125 million – at least – for P&A costs) will prevent it from being the tentpole release that Warner Bros. and DC Comics had anticipated. Although a sequel is already in the pipeline with a script already written, you can just imagine the conversations that the studio brass and DC Comics are having with one another.
Turning to new films released on less than one thousand screens, Michael Rapaport’s documentary Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest opened on four screens and had a per-screen average of $30k, the most of any other film this weekend, and finished with $120k. Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness debuted on a single screen and collected $18.4k.
Next week we’ll see how the final installment in the Harry Potter franchise performs and see if audiences still care about a bear who keeps jonesing for honey.
1. Transformers: Dark of the Moon – $47 million ($558 million worldwide)
2. Horrible Bosses – $28.1 million
3. Zookeeper – $21 million
4. Cars 2 – $15.2 million ($231 million worldwide)
5. Bad Teacher – $9 million ($78.8 million)
6. Larry Crowne – $6.2 million ($26.5 million)
7. Super 8 – $4.8 million ($163 million worldwide)
8. Monte Carlo – $3.8 million ($16.1 million)
9. Green Lantern – $3.1 million ($143 million worldwide)
10. Mr. Popper’s Penguins $2.8 million ($57.7 million)
