Weekend Box-Office: October 14-16, 2011

Moviegoers
dig their fighting robots..

After seeing our poll
results from last weekend in which we asked our readers to let
us know which October film "excited" them the most (and
they chose NONE OF THE ABOVE by a big margin!), it wasn’t
too much of a surprise to run into yet another "meh"
box-office weekend as Disney’s REAL STEEL maintained the top spot,
despite a close call from the latest remake on the charts
FOOTLOOSE, which finished in 2nd place. That said, the numbers
below are just "estimates" so the rankings may actually
change by Monday when the actual figures are announced (right now,
there is only a $200,000 difference between #1 and #2).

The other remake
released this past weekend (sigh) called THE THING apparently
wasn’t as bad as people expected, but I’m sure if you asked those
very same people, most would say that they’d have preferred the
studio created a BRAND NEW movie based on a (get this) an ORIGINAL
IDEA!! Aaaaah, I remember the good ol’ days when films that
we’re being released in theaters weren’t just sequels, prequels,
remakes and TV spinoffs. Bah! Enough about how much the gool ol’
days rocked…. 

Which brings us to the third new release of the
weekend for a film starring Owen Wilson, Jack Black and legendary
comedian Steve Martin, the latter of whom apparently needs money
more than anyone else from his generation as he doesn’t mind doing
total crap for money from time to time (SGT. BILKO,
BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE, CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN, THE PINK
PANTHER….). A shame for a guy who used to be known as an
original creative mind on the scene. Nowadays, Martin is relegated
to taking shitty roles in shitty movies like THE BIG YEAR which
Fox under-promoted because they likely knew how shitty it was.
Then why make it in the first place, people?!?! Oh and THE BIG
YEAR opened in 9th place with $3M. The film cost $41M to make.

The rest of the top 10 remained relatively the
same except for most films moving down a notch or two and three
films getting booted from the top 10 in order to make room for the
latest releases including DREAM HOUSE ($18M), CONTAGION ($72M) and
WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER ($13M).

Next week is apparently the only weekend during
which Hollywood studios will release a "horror movie"
this Halloween month, as PARANORMAL
ACTIVITY 3 moves into theaters with very little info on the
film. RESIDENT EVIL guru Paul WS Anderson will also be taking the
latest shot at THE
THREE MUSKETEERS saga (sigh), while Mr. Bean is back with JOHNNY
ENGLISH REBORN. So after this weekend’s 2 remakes being
released, next weekend sees 1 remake and 2 sequels. Fun
times…not. But just for shits and giggles, how much $$$ do you
think PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 will earn over its opening weekend? VOTE
HERE!!!