Reject Report: The Weekend of Iron Man

Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on May 1, 2008

A big hello to all of you movie fans! 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. This weekend, all the attention is on one, singular movie: Iron Man. There is no question about this movie’s victory at the box office this weekend. The only question is by how much.

Oh, and those of you girls in the audience may be interested in Made of Honor, that other new flick rolling out wide this weekend starring Patrick Dempsey. Anyway, those are the two movies rolling out wide this weekend that we will preview here at the Reject Report. And so we begin with Iron Man.

Iron Man is based on the Marvel comic book character that was created way back in 1963. To this point the character has kept a relatively low profile as part of the Avengers in the Marvel universe. But that may all change after this weekend. The movie stars Robert Downey Jr. as the badass Tony Stark, a billionaire industrialist who is captured by terrorists in Afghanistan. Ordered to build a powerful weapon for them, he instead builds a bulletproof armored suit and makes his escape. He then returns to the USA where he perfects his armored suit to become Iron Man, and it leads to the inevitable faceoff against his ex-captor, the evil Obadiah Stane (played by Jeff Bridges). Gwyneth Paltrow plays his personal assistant Virginia Potts and Terence Howard plays pilot James Rhodes. The picture is directed by Jon Favreau.

That is the synopsis in a nutshell, and you’ve all seen the trailers and the promos and all the rest of it. Everyone knows this movie is going to make a fortune. Paramount is releasing it into 4,105 theaters and there are 8 p.m. sneak previews going on in some 2,500 theaters as I write this. There are a few potential obstacles for this movie, though. For one, there’s this ridiculous theory out there that the young demographic that this movie is aiming for is going to be too busy staying at home playing their new Grand Theft Auto 4 video games, which rolled out earlier this week. Personally, I think this will have no impact at all. That video game has already made whatever impact it is going to make and people are going to want to do something else come Friday and Saturday night.

The other theory I hear (and Nikki Finke seems to be floating this one on her site) is that this movie is going to be a tough sell with women. That it’s not romantic like, say, Spider-Man or the Batman movies. All I have to say about that theory is: duh! No kidding. But that didn’t stop these other comic-book movies before and it won’t stop this one now.

The official line of bull Paramount is spewing is that Iron Man is likely to make between $60-$70 million. This is typical lowballing by the PR department, and I am sure this movie is going to top that. My gut sense of it is that $79 million is a good guess. I have already read predictions out there that it could make 85 million, even over $100 million. But I am going to stick to a $79 million prediction, because that’s just my gut feeling of how it will do. The good reviews that are coming in (95% at Rotten Tomatoes) make it likely that this movie will not suffer the massive drops that other superhero movies have suffered at the box office after their initial release. I expect this movie to probably do well at the box office for weeks on end. So that is Iron Man.

Next is Made of Honor, and this is a ready-made chick flick from Sony aimed at the fans of Grey’s Anatomy star Doctor McDreamy, a.k.a Patrick Dempsey. It’s about this dude Dempsey who is in love with this woman Michelle Monaghan, except she’s engaged to be married to someone else. And she asks Dempsey to be her “maid of honor”. So of course Dempsey has to try and pry her away from her man.

Doesn’t this sound lame to you? (The Rotten Tomatoes ranking is 9% as I write this.) Then again, I am not a Grey’s Anatomy fan, and I am not a Doctor McDreamy fan. I am a fan of Michelle Monaghan, but that doesn’t recommend this movie to me. Still, this is the only new alternative out there to Iron Man, so it is bound to attract an audience consisting of lovebirds and guy-crazy females. I predict $16 million for Made of Honor.

So that’s about it as far as new wide releases are concerned, and here is a rundown of how I see the Top Ten playing out this weekend.

So there you have it! Back after the weekend to see how well Iron Man cleaned up at the box office and see if any records were set. Keep it right here for all the latest at The Reject Report.

Read more articles by John Cairns