The Reject Report Seeks Box Office Salvation

Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on May 21, 2009

rr-terminator

We have a long Memorial Day weekend ahead here at the Reject Report, and a very competitive weekend with three new movies rolling out. One, Terminator Salvation, is out Thursday while the other two, Dance Flick and Night at the Museum II, roll out Friday.

The big question is still whether this will finally be the weekend where we see a movie crack $100 million for its domestic open. Last year at this same time we had our answer with Indiana Jones 4. For a while in 2009, it looked like this weekend would be neck and neck between Salvation and Museum, and then just recently it looked like maybe Salvation had a shot at maybe hitting $100 mil. Now it looks like it might be back to being a close weekend race, and I think the reviews may have a lot to do with it. The reviews for Salvation have been less than stellar. Now granted, that hasn’t stopped a lot of movies winning at the box office, but I think it does slow a movie down somewhat. You just don’t make it to $100 million at the weekend box office if the reviews and word of mouth are like this. (Not often, anyway.)

Anyway I’ll begin with Terminator Salvation, since I’m already talking about it. This one stars Christian Bale as John Connor and Sam Worthington as the cyborg Marcus Wright who thinks he’s human. It’s set in the post-Apocalyptic world of 2018, telling the story of Connor’s role leading the human resistance against Skynet’s evil machines.

rr-amyadamsmuseum Now, this movie rolls out with midnight screenings on Thursday. From what I gather it will have a lower theater count than Night at the Museum 2. However, I still expect this to win the weekend, and the reason why is because this has been a big year for movies with dark overtones. This year has been dominated by movies filled with death and destruction and I have to believe the trend will continue here. Heck, the recession is still on and everyone is still depressed. I am predicting $21 million for Thursday and $85 million for the four-day Friday-to-Monday long weekend for Terminator Salvation.

One other thing: this movie is rated PG-13, which may help draw in people. Or it may not help at all: a lot of fans just hate the rating and think the movie will end up watered down. I have a feeling this movie may end up sinking like a rock in the next few weeks. It may have a big first couple of days and that might well be it.

Next up is Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, starring Ben Stiller. This is the sequel to the wildly successful original movie and it looks to have the biggest opening for a comedy movie so far in 2009. As everyone knows, this has been a big year for security guard movies at the box office, with Paul Blart: Mall Cop doing so well and with Observe and Report doing not well at all. Here, Stiller returns as Larry Daley, who finds himself trying to save the old exhibits that are shipped to the Smithsonian by mistake — exhibits that are now under attack. Amy Adams, Hank Azaria, Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan are in the cast.

Anyway, this movie is going to be getting a big wide release to around 4,000 theaters. I think most folks pretty much know what to expect from a movie like this and I am predicting a four-day haul of $69 million — lower than Terminator Salvation, but still a pretty good showing for a comedy movie. I think this will serve as pretty good counter programming and should attract the family crowd to see it. Whether it will post the kind of numbers Monsters vs. Aliens has remains to be seen, but it’ll do OK.

rr-danceflick As an aside — what is up with all the sequels, man?? It’s been one sequel (or prequel, or sequel/prequel) after another for weeks on end. Whether it’s Terminator, Night at the Museum, Angels and Demons, Star Trek, X-Men, Crank, Fast and Furious etc. etc., it really has been ridiculous. Can’t people in Hollywood come up with original ideas? Uh, actually, yeah they are, but folks in middle America would rather go to sequels. So that’s why we’re getting sequels all the time. The good news, though, is that it will be all over next week with Up. That will be the end of the sequels for at least a little bit, and all I have to say about it is Thank God, I was getting sick of them.

I guess I have answered my own question, then, about how Dance Flick will do. It’s only in 2,300 theaters and it’s not a sequel, which means certain box-office doom right now. Unfortunately, it’s yet another movie parody flick a la Scary Movie, Disaster Movie, Superhero Movie et al., and you probably know what I think of them. It featuring Damon Wayans and Shoshana Bush.

So in the end, it’s going to get crushed. Everybody is sick of these kinds of movies, already, and quite a few of these parody movies have just gone down the tubes at the box office in recent years. My prediction is $10 million for the four day weekend. Personally, though, I would be really happy if the total came in lower. I am truly fed up with these idiotic parody movies. They may have been funny at one time, but the joke is long over.

My prediction for the four-day long weekend is as follows: