Weekend Box-Office: August 13-15, 2010

WEEKEND BOX-OFFICE

Take
me down to the Paradise City…

Is it possible that 64-year old “action
star” Sylvester Stallone is back and here to stay?!? After
the great success of both RAMBO and ROCKY BALBAO, his latest new
venture entitled THE EXPENDABLES — and featuring a ton of other
action stars — became the #1 movie this week and by a long shot
at that! Julia Roberts movies used to open at #1 in the good ol’
days, but it seems as though the power of the macho men was too
much for her in 2010, as EAT PRAY LOVE opened with a decent $24M
in second place. For fans of Stallone (like myself), it’s great to
see him back in the saddle, doing what he does best and hopefully
keeping it going with a possible
sequel. 

Oddly enough, despite 75% of EAT PRAY LOVE
movie-goers being women, close to 40% of EXPENDABLES’ audience
were also women! That probably bodes really well for the film’s
future (much like 300), but as per usual, only time will let us
know how the film performs in the long-term.

Unfortunately for fans of Edgar Wright and his extremely
well-received SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD, not enough people
went to see the film this past weekend, leaving it with a decent
(but not mind-blowing) $11M and 5th place opening. Normally that
figure would be awesome for any Wright movie (SHAUN OF THE
DEAD opened with $3M and ended up with $14M, while HOT FUZZ opened
with $6M and ended up with $23M), but word on the street is that
PILGRIM cost upwards of $60M, so the film will have to perform a
lot better around the world, and on home video, if they want it to
become profitable. I personally don’t doubt that it will, since
pretty much everyone I know who saw it, loved it, but I
guess only time will tell.

The rest of the top 10 remained pretty much the
same, with the biggest drop in audience coming from STEP UP 3D
which went from 3rd to 7th place (60% drop). Last week’s #1 movie,
THE OTHER GUYS, also kept making money, adding another $18M to its
coffers, while one of the best surprises of the summer, INCEPTION,
kept rolling along with another $11M added to its grand total of
close to $250M now. The three films to get bounced from the top 10
this week included THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT ($17M), the misfire
CHARLIE ST. CLOUD ($29M) and the most
successful animated movie of all-time, TOY STORY 3.

And that’s pretty much it for the “awesome
movies” of the summer, boys and chicks! Next week begins the
“dog days of summer” movies including shit like VAMPIRES
SUCK, THE
SWITCH, THE
LOTTERY TICKET, NANNY
MCPHEE RETURNS and the fun-looking PIRANHA
3D. Out of the shitty looking movies coming out, which one
looks like the crappiest to you? VOTE
HERE!!!

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