Reject Update: The Heartbreak Kid Gets Dumped by The Rock
Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on October 7, 2007
Well, well. For the second week in a row we have a big upset at the box office, and this week is an even bigger shocker than the last one. The Game Plan starring The Rock ended up Number One AGAIN on the strength of a big matin©e audience on Saturday and Sunday. The Heartbreak Kid broke the hearts of the executives at DreamWorks and finished second at $14 mil!
How could I be so off in my predictions?! A new movie gets beat out for Number One by a holdover from last week. Granted, I wasn’t the only one to be off, but I thought The Heartbreak Kid was going to do more business than this. I mean, it’s a Farrelly Brothers movie, and these usually do a lot better than this! But I read that the tracking was bad for this movie from the get-go. I guess everyone confused this with Good Luck Chuck and expected The Heartbreak Kid to be a total piece of junk, so they didn’t bother to show up!
Maybe people just aren’t interested in seeing any more crazy chicks on the screen. Malin Akerman doing her best Isla Fisher impersonation would seem to get old in a hurry. I think perhaps that “R†rating might be a hindrance, too, because The Game Plan cleaned up with its appeal to a younger crowd. I guess all these stories out there about how people are flocking to R-rated comedies are a pile of rubbish. Just as these R-rated comedy movies that are out lately are a pile of rubbish.
I haven’t even gone to see The Heartbreak Kid yet, which kind of says it all right there.
Oh and by the way, Ben Stiller isn’t the only one heartbroken today. So are those guys at 20th Century Fox. The Seeker: The Dark is Rising got absolutely killed. Absolutely, freaking creamed at the box office. That flick got beat up at the box office so badly that any hope of a sequel is down the toilet. (I guess the same could be said for The Jane Austen Book Club, which only made $1.5 mil, but they weren’t gonna make a sequel of that one anyway.)
I gotta say, these are sad times at all the movie theaters with all these flops going on. September was bad enough, but October is just as bad, if not worse. The big box-office summer is being followed up with a disastrous fall showing. It’s really getting ridiculous with all these crummy numbers we are seeing. The only one who has to feel pleased with the numbers has to be The Rock. At least he can say his movie is a hit — unlike everyone else.
The damages from Box Office Mojo:
| Release | Studio | Predicted Gross |
| The Game Plan | Buena Vista | $16,262,000 |
| The Heartbreak Kid | Dreamworks | $14,031,000 |
| The Kingdom | Universal | $9,345,000 |
| Resident Evil: Extinction | Screengems | $4,300,000 |
| The Seeker: The Dark is Rising | Fox-Walden | $3,725,000 |
| Good Luck Chuck | Lionsgate | $3,500,000 |
| Feel the Noise | BMG | $3,400,000 |
| 3:10 to Yuma | Lionsgate | $3,040,000 |
| The Brave One | Warner Bros | $2,260,000 |
| Mr. Woodcock | New Line | $2,025,000 |
Anyway a whole host of movies are coming up later this week, some of which might be pretty good. (For example, Michael Clayton starring George Clooney, which is in limited release right now but which will go wide next week.) So I will attempt once again to get it right. What can I say? It’s back to empty theaters and blown predictions here at THE REJECT REPORT.
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