Box Office Takes The Call

To no one's surprise Oz the Great and Powerful held on to its number #1 spot and also became 2013's biggest hit (thus far). But who could have forseen that the combined draw of Steve Carell and Jim Carrey wouldn't work out so well for Burt Wonderstone. And WTF with The Call's second place showing! Halle Berry hasn't opened a movie that strong since... (gulp) Catwoman nearly a full decade ago.

my phone call to Halle

What prompted people to see it? Seriously?

Box Office WIDE
01 OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL $42 (cum. $145)
02 THE CALL  *new* $17.1 
03 THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE  *new* $10.3
04 JACK THE GIANT SLAYER  $6.2 (cum. $53.9)
05 IDENTITY THIEF $4.5  (cum. $123.7)

Box Office PLATFORM
01 SPRING BREAKERS *new* $.2 
02 STOKER  $.2 (cum. $.6) 
03 THE GATEKEEPERS  $.2 (cum. $1.3)
04 NO  $.1 (cum. $.7)
05 FROM UP ON POPPY HILL *new* $.05 

What did you see this St. Paddy's Weekend?

What Did You Watch This Weekend?

There was not a pot of gold at the top of that beanstalk... or rather there was but it had already been raided to build said beanstalk in the first place.

Box Office WIDE
01 JACK THE GIANT SLAYER *NEW* $28 Review
02 IDENTITY THIEF  $9.7 (cum. $107.4)
03 21 AND OVER  *NEW* $9.0
04 THE LAST EXORCISM PART II  *NEW* $8
05 SNITCH $7.7  (cum. $24.4)

Given Jack the Giant Slayer's gargantuan budget ($200 million), and the loss of the family audience next weekend when Oz: The Great and Powerful cuts it off at the knees beanstalk (har-de-har-har), this has to be a regarded as a face plant (plant. get it, I... never mind). Unless its overseas take is significantly better.

Box Office PLATFORM
01 THE GATEKEEPERS $.2 (cum. $.6)
02 STOKER *NEW* $.1 Review 
03 NO $.1 (cum. $.3) Review
04 HYDE PARK ON HUDSON  *$.04 (cum. $6.2)
05 STAND UP GUYS $.1 (cum. $3.2)

Though Stoker had a non-spectacular 'highest-per-screen-average of any movie' claim this weekend, I always wonder why genre efforts with famous stars don't open wider to begin with. I mean, seven theaters??? Sure this is an art horror film rather than a easy-sell slasher but remember when Bug opened wide and they pretended it didn't have critically acclaimed roots? It was hardly a hit but it made $3 million in its opening weekend and $7 million in total. If you hide Stoker for long enough, it won't even get to $7 million because the buzz will warn away the people who are scared of anything non-generic... which is obviously a lot of people if you look at box office receipts for horror films where interchangeable slashers tend to reign.

One unreported story of the box office this winter season is surely that the non-bankable Oscar bait failures like Quartet and Hyde Park on Hudson still somehow managed to earn non-embarrassing grosses. Especially Quartet which nearly equalled Beasts of the Southern Wild's take with about .1% of its publicity - the power of the Dowager Countess!?! 

What did you watch this weekend? I took in Stoker, Jack the Giant Slayer and a couple of 1930s movies

A Beautiful Day To Box Office

I should've gone to a movie today because it's the most instantaneous cure I know for the blues. But I'm too backed up with work. Maybe tomorrow if I'm a good boy for President's Day? Bruce Willis & Jai Courtney's father/son tough guy act for A Good Day To Die Hard topped the Valentine's Weekend as the only "manly" option with several softer options competing for similar demographics. Safe Haven came in third just behind last week's champ Identity Thief. The romzomcom Warm Bodies somehow fended off the other supernatural romance Beautiful Creatures which was surely aiming for the same crowd. Was it the simplicity of the Warm Bodies concept or just its strong word of mouth in a 3rd week?

Or maybe it's those totally chaotic Beautiful Creatures commercials. What the hell is it? And can we talk about how much the posters for Beautiful Creatures looks like perfume ads!?! Especially Alice Englert's "Lena"... (I hope the bottle looks just like her necklace.)

From the commercials I'm guessing that Emmy Rossum's "Ridley" perfume smells like succulent ham.

What did you see this weekend?

If you saw Beautiful Creatures, spill. Aromatic or rotten? And you think Jane Campion ever expected her baby daughter to go so mainstream so fast?

Posterized: Bruce Willis, Perennial

I raced excitedly to a A Good Day To Die Hard screening earlier this week though I couldn't quite put my finger on why. As a rule of thumb, I love Bruce Willis but I don't exactly seek his movies out and haven't seen a Die Hard since the second one. (I've been the furthest thing from a loyal fan mostly because he churns out so many disposable actioners.) I was just in the right mood I guess though I am sad to report that it felt like a phone-in.

But for this week's edition of Posterized, I thought we'd look back on his whole career. I've previously applauded him for his unheralded range. Which is to say that even though he is always "Bruce Willis" he can easily slip into auteur pieces, comedies, dramas, and action flicks without ever disrupting the site-specific tonal demands. That's as true of a definition of Movie Star who also happens to be a Fine Actor as I know of. But the posters disagree with me since every other one cribs some element from the original Die Hard (1988) poster, Bruce with a tense side stare, Bruce pursing those thin lips, Bruce holding a gun (or signifying that a gun is just outside the frame with battle gear on). Every movie wants to be Die Hard... especially all the subsequent Die Hards. Die Hard 2 may be the most hilarious example of the unspoken sequel motto ("be the same movie over again... only bigger")

The "Moonlighting" Years (85-89)
aka Cybil (TV) and Demi (The Movies) share him
Blind Date (1987), Sunrise (1987), Die Hard (1988)

Seemingly hundreds of movies after the jump! How many have you seen?

Click to read more ...

Melissa McCarthy Robs the Box Office Blind

It was a big big weekend for Melissa McCarthy, who capitalized on that big Bridesmaids breakthrough with her first huge headliner opening of the year in Identity Thief. I use the word "first" because clearly there'll be a second. Her buddy comedy with Sandra Bullock The Heat opens in just two months time. Here's why I knew Identity Thief would be big: three of my friends -- two of whom are rarely seen inside movie theaters (the last thing they saw was Skyfall) -- both told me they wanted to see it. 

box office chart repurposed and photoshopped from boxoffice.com

Critics were not kind to the comedy. And that's before we even get to the subject of Rex Reed who notoriously called McCarthy a "female hippo" in his review prompting outrage 'round the web (i.e. more name-calling only this time directed at Reed and his age instead of McCarthy and her weight). But I liked Gawker's take. If the movie is seriously as bad as people are saying, shouldn't McCarthy who is obviously talented and truly funny, bare some responsibility? Why do reliably funny actors so rarely star in actually hilarious movies? (I remember being shocked while watching Date Night and Baby Mama that the movies were not half as funny as Tina Fey is as Tina Fey.) Is the problem that funny people are asked to be the entire joke?

Other Box Office Stories...

• Side Effects opened to a non-stellar non-embarrassing $10 million
• Argo went wide again to capitalize on Oscar buzz and rejoined the top ten
• Top Gun got a 3D conversion earning just under $2 million (and a new limited edition 3D Blu-Ray)
• Silver Linings Playbook continues to inch toward the $100 million Best Picture Nominee club which is very crowded this year.

What did you see this weekend? I finally watched Yossi but otherwise it wasn't a movie weekend for me.