Weekend Box-Office: June 4-6, 2010

WEEKEND BOX-OFFICE

Shrek
#1 for 3rd week in a row. Yawn.

No offense to Nikki Rocco, head of distribution
for Universal, who when asked about this summer’s
"slumping" revenues replied, "Everybody is
talking to me about that, and I don’t have an answer."
but…..Huh?!?!?! Didn’t you notice that most of the "big
movies" this summer are shitty quality and being dissed by
film critics and audiences alike? Only 1 of the top 6 movies this
week have a positive rating on Rotten
Tomatoes (GET HIM TO THE GREEK) while 7 of the top 10 have negative
ratings (i.e. not recommended!). In fact, even IRON MAN 2, one of
the three films in the top 10 with a positive rating on Rotten
Tomatoes received mostly lukewarm reviews from fans, who were
expecting a lot more in the sequel, yet received much of the same
as the original.

Now I’m not saying that whatever critics say
goes, but they are usually a pretty decent barometer and so
far, it seems like most of their negative reviews of films such as
SEX AND THE CITY 2, PRINCE OF PERSIA, KILLERS, MARMADUKE, ROBIN
HOOD, etc…, are being echoed by audiences as well. I’m also
pretty sure that audiences are sick of seeing their ticket
prices always going higher and higher, while the studios
continue to find different ways of making money from their movies.

All this is currently being discussed because May
figures were sluggish at best, while the Memorial Day weekend
numbers were the lowest in 17 years! Hulllllo! And you don’t have
an answer? I have 2 answers: shit movies and high ticket prices.
Voila. See, that wasn’t so difficult, was it?

As for this week’s top 10, despite 4 new movies
entering the fray, SHREK FOREVER AFTER remained in the top spot
for the 3rd weekend in a row, even though it will likely be the
SHREK movie that finishes with the least amount at the box-office
(SHREK: $267M, SHREK 2: $441M, SHREK 3: $323M). GET HIM TO THE
GREEK finished in 2nd place with about $17M, and was the only film
in the top 6 with positive reviews. Whether that will translate
into ongoing box-office success is yet to be determined, but last
year THE HANGOVER opened with $45M during this exact same weekend.

KILLERS also made a surprising $16M, despite not
being shown to critics, but did receive plenty of negative reviews
once it was released (check out our very own JimmyO’s 2.5/10
review HERE).
But most of all, I think we should all thank our lucky stars that
MARMAFUCKINDUDE only managed $11M and a 6th place opening and
didn’t pull a "Chipmunks" on us, otherwise we’d have to
look forward to many MARMADUKE sequels including one in which he
certainly would pair up with the Chipmunks to mess up those CATS
& DOGS.

SPLICE was the worst opener of the 4 new films, in
8th place and only $7M in receipts, but the film only cost $30M,
so hopefully their losses (if any) won’t be too substantial. IRON
MAN 2 continued to add dollars to its bank account, but is still
about $42M behind ALICE IN WONDERLAND as the #1 movie of 2010 so
far. The biggest drop of the weekend was for SEX AND THE CITY 2,
which lost 60% of its audience from last week, which tells us that
women as just as smart as men when it comes to deciphering and
ignoring bad quality product. The 4 films to get knocked from the
top 10 this week included DATE NIGHT ($95M), JUST WRIGHT ($20M),
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON ($214M) and MACGRUBER ($8M).

Next week sees the release of two more "major
summer movies" including the
remake/re-imagining/unoriginality of THE
KARATE KID starring Will Smith’s son and Jackie Chan, as well
as the cinematic reincarnation of TV’s THE
A-TEAM starring a bunch of macho guys and…Jessica Biel
(although you wouldn’t know it by the film’s trailers). Since we
assume that THE A-TEAM will be the #1 movie next weekend (then
again, you never know!), the poll question to you this week is:
How much $$$ do you think THE A-TEAM will open with next weekend? VOTE
HERE!!!

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