Box Office: Tyler Perry Tops The Jonas Brothers

Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on March 1, 2009

rr-jonasbros

Well, once again I look dumb here at the Reject Report, and it’s all because of the Jonas Brothers. You know that Jonas Brothers movie that I had picked to win the weekend? Well, it won Friday night with a haul of only $4.9 million, and then it promptly sank like a stone. In fact, after Friday night people were revising their numbers and predicting $20 million for this flick. Then on Saturday they were revising their numbers again, because none of these families were showing up to this movie in the numbers that were expected.

Turned out it was Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail that won the weekend with $16.5 million dollars. The Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience got only $12.7 million. Well, I don’t know what to say. I know it’s hard to predict how any 3-D movie will do, but there numbers are a surprise to a lot of people in Hollywood because they expected much bigger things from the Jonas Brothers. I know there were a lot of folks predicting the flick would top $40 million, which I thought was a really unrealistic expectation to begin with. I thought I was going out on a limb simply by predicting it would get $34 million. At least, this movie should have at least been somewhere close to the same ballpark as Hannah Montana , which made $31 million in its opening weekend last year.

There had been all this hype out there about how well this Jonas Brothers movie would do because of the big presales and so on. I knew that Hannah Montana ran ahead of the Jonas Brothers in pre-sales, but it didn’t seem like it was ahead by a lot. Personally, I thought it would do better than Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus’s showing last year because it was in far more theaters. True, 1,200 isn’t a lot of screens, but I thought those theaters would be packed. I knew that the Jonas Brothers were a big deal — not with me, anyway, but with a lot of people. I figured lots of families would flock to this movie. I figured a lot of things, none of which came to fruition.

Based on this showing, though, I must take back all my comments about the Jonas Brothers being practically bigger than the Beatles, because the Beatles would have done better than this.

Heck, Tyler Perry even did better than this, and that says a lot because the Madea Goes to Jail numbers dropped by almost 60 percent from last weekend. Overall, I think people are probably fed up with the “same old, same old” from the studios, and this Jonas Brothers 3-D flick probably looked like nothing special and a rehash of what the Disney folks rolled out the previous year. Maybe the reviews were a factor- only 37% positive at Rotten Tomatoes. Miley, of course, got very favorable reviews.

Suffice it to say the Disney magic at the box office is officially over. Let the layoffs begin.

The crummy numbers from the weekend:

  1. Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail $16,500,000
  2. Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience $12,700,000
  3. Slumdog Millionaire $12,150,000
  4. Taken $9,950,000
  5. He’s Just Not That Into You $5,875,000
  6. Paul Blart: Mall Cop $5,600,000
  7. Coraline $5,252,000
  8. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li $4,650,000
  9. Confessions of a Shopaholic $4,490,000
  10. Fired Up $3,800,000

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li made only $4,650,000, but that isn’t surprising because it wasn’t in a lot of theaters — and on top of that, everyone hates the flick. I notice the Rotten Tomatoes rating was running at 0 percent. Zero freaking percent! You aren’t going to get good word of mouth with a reaction like that. Even Pete Hammond had nothing good to say about the movie, and as everyone knows it takes a lot for Pete Hammond to say anything bad about any flick. That kind of says it all.

As for Slumdog Millionaire, it hung in there all weekend and finished with $12.1 million, which leads me to think the movie might have a chance of perhaps winning one of these weeknights coming up. Stay tuned.

So, another week of predictions is now officially down the drain, and now I’m really worried because the week of the Watchmen is coming up. You would expect this movie to open huge. But this year has been crazy so far, with some expected hits falling flat on their faces and with plenty of upset victories from the likes of Madea Goes to Jail, Paul Blart: Mall Cop and other flicks. You might think a movie like Watchmen would open as high as $80, $90 or $100 million based on the recent box-office history of DC and Marvel superhero movies, but now I don’t know. This year has been crazy. Who really knows how much Watchmen will make.

I’ll take a few days to try and figure out what will happen with the Watchmen , and I’ll try again to get a prediction right here at the Reject Report.


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  • 2-D
    That's surprising. Bloody Valentine, Beowulf, and even Shark Boy and Lava Girl made it seem like anyone's dumb enough to buy a ticket as long as you have 3-D tacked onto the movie posters. Maybe Evangelical Christians think 3-D technology is the work of the devil.
  • I had an inkling that the Jonas Brothers movie would be a B.O. disappointment when I showed up to the midnight show of Street Fighter, and the guys at the ticket counter told me that Chun-Li sold more tickets that night than the JoBros.

    And Watchmen, while it will be an awesome flick, won't place much more than $50 million for the weekend (topping out at $150 on the outside). A fanboy favorite, sure, but it's an R-rated flick with relatively esoteric (read as: not quite mainstream) story and characters. With the exception of TDK, other fanboy favorites have posted disappointing numbers when put in front of a mainstream audience. Does anyone remember how disappointing the numbers were for Grindhouse?
  • Arou101
    Comparing Watchmen to Grindhouse is a mistake Carr, and I'll make you eat those words come numbers time.
  • playwert
    Watchmen will bomb[in a fashion] , can't see it doing more than 30 mill. Its just not mainstream enough, and its r rating cripples it from the usual ,younger crowd who drive comic book movies. Look for similar numbers to Sin City, but I can't see it making as much as Sin City, it doesn't have a big name cast.
  • well said
  • thank god! I'm glad tyler perry beat those stupid Jonas Brothers' asses...
  • it's like the lesser of two talentless evils winning the box office.
  • That's right Jonas Brothers you're not as cool as you thought! That's what they get for taking the 3D screens from Coraline.
  • Watchmen will open to 45-50 mil. the second week will be the interesting one i think. will word of mouth be good (re: fanboys who actually liked it) or bad (re: fanboys that hated it/regular people who didn't "get it").
  • Ouch.
    I saw the Jonas Brothers movie and saw the Hannah Montana one last year, and this disappointment should definitely be pinned somewhat on quick and vicious reviewers, high ticket prices, and viewers who felt burned by a year of Hannah Montana scammery and disgraces (they lied about the brief release to rush people into theaters, extended the run, and then aired it on TV within a month). This was a fun movie in the well-performed concert parts but thoroughly showcased where Disney's interest lies at the moment (not always true) - with making a buck, cutting corners, and not giving a crap about showing their stars in the best light, including relentless overexposure in the lead-up. The Jonas Brothers deserved better...if I were the them, right now I'd be asking to be laid off by Disney!!
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