Weekend Box-Office: July 16-18, 2010

WEEKEND BOX-OFFICE

Inception
turns things upside down…

It’s always nice to see an original piece of
filmmaking receive the praise that it deserves from critics &
fans alike (so far, 21
reviews on Movie Fan Central with an average rating of 9.2/10
and 172
comments with a 97% positive rating), but even nicer when that
film can bring in big dollars at the box-office, because as per
Hollywood’s rules, they like "copycat" successful
movies, so maybe INCEPTION’s great opening starts a new trend that
features more original filmmaking instead of rehashes, sequels and
remakes?? We can only hope.

INCEPTION was the #1 movie this past weekend,
making $60M in its first three days of release while at the same
time becoming Leonardo DiCaprio’s biggest opening of all-time,
after the $41M that SHUTTER ISLAND opened with earlier this year.
Director Christopher Nolan, on the other hand, holds the record
for the biggest opening of all-time (that would be for a little
film called THE DARK KNIGHT, which opened with $158M back in
2008), but should still be pretty satisfied with this great
opening for a film that might’ve been deemed too cerebral for mass
audiences. INCEPTION had the 7th
biggest opening of the year so far.

It’s also nice to see the #1 and #2 movies on the
charts come from wholly original ideas, as opposed to the constant
remakes and TV shows being made into movies these days. DESPICABLE
ME, last week’s #1 movie, only lost about 40% of its audience from
last weekend and has already grossed close to $120M in its first
10 days of release.

Walt Disney and the Jerry Bruckheimer gravy train
finally seem to have slowed down this summer, as their first
release, PRINCE OF PERSIA, became one of the summer movie season’s
first disappointments, and now THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE has
bombed, making only $17M in its first weekend of release (the film
apparently cost about $150M to produce). I’m still not exactly
sure why Disney seems to have so much confidence in director Jon
Turtletaub, whose only real successes have been the NATIONAL
TREASURE movies, which to me, weren’t that great in the first
place. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that he was
high school buddies with Cage back in the day? Either way, it
looks like very little about APPRENTICE interested audiences,
including the over-abundance of CGI and Cage’s latest goofy
hairpiece.

As for the rest of the top 10, it’s interesting to
note that TOY STORY 3 is now the #1
highest grossing movie of the year so far, while ECLIPSE is
still about $32M behind NEW MOON’s final gross. Despite pretty
solid reviews, PREDATORS dropped like a rock this past weekend,
going from 3rd to 7th place and losing 72% of its audience! That
said, the film only cost $40M to make and has already made $40M
domestically alone, so it’s still considered a success. The two
films to drop out of the top 10 this week include CYRUS ($5M) and
the underachieving THE A-TEAM ($75M).

Next weekend sees the release of only one new film
(might afford INCEPTION more time to spread the word about its
awesomeness) entitled SALT
and starring the always sexy Angelina Jolie. In case you hadn’t
heard yet, the original script had Tom Cruise starring in the lead
role, but he thought it might be too close to his Agent Hunt
character from the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movies, so he dropped out,
only to be replaced by Mrs. Brad Pitt. So do you think you’ll be
checking into SALT? VOTE
HERE!!!

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