Weekend Box-Office: June 11-13, 2010

WEEKEND BOX-OFFICE

"Everybody
was Kung-Fu
fighting…!"

We’re six weeks into the 2010 "summer
blockbuster season" and so far, only 2 films have managed to
break the illustrious $100M mark, and even then, they are two
movies that pretty much everyone in the world expected to
break that mark, since they were both sequels to extremely popular
franchises (IRON MAN 2 – $299M so far and SHREK FOREVER AFTER –
$210M so far). Not one other movie has been able to scrounge up
$100M this summer. Yup, so far, so bad, boys and chicks.

This week’s big winner will definitely be
surpassing that amount though, as the remake of THE KARATE KID
managed a massive $56M opening, which was $30M (!!) more than the
2nd place finisher THE A-TEAM. Since KARATE KID only cost about
$40M to make, the film is already highly profitable and will
likely mean more sequels and more money for the "Will Smith
clan". The A-TEAM’s mediocre numbers were disappointing for a
film that was slated as one of this big summer action flicks, and
even moreso for a movie that cost $110M to make. Maybe next summer
we can see a remake of GYMKATA versus the big-screen version of
THE FALL GUY? A man can dream.

In defense of THE A-TEAM, the reviews posted on
MOVIE FAN CENTRAL so far give
the film an average of 9/10, despite the film getting
laced by most traditional critics. Despite SHREK FOREVER AFTER
topping the charts for the past 3 weeks, and managing another $15M
this weekend, the fourth installment of the SHREK series is still
the least prolific of the franchise, as it’s still trying to catch
the original film’s total, which made the least money of the films
so far, with $267M — SHREK FOREVER AFTER is currently at $210M,
but remember that next weekend marks the release of TOY STORY 3,
the Pixar juggernaut that will surely dwarf Shrek’s figures.

The rest of the top 10 didn’t offer much to
discuss, although SPLICE had the biggest drop at about 61%, GET
HIM TO THE GREEK has already made most of its budget back ($40M)
and IRON MAN 2 is on the cusp of surpassing the $300M
mark, which would make it only the second movie of the year to
do so. It also doesn’t look like the sequel to SEX AND THE CITY
will surpass the original’s box-office total of $153M, as it
currently sits at around $85M and is dropping like a rock. The two
films to drop out of the top 10 this week included ROBIN HOOD
($99M) and LETTERS TO JULIET ($47M).

Next week sees the release of one of the biggest
movies of the summer, one which topped most of our internal
staff’s "JoBlo.com Box-Office Summer Contest" lists, and
one which our podcast host Jim Law is totally stoked about (if you
don’t believe me, check out THIS
PICTURE of his kids, yo!). The film is called TOY
STORY 3 and if you haven’t heard of it, you are not a big
movie fan. The other release may be considered
"counter-programming" but from what I hear, feels more
like a "dump" as JONAH
HEX has been receiving some pretty bad buzz so far, and the
fact that the studio isn’t screening it for critics (a la
KILLERS), is generally another bad sign (my oh my, what will Megan
Fox do after this?). But I guess the really big question of the
week is: how much $$$ do you think TOY STORY 3 will open with next weekend? VOTE
HERE!!!

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