When September began, we all got a little excited over the prospect of there being a new genre flick released every weekend this month. Now, it’s any wonder what the hell we were looking forward to… GAMER, SORORITY ROW, and WHITEOUT have all come and gone, quite literally, and now we have JENNIFER’S BODY, which looks like it will disappear just as swiftly.
The Megan Fox-led flick opened in 5th place this past weekend with a paltry $6.8 million, which is slightly better than the dreadful $5 million openings of SORORITY and WHITEOUT, but still must be seen as a huge disappointment for 20th Century Fox, especially considering Megan Fox’s omnipresence lately, and that it’s “It” scribe Diablo Cody’s follow-up to her Oscar-winning JUNO screenplay.
That said, it’s not really hard to discern why JENNIFER’S BODY didn’t open well. Horror-comedies are extremely tough to market, and BODY just appeared to be snarky and self-satisfied. (Having seen it, I can confirm that it kinda is.) Plus, Megan Fox seems to be overstaying her welcome, and why pay to see her poor acting when you can just look at her online? It’s not exactly a “date night” movie either, and a horror flick needs that appeal to open successfully. The only real good news here is the fact that it didn’t cost very much to make (reportedly around $16 million, before marketing).
SORORITY ROW and WHITEOUT both took big plunges, of 50% and 58% respectively. The two films won’t finish their domestic runs with much more than $13-14 million, but should see decent life on home video… Now we wait and see if this downward horror trend at the box office continues next week (I think it will) with PANDORUM, and more interestingly, the week after, when the horror-comedy ZOMBIELAND opens.