Box Office: Meet the Spartans Takes the Weekend

Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on January 28, 2008

Well, I once again look dumb here at The Reject Report, because once again my predictions are way off. The question is: who’s more stupid? Me, or the idiots out there in middle America who made Meet the Spartans the box office champ of the whole United States?!

Think about it. This movie got 5 per cent from Rotten Tomatoes!! You can tell just by looking at the trailers that this film is going to be terrible. But it still finished first with a projected weekend gross of $18,725,000, barely ahead of Rambo with $18,150,000.

I’m going: what the heck?! How could these folks at home reward Meet the Spartans with a first-place finish when it’s so freaking obvious there are far better movies out there?! This is one weekend in particular where I am really scratching my head over the results.

Another surprise was the quick demise of Cloverfield. Last weekend it got a big $41 million take at the theaters. I would have thought at the very least that it would have held half that total for another first-place finish. Instead, the monster movie sank into the Atlantic Ocean. It only made $12,700,000, a 68.3 per cent drop from last week!! That’s a massive dip, ladies and gentlemen.

Maybe all the talk about people going into the theaters and getting dizzy from watching the movie had a negative impact. I was starting to read news reports this week with all these medical doctors quoted about how this movie was making people sick from vertigo. To be honest, I dunno what the heck happened with the box office here.

I’m less surprised about Rambo’s performance. It made exactly what I thought it would make. But these box office results this weekend really made no sense. A five-per-cent movie as the top draw in the land — good grief.

This is more proof that you cannot take box office results seriously as a measure of whether or not a movie is any good. I suspect Meet the Spartans will meet a gory end next weekend when word of mouth catches up to this flick.

Here’s a look at the numbers courtesy of Box Office Mojo.

The other new wide release this weekend, How She Move, finished 12th at $4,158,000.

For those still following the 2007 box office overall totals: I Am Legend is now up to $251,650,000, for sixth place overall. Also, National Treasure: Book of Secrets is now up to $205,421,000, and Alvin and the Chipmunks is now at $204,159,000. These two movies are now on track to finish in the Top Ten for all 2007 releases, passing Ratatouille this week.

Juno has also cracked the $100 million mark this weekend and is still climbing.

That’s all for yet another weekend. See you later this week when I pick myself up off the ground and try again — right here at The Reject Report.

Read more articles by John Cairns