Weekend Box-Office: August 27-29, 2010 | Movie News

UPDATE: The "actual figures" from Monday show that TAKERS actually beat THE LAST EXORCISM by $100,000 (see updated numbers below), yet my headline below still stands... :)

WEEKEND BOX-OFFICE

One crappy movie edges out another?

We ran a poll last week, asking our readers what film would be #1 this weekend. Perhaps voting per "wishful thinking", 40% of you believed that THE EXPENDABLES would hold on to the #1 spot, while only 13% said THE LAST EXORCISM and even less, 5% said TAKERS. Well, as it turns out, the battle for the #1 spot this weekend was between the two latter films, in fact, we may have to wait until Monday to crown the real winner, since that's when the "actual estimates" are announced (right now, there's only a $300,000 difference between first and second place).

For now, THE LAST EXORCISM has bounced THE EXPENDABLES from the #1 spot and surprised many. And would you believe that the film apparently only cost about $2M to produce? (while Lionsgate bought its distribution rights for less than $1M). As for TAKERS, well, wow...what can you say? The film cost a lot more than EXORCISM (around $32M, in fact) but it too surprised many with its high placing this weekend. Can we expect a TAKERS 2: STILL TAKIN' next summer?

Many of you believed that AVATAR (the re-release of the "special edition") would have been the #1 movie, but as it turns out, it was only released in a limited amount of theaters (approximately 800 compared to about 2,500 for the top money-makers) so it only added about $4M to its total for now (in case you're keeping score at home, AVATAR has now grossed $753.8M and that's only domestically!). Remember that the film's initial release ended up taking in more than 2.7 BILLION worldwide.

THE EXPENDABLES, in the meantime, continued to bring in the dollars, as it remained in the top 3 this week while upping its total to $82M and turning it into Sylvester Stallone's 3rd biggest box-office hit since 1985's ROCKY 4!! If you count only adult movies (2003's SPY KIDS 3D made $112M), only 1993's CLIFFHANGER made more money ($84M), although THE EXPENDABLES will crush that total any day now! Congrats to Sly whose obviously still got it!

The two films to get knocked from the top 10 this week included the highest grossing film of director Edgar Wright's career in SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD ($26M) -- although for some reason, the film's budget was really high ($60M) so many are considering it a "failure" at least, to this point -- and something called the LOTTERY TICKET ($17M).

Next weekend sees the release of 2 surprisingly good-looking movies in MACHETE starring Danny Trejo, DeNiro, Alba, Seagal, Rodriguez, Lohan and others, as well as THE AMERICAN starring George Clooney as an American assassin in Europe. The only "meh" looking film is GOING THE DISTANCE which may or may not be a reality movie based on the on-again/off-again relationship between actress Drew Barrymore and the always entertaining Justin Long. But if we focus on MACHETE for now, how much money do you think it will pull in during its first weekend of release? VOTE HERE!!!

ACCESS BOX-OFFICE ARCHIVES HERE

Extra Tidbit: One of our MFC members just posted the first review of THE TOWN right here. "The loudest shoot-outs since Michael Mann, Renner mining Cagney and Fate propelling events a la Mystic River – yet The Town is more indebted to life than movies. A triumph.