HollywoodIdiocy.com

Tropic Thunder may not be set on a beach or feature starlets in skimpy swimwear, but Robert Downey Jr’s risky performance in black-face was apparently enough to help the movie cling to the top spot in box office draw in the weekend leading up to the coronation of the political messiah, Barry Obama.

Tropic Thunder garnered $16.2 million, just enough to hold off newcomers The House Bunny ($14.5 million) and Death Race ($12.6 million). The Dark Knight, knocked off its perch at number one last weekend by Tropic Thunder, slipped to fourth place overall this week, bringing in only $10.5 million in its sixth week of release.

Tropic Thunder has topped $65 million in two weeks, while The Dark Knight’s total now stands at $489 million domestically and $381 million overseas for a combined total of $871 million. The Dark Knight is now second only to Titanic in all-time box office.

With a career revitalized by the Iron Man film, Robert Downey Jr.’s risky role in Tropic Thunder powered the campy comedy to an upset of The Dark Knight after a solid month of box office bat-dominance. Tropic Thunder scored $26 million in its debut, while The Dark Knight slipped to the second spot with $16.7 million.

Batman now has $471 million domestically, $328 million overseas, and a grand total that just eclipsed the $800 million mark. Star Wars: The Clone Wars ($15.5 million), Mirrors ($11.1 million) and Pineapple Express ($10 million) round out the Top 5 spots.

X-Files: I Want To Believe has already been pulled from theaters like the tiny Micro SD card its box office results unfortunately resembled.

Even the undead can’t bring down The Dark Knight; that’s the lesson to be learned from this week’s box office results as the Caped Crusader stayed atop the weekend box office like pool floats, drawing $42.6 million to arrive at a new total of $393 million domestically. Add in an additional $202 million in foreign box office and The Dark Knight sits at an impressive $596 million in just 17 days.

Still, the Brenden Fraser vehicle, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor was not exactly blown over by The Dark Knight, earning a respectable $40.4 million for a strong second-place showing. That’s far more than last week’s challenger, X-Files: I Want to Believe, will probably gross at the box office at the end of its run. X-Files fell all the way to the ninth spot this week, drawing only $3.38 million in the crowded field and topping only $17 million in 10 days, far below expectations and marking the film as the biggest disappointment of the summer since Speed Racer.

Step Brothers was third with $16.5 million ($63.1 million to date), Mamma Mia! was fourth with $12.6 million ($87.4 million to date), and Journey to the Center of the Earth’s $6.6 million ($72.9 million to date) edges the Kevin Costner starrer, Swing Vote, for the fifth spot. The improbable political comedy struggled to earn $6.2 million in its debut, earmarking it as yet another bomb at the box office for the once-potent Costner.

Meanwhile, aside from Batman, this summer may have helped Brenden Fraser’s career more than any other; with two movies in the top five this past weekend, grossing a combined $47 million this weekend and a combined $113.3 million domestically to date, he’s proven himself to still be bankable.

Even in its second week of release, The Dark Knight, the follow-up to 2005’s Batman Begins, is still high atop the weekend box office with a grand total of over $75 million in receipts domestically. The movie broke the record for opening weekend last week, and by Friday had broken the record for quickest movie to reach the $300 million mark.

The Dark Knight sits at approximately $314 million in domestic ticket sales after 10 days of release, and with foreign markets added in, that total jumps to $355 million. That places The Dark Knight well ahead of SpiderMan 3’s pace, and has some in Hollywood even whispering about eclipsing Titanic’s final total before it’s all done.

That might be a bit premature after only two weeks, but the film is certainly valued far above Tahitian pearls at this point, and is well on its way to becoming the most successful superhero movie of all time. That’s due in large part to Chris Nolan’s continued sober treatment of the Batman character; whereas Batman Begins felt like a James Bond film, The Dark Knight has more of a feel akin to Scarface, The Untouchables, or perhaps a James Patterson thriller.

In other words, Batman doesn’t feel like a “superhero” movie so much as it feels like a solid crime thriller; the gangsters in the film are not bumbling fools that the Joker rules over, but are hardcore, ruthless criminals who might have stepped out of the set of Oz or The Sopranos, rather than a comic book adaptation, and The Joker is genuinely at risk to the lowlifes he’s seeking to control, staying atop only by being just a bit more bloodthirsty and less predictable than they are.

But enough with the love-fest for The Dark Knight; two new movies made their mark this weekend as well. The Will Ferrell comedy Step Brothers notched a solid $30 million to take second place, and Mamma Mia!, the smart counter-programming film to The Dark Knight, held onto third place with a respectable $17.8 million.

The surprise of the weekend was the poor performance of the very-well-done X-Files movie, I Want To Believe, which barely squeezed $10.2 million out of the weekend. Of course, being nearly six years removed from the TV show’s final bow, and almost a decade since the franchise’s last big-screen appearance, didn’t help. The film has been well-received by reviewers, but perhaps the biggest reason the film has stumbled is that it pursues a very similar demographic to that of The Dark Knight, and was released only one week following The Dark Knight’s debut; Fox would have been wise to push X-Files: I Want to Believe back into August, to get more breathing room from what most of Hollywood knew would be a monster hit in the form of The Dark Knight.

If Fox doesn’t stop believing in the X-Files film, though, it could become one of those long-run quiet hits that never really has a huge weekend, but does solid business for a long time as folks get other films ticked off on their must-see lists, and start searching for those quieter films they missed when concentrating on The Dark Knight and other top hit movies.

Next week brings the last huge “box office blockbuster” of the summer, the long-delayed Mummy sequel, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emporer. Identical demographics to The Dark Knight’s audience spell trouble for that one, too, I’m afriad. Swing Vote isn’t expected to make a big splash either, and August is a wasteland of quiet films, so The Dark Knight could have a good, long run and X-Files: I Want To Beleive could easily bounce back, given the chance, over the next five or six weeks.

Pixar’s animated robat flick topped Universal’s Angelina-mated assassin flick over the weekend, but both opened quite well, combining for a monstrous weekend at the box office. Wall-E won out with $62.5 million in its opening weekend, about a third of its $180 million budget; Wanted opened well above expectations with $51.1 million, or over two-thirds of its relatively modest $75 million budget. It all combined for a spectacular box office weekend that kept popcorn machines popping, prior to the coming July 4 holiday.

Last week’s champ, Get Smart, held on to third with a healthy second-week take of $20 million, bringing its total to $77.2 million after two weeks, against an $80 million budget. Kung Fu Panda dropped precipitously with the new competition for kids flicks from Wall-E, and took in only $11.7 million. Incredible Hulk was a strong fifth-placer with $9.2 million. With domestic box office now at $115 million and another $65 million in global box office, Incredible Hulk is now at $180 million, or $30 million into profit mode.

All 12 movies in the top 12 this weekend made at least $1 million or more.

The IQ of the US box office has risen to Steve Carell levels; the comic actor’s tribute to the 1965 Don Adams spy comedy, “Get Smart,” ruled at the box office this weekend, drawing in an estimated $39.1 million. Adams, who died on September 27, 2005, revised his role for the first silver-screen adaptation of the classic TV series in 1980, The Nude Bomb, but the movie was a critical and box office failure. The Carell version has been panned by critics, but with a nearly $40M weekend, it seems America doesn’t care what the critics say; they like Carell.

The whole Ademco link to Carell’s career might eventually become complete if Carell ever hosts a TV reality show that allows middle Americans to audition for a chance to get their big break in Hollywood; Don Adams had minor success with that concept on CBS in the early 1970s with “Don Adams’ Screen Test” and given the current trend of reality programming, bringing the concept back with Carell as host might not be an altogether bad idea. Only, of course, once Carell’s career cools down, which at the moment it shows no signs of doing.

Elsewhere on the weekend box office results, Kung Fu Panda ($21.7 million) eked out a narrow victory for second place behind Incredible Hulk ($21.5 million), which easily took third. Hulk raked in an extra $30 million from foreign box office so far, to bring its total to date to $127 million.

Mike Myers’ The Love Guru bombed out of the gate with a weak $14 million showing, although its light, $62 million production budget helps alleviate some of the disappointment; the movie seems to suffer mostly from Myers’ long absence from the silver screen, which led to him seeming more like “yesterday’s news” than “the hot, happening comic of the moment.” Rock on, Steve Carell.

M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening held tight to the last spot in the top five, with a $10 million weekend. So far the film has grossed $50.2 million domestically and $31.5 overseas, for a tidy $81.7 million gross against a $62 million budget, putting the film into the black in only its second week of release.

The rest of the “million or more” club goes like this: sixth place, Indiana Jones, $8.4 million; seventh place, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, $7.2 million (which has been weak overseas as well, grossing only $4.5 million so far, for a total of $88 million combined, against a $90 million production budget); eighth place, Sex and the City, $6.4 million; ninth place, Iron Man, $4 million; tenth place, The Strangers, $1.9 million and eleventh place, Prince Caspian, $1.7 million.

Well, it doesn’t quite measure up to Iron Man’s opening, nor does it compete with even the first Hulk movie, but there are several reasons Marvel Studios should be encouraged by Incredible Hulk’s $54.5 million opening. First, it was $20 million ahead of the next-closest feature, Kung Fu Panda, currently in its second week of release; second, it seems like a movie that, rather than losing steam fast on bad word of mouth as the first Hulk movie did, seems to be holding a bit more steady, thanks in part to a cameo by Robert Downey Jr. in his Iron Man/Tony Stark persona, which gave Incredible Hulk some legs off the goodwill generated by the very successful Iron Man movie.

Rather than go with big-name director Ang Lee this time, Marvel went with a lesser name directing, but a more faithful adaptation of its comic book hero. Instead of an artsy mess, this Hulk movie delivers all the expected “Hulk smash!” action that the first one failed to deliver. The film also fields a fresh cast to make the break from the Ang Lee-directed mess complete.

Replacing Eric Bana is Edward Norton as Bruce Banner, and replacing Jennifer Connelly as Betty Ross is Liv Tyler, hot off her appearance in the surprise summer slasher hit, The Strangers. Plus, comic fans were thrilled to see Hulk battling his arch-nemesis, the Abomination, rather than a bunch of stupid Hulk-Dogs. Incredible Hulk is an upgrade in most every respect, including a trim $150 million budget, a third of which the movie has already made back; by the time it has enjoyed its domestic run and raked in some foreign receipts, this is a Hulk film that ought to make money.

As mentioned earlier, Kung Fu Panda held firm at second place with $34.3 million, and just short of $118 million domestically in its second week of release, which should have voice star Jack Black selecting out new home furniture with his royalty payments; followed closely by M. Night Shyamalan’s R-rated The Happening, which did better than expected, raking in $30.5 million to take third place, a take that will certainly be good news after the slim $60 million budget it took to make the flick.

Adam Sandler’s You Don’t Mess With the Zohan was solid in fourth place with about half that take, at $16.4 million; Indiana Jones added $13.5 million in fifth place, once again besting Sex and the City in staying power.

Sex dropped out of the top five but did decent business as alternative programming to the male- and child-dominated selections at the box office. Sex took in $10.1 million in its third week. No other movie cracked the $10 million mark, although four other flicks did $1 million or better. They are Iron Man ($5.1 million after seven weeks in release), The Strangers ($4.0 million), Prince Caspian ($3 million), and What Happens In Vegas ($1.7 million.), which means all Top 10 movies grossed at least $1.7 million or more.

Yes, the unlikely did happen and “Sex and the City” did take the top spot for weekend box office away from Indiana Jones … barely. While the Sarah Jessica Parker-headlined chick flick opened to a $27 million Friday, the film suffered from poor word-of-mouth and actually lost momentum as the weekend wore on. The final three-day tally for “Sex and the City” was only $55.7 million, about $20 million less that many industry analysts predicted after Friday’s big opening. However, since the film only cost New Line $65 million to make, the blogosphere and media press are still puffing it up as a huge win, with rumors of a sequel already in the planning.

My advice to film investors? Hide your wallets; the AbFab Four are certain to demand higher paydays for a second outing on the silver screen, so take a careful look at the business dynamics of the weekend before pouring $80 to $120 million into a sequel. Yes, the film had a fun Friday, but Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull gained momentum over the course of the weekend, beating Sex’s declining take on both Saturday and Sunday.

In fact, Harrison Ford and company posted a very impressive $46 million in its second week of release, bringing its domestic take to $216 million, $363 million when worldwide box office is added in. That’s in contrast to Sex, which thus far has done no business outside of the US.

Perhaps the biggest shocker of the weekend, however, is that Rogue Pictures’ slasher movie, The Strangers, took in $20.7 million in its opening weekend to bump Iron Man out of the third spot. Crafty casting may explain the surge in business for this Hostel-clone movie, as fans began to realize that, yes, that is Liv Tyler in the film, as well as former Felicity heartthrob Scott Speedman as the couple cornered by sadistic killers in a remote cabin.

The Strangers, which only cost $9 million to make, is already well into profit mode, even if business dries up next weekend. I’d venture to say that Tyler proved her box office drawing power by pushing a low-budget slasher/torture flick to over $20 million, than did Sarah Jessica Parker with her start-strong-and-fizzle-fast performance in Sex and the City. Tyler should be able to use the performance of The Strangers to draw a bigger payday in whatever she does next.

Iron Man stayed steady at fourth place, with $14 million, ahead of fifth-place Prince Caspian, which drew $13 million. Iron Man has done $276 million to date domestically, $505 million worldwide. Prince Caspian has made $115 domestically and $166 worldwide, but may need to wait until DVD/BluRay release to make its $200 million production budget back. Business is off considerably for Prince Caspian, as the first film in the series, Narnia, made $291 million at the box office, while this one will come nowhere near that cume.

The main difference seems to be that Narnia benefitted from the softer winter holiday season, whereas Prince Caspian was unleashed in the far-more-competitive summer season. The results of this downturn may cause Walden Media to scale down the $200 million budget for the third film, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, currently scheduled for another May release, in 2010; at the very least, the company may want to movie the third film back into the winter holiday season.

The rest of the Top 10 was as boring as a diet pill review, with nothing breaking the $10 million mark and some films not even making $1 million near the bottom of the roundup.

Next weekend is counter-programming to Iron Man and Indy, once again, but could also erode Sex and the City’s business as well; the Jack Black-voiced toon, Kung Fu Panda, makes its initial bow, along with the family-friendly Adam Sandler comedy, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.

The weekend of June 13 will be the next big poke at adrenaline-fueled, testorerone-focused fare as both The Incredible Hulk and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening are strongly anticipated reviews, though expectations for the Hulk flick are muted due to both the original film’s critical failure, as well as Iron Man’s staying power.

If the second Hulk film flops, it’s likely a long timeout for the Jade Giant before he returns to the big screen again; in the meantime, most diehard comic book movie fans are setting their sights on the July 18 debut of The Dark Knight, the follow-up to the highly successful Batman relaunch, Batman Begins.

There are some Orlando vacations in the futures of all the folks involved in making Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The three-day total for Indy 4’s first weekend of release has reached an impressive $101 million domestically. With a Thrusday debut and a Memorial Day Monday added in, the film is set to make big bucks by the end of tonight.

With Monday total not yet in, Spielberg-Lucas-Ford action flick has so far grosses $126 million domestically and $146 million overseas, for a grand total of over $272 million combined; not bad for a movie that had a production budget of $185 million.

Prince Caspian, the second film in the Narnia Chronicles, based on the series of children’s stories by C.S. Lewis, did well enough to retain second place, but at $23 million, saw a huge, 58-percent dropoff from its debut week. Boasting a production budget of $200 million, Prince Caspian’s two-week total is $96 million domestically, and $22 million overseas, for a disappointing two-week total of only $118 million. This could make it difficult for the sequel to make its money back prior to DVD release.

That’s not a problem for Iron Man, which held on to the third spot in the box office race with an additional $20 million domestically. In release not for over three weeks, Iron man has taken in $257 million domestically and $228 million oveseas, for a staggering total of just inter $486 million; considering the film’s relatively slim $140 million budget, Iron Man stands now shoulder-to-shoulder with Spider-Man as one of Marvel Studios’ most profitable franchises.

What Happens in Vegas made just over $9 million in fourth place and then there was a huge dropoff as Speed Racer couldn’t even draw $4 million to take fifth place. Speed Races has only barely topped $36 million, contrasted to its $120 million budget, guaranteeing its stink-bomb status in this summer movie season; even with foreign box office added in, the film has barely made half of its investment back, at $61 million, and with business dropping like a rock, the best hope for producers to make their money back on Speed Racer is DVD/Blu-Ray sales.

This coming weekend is likely to be the least competitive of May, as Sex and the City and the thriller The Strangers are the only two new entries; both flicks seem unlikely to unseat Indy 4, and depending on the dynamics of the weekend, could potentially have trouble unseating Prince Caspian and Iron Man from the Top 3 spots as well.

Anyone with decent bathroom lighting can see that The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian has the goods to burst to a powerful debut in the weekend box office, but some folks weren’t sure the film would best the ultra-powerful Iron Man, now in its third week of release.

The good news for Hollywood is that Prince Caspian did beat out Iron Man to get a rock-solid grip on first place, but Iron Man did quite well, too, for its third week of release. Estimates are that Prince Caspian debuted at $56.5 million for first place, while Iron Man showed good staying power by taknig in an additional $31.2 million, bringing its domestic take to $222.4 million, and a startling $378.5 million combined between domestic and foreign box office totals.

Bouyed by good word of mouth, What Happens In Vegas took third place with a $13.8 million weekend, and the stink-bomb that is Speed Racer sank to a depressing fourth-place in its second week of release, luring in only $7.6 million. Speed Racer has a huge $120 million budget and thus far hasn’t even topped $30 million. As Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog might say, Speed Racer is a very warm, exciting movie… for me to poop on! (Apologies to Triumph creator Robert Smigel and Conan O’Brien.)

Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man proved an immovable object at the top of the box office books this weekend, grossing an estimated $50.5 million in US box office and bringing its domestic total to over $177 million. Worldwide, the superhero actioner has surpassed $276 million.

Iron Man’s total take was still two and a half times that of box office rookie, Speed Racer, which banked a mere $20.2 million; for a flick that cost over $170 million to make and was expected to gross $40 million in it’s opening weekend, Speed Racer has become the first box office bomb of the summer … and it’s not even technically summer yet.

Although “What Happens In Vegas” was only a hair behind Speed Racer at $20 million, that flick only cost $35 million to make, putting it on track to make its money back. Made of Honor and Baby Mama rounded out the top five. Iron Man is the only film in the Top 12 to go over $100 million at the box office so far, although Dr. Suess’ Horton Hears a Who boasts $150 million to date, down at number 14.

In fact, aside from Iron Man, the only movies in the top 12 to go over $50 million in box office is the gambling drama, 21, at the 12 spot with $80 million over seven weeks in release, and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” with just over $50 million.

The next movie to challenge Iron Man’s box office dominance is the family-friendly “Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” next weekend, though some industry analysts don’t expect Iron Man to day until the weekend of May 23, when Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull makes its debut.

The Paramount-Marvel Iron Man movie surpassed the weekend’s $85 million box office expectations to take in a gigantic $100 million over its first three days, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com. The superheroic romp, starring long-troubled box office star Robert Downey Jr. as a superhero with a substance abuse problem, proved to be the perfect fit between actor and character, and it’s aggressive over-expectations box office performance almost guarantees a sequel.

The move cost over $140 million to make, but with all US and foreign box office calculated to date, the studio has already raked in $200 million since its Friday global debut, with about $104 million from all US receipts (the movie debuted a day early in select markets) and over $96 million overseas.

With 96 percent of reviewers giving the film either an A or a B, it is the best-reviewed and highest-grossing superhero flick since Spider-Man, and easily places the film as the second-best Marvel superhero franchise to date, surpassing X-Men and Fantastic Four, as well as many others.

You can bet Downey, who has revived his career with this roll and these box office results, will be asking for and receiving travel trailers full of money for the inevitable sequels this film seems sure to inspire. While true to the spirit of the comic book, Iron Man’s origin was updated from its Cold War roots to a contemporary War on Terror setting, which may have also played a part in the film’s wide appeal.

Behind Iron Man, Made of Honor came in a distant second with $15 million in its first week, well below even half of its modest $40 million budget. Baby Mama came in third with over $10 million and Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay round out the top five with around $6 million each.

Box office receipts are sure to show more vitality in the top five next week, when Speed Racer joins the May race of the early summer blockbusters.