Box Office Still Has a ‘Hangover’
Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on June 14, 2009
The story of the weekend box office is that the box office is having a Hangover – in every which way. For the second weekend in a row the box office goes to The Hangover, and by an even bigger margin. According to the Sunday morning estimates it hauled in $33.4 million, well ahead of the $30.5 million hauled in by Up.
What can I say? The Hangover , rated R, has to rank as the biggest box office surprise of the summer — it has to be the Wedding Crashers of 2009. What I find interesting is that this movie came in totally under the radar. Everyone was talking about these other movies out there, but The Hangover still managed to win not one weekend, but two weekends in a row. And against significant competition, no less. I gotta say, if you were a betting man, and you had bet that The Hangover would have been the first movie this summer movie season to win two weekends in a row, you would have cleaned up big in Vegas.
It was also another good weekend for Up, which seems well on its ways towards making a run at Star Trek for top grossing movie of the summer so far. Its overall haul is now $187 million, and Star Trek is now at $232 million.
Now to perform the autospy on the two new wide releases this weekend. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 finished third with $25 million, a bit lower than expected — though I learned that Friday’s haul was the biggest in director Tony Scott’s career. I am sure there are going to be all kinds of stupid articles out there, blaming the movie’s performance on the fact that John Travolta was unable to promote the movie because he was still grieving the death of his son. That is so much nonsense. There was plenty of promotion for this movie — they can’t blame the marketing one bit. People just weren’t excited about this movie, period. And that’s that.
As for Eddie Murphy’s debacle Imagine That, its $5.7 million haul ranks down there along with the performance of Meet Dave last year. I could just haul out the comments I made about Will Ferrell and Land of the Lost in describing Eddie Murphy’s choice of movies these days. Eddie Murphy just cannot pick a movie script to save his life, but we all knew that already. It’s interesting because even though this movie bombed big at the box office, the critics didn’t completely trash the picture. Imagine That was running at 45 percent at Rotten Tomatoes, which is better than nothing. So maybe Eddie Murphy is getting a little better at picking scripts. What he is not getting better at is picking scripts of potential hit movies, because this is a FLOP.
The showings of Imagine That and The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 have resulted in a decline at the overall box office for the third weekend in a row. Down 24 percent, in fact. And it’s not as if the box office was so great a year ago at this same time, either. Last year at this same time, they were rolling out The Incredible Hulk. So it’s not as if they’re down 24 percent compared to a blockbuster weekend that rolled out The Dark Knight or something like that. They’re down compared to a fairly typical summer-season weekend, so people in Hollywood have got to be nervous. Everyone’s on edge right now, hoping for Transformers 2 to bail everyone out this summer.
We may, or may not, see the box offiice “hangover” continue next week when Year One and The Proposal come out. That may turn things around, but a lot of people are worried it may not. In fact, I notice Sandra Bullock has been going around on the interview circuit bragging about the “full frontal nudity” in The Proposal. All I will say about that is I remember when Basic Instinct 2 came out, and Sharon Stone was bragging about her nude scenes in that movie, too. And that movie absolutely bombed. When actors go out and brag to the press about nude scenes, that’s usually a sign of big trouble.
The damages.
- The Hangover – $33,415,000
- Up – $30,515,000
- The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 – $25,000,000
- Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian – $9,600,000
- Land of the Lost – $9,153,000
- Imagine That – $5,700,000
- Star Trek – $5,600,000
- Terminator Salvation – $4,695,000
- Angels & Demons – $4,200,000
- Drag Me to Hell – $3,864,000
See you later this week when we try and figure out how The Proposal and Year One will do, here at the Reject Report.
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