Weekend Box-Office: August 27-29, 2010

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!!!

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