Weekend Box-Office: September 3-5, 2010

WEEKEND BOX-OFFICE

The
American vs The Mexican!!

This weekend’s grosses aren’t anything to write
home about, but it was interesting to see a slow-burning
“thriller” entitled THE AMERICAN going mano-a-mano
against the Mexploitation fun that was MACHETE. Who would come out
on top was anybody’s guess according to the close figures on
Friday, but now that the weekend is almost done, it appears as
though Clooney’s charms (and abs) were able to secure the #1 spot,
with close to $2M more than Robert Rodriguez’s latest Mexican
adventure (and yes, that’s despite Lindsay
Lohan showcasing her boobage in the film).

Surprisingly, it was last week’s #1 movie TAKERS,
that managed to snag the #2 spot, about $200k in front of MACHETE,
although that might change when the actual figures are announced
soon. The biggest drop-off from last weekend came from THE LAST
EXORCISM, which isn’t a huge surprise since most horror movies
tend to drop severely during their 2nd week of release. The
weekend’s 3rd new release, GOING THE DISTANCE, opened in 5th place
with about $7M. The 3 films to get knocked out of the top 10 this
week include THE SWITCH ($21M), PIRANHA 3D ($22M) and VAMPIRES
SUCK ($32M), three films that were only released 3 weeks ago.
Yipes, that was fast!

Since there isn’t that much more to say about this
weekend’s movies, allow me to post this summer’s overall top
box-office grossers, since we can officially call it a summer now.

The biggest surprises for me include how much
money THE KARATE KID, THE EXPENDABLES and DESPICABLE ME made, and
how little SCOTT PILGRIM made ($29M), despite so many positive
reviews. I was also a little surprised to see Bruckheimer’s two
films perform so badly (PRINCE OF PERSIA & SORCERER’S
APPRENTICE), but then again, neither film looked particularly good
from the outset. What did you consider to be the biggest surprise
of the summer? VOTE
HERE!!!

Only one big release next weekend and it’s for RESIDENT
EVIL: AFTERLIFE, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, the man
behind the original RE film, starring his wife Milla
Jovovich and the very lovely Ali
Larter. Joaquin Phoenix’s I’M
STILL HERE will also be opening in limited theaters, so it’ll
be interesting to see whether that whole thing was a worthwhile
lark or not….

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