The Reject Report

Welcome to another special early edition of the Reject Report — early because this week we have movies rolling out on July 2nd, in time for the long Independence Day weekend.

The story at the top is that WALL-E did exactly the kind of business it was expected to do: it made $62 million for the third-best opening of the entire year so far. But it wasn’t the runaway victory that everyone expected.

What happens over the next four weeks may determine whether theaters end up in the black for the summer — or in the toilet.

Well, chaos reigned supreme at the box office this weekend. Or you might say, KAOS reigned supreme, because Steve Carell’s new movie Get Smart did well while everyone else seemed to tank at the box office.

We’ve got the much-ballyhooed Get Smart movie starring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway, plus the return of Mike Myers, a.k.a. Austin Powers, in a movie that to my eyes looks like an Austin Powers movie without Austin Powers: The Love Guru.

Ironically, the opening for this Incredible Hulk was a bit lower than the $62 million the previous Hulk brought in during its open– a sure sign that people were scared off by bad buzz and the stench left over from the previous Ang Lee effort. Not exactly Hulk-a-mania at the theaters.

Aren’t you fed up yet with Marvel comic book heroes? Well, the folks in Hollywood and at Marvel Studios don’t seem to think so, as The Incredible Hulk rolls out Friday only weeks after the big success of that other Marvel hero, Iron Man.

Kung Fu Panda won the box office this week with a take of $60 million dollars! Meanwhile, the Adam Sandler flick You Don’t Mess With the Zohan took in $40 million.

I just couldn’t resist doing a play on the title of Adam Sandler’s latest flick, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, even though it looks like Kung Fu Panda will probably be the box office winner this week. But who knows?

I am pleased to say that I am glad that I didn’t listen to these fools in Hollywood who passed on their usual “conventional wisdom” about how Sex and the City would do.

It’s time to take a break from talking about superheroes, action, and other “guy” stuff. This week, it’s about Prada, fashion, relationships and other “girl” interests.

Welcome to a special — and quick — Memorial Day update on the box office numbers for the entire four-day weekend. Projections for Monday are now in and without further ado, here are the Friday-to-Monday numbers.

Well, the numbers are in for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and we can say with certainty now that this movie is the top grosser of the year so far, but it is not going to be as big a blockbuster as some other movies that have been rolled out over five days.

Happy Memorial Day weekend, my fellow Americans! (Why am I saying that? I’m Canadian! And I don’t get a holiday on Monday, either.)

The headline of the hour is that The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian was the Number One movie at the box office with a take of $56 million dollars. That’s the good news.

It’s really easy to pick a weekend box-office winner when these studios roll out only one new blockbuster week after week against absolutely no competition.

t’s only been two weeks, but the first major train wreck of the summer movie season is in the books. Or maybe I ought to say “car wreck”, because Speed Racer crashed in spectacular fashion and was killed at the box office.

It is shaping up to be quite a race this weekend, one of the most dramatic box-office showdowns of the year in fact. Will it be the challenger, Speed Racer, or the defending champion Iron Man that takes the checkered flag this week at the box office?

This was the weekend of Iron Man, all right. It was a dominant, crushing victory at the box office for the latest Marvel superhero success. It made not $80 million, not $90 million — but $100 million dollars!!!

It’s time to take a break from playing Grand Theft Auto 4 to enjoy the Reject Report’s predictions for the official kickoff of the summer blockbuster movie season.

The summer movie season is finally here. And when it comes to the box office, there is no one better than our John Cairns and The Reject Report. In this special edition, he makes some bold predictions about this year’s summer box office results.

What can I say? It was another winning performance at the box office for Tina Fey as Baby Mama won with an $18 million gross. And as usual, it was another losing performance at the theaters for Harold and Kumar, whose Escape from Guantanamo Bay wound up trailing in second with $14.5 million. But don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll do well on DVD.

This weekend looks to be a bit of a disappointment at the cash register, I am sad to say. All the die-hard movie fans out there would really like to see Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay do well, but it has stiff competition from Baby Mama and from Deception, the other new movies this weekend.

Well, it was Sarah Marshall who got dumped this weekend at the box office. Or better yet, it was Judd Apatow who got dumped — not by Sarah Marshall, but by the moviegoing public, AGAIN.

It appears things are definitely looking up as far as theater business goes in the next few weeks. We have the Judd Apatow production Forgetting Sarah Marshall, we have the Al Pacino thriller 88 Minutes, and the action flick The Forbidden Kingdom.

No, we didn’t completely get it wrong. We did correctly predict that the teen horror remake Prom Night would win at the box office, and, well, we were right.

Welcome to another truly ominous Reject Report. Ominous because, well, it’s looking scary at the box office this weekend. Not only do we have the horror movie Prom Night set to open along with the shoot-em-up Street Kings, but it looks like it will be another down week at the theaters.

It was DEFINITELY not such a good weekend at the theaters for George Clooney — or for any of the movies at the box office, really. The only movie that really held up its own was 21. That was the surprise Number One movie at the box office for the second weekend in a row.

This week, you can say the Reject Report is in Ruins. We have a movie called The Ruins, and we have a film about the National Football League called Leatherheads set in an era when it looked like the whole league was going to end up in ruins, and on and on.

Well, it seems Americans may have some taste in movies after all. Superhero Movie, well, was not so super after all. The winning movie this weekend was the gambling pic 21, beating out Horton Hears a Who! and Superhero Movie.