Tagged: metal buildings

The apes did rise!

The apes did rise after all.

The Planet of the Apes prequel, based on the old Charlton Heston SF movie franchise, raked in am impressive $54.8 million in its debut weekend, charged by tremendous special effects and a great marketing campaign. Produced on a relatively modest budget by Hollywood standards (only $93 million) the film added $23.4 million in initial overseas box office and, with gains since the weekend, now stands at $84.8 million in global box office, meaning the movie will quickly reach black ink on studio ledgers. Considering all the skyscrapers and metal buildings that were done away with in that movie, that’s an impressive precision of their special-effects budget!

Nothing else even came close. The Smurfs did well enough to secure second place with $20.7 million, while Cowboys and Aliens plummeted to a distant third place with $15.7 million in new ticket sales. That was barely better than the healthy-but-fading older competition.

The Jason Bateman-Ryan Reynolds vehicle The Change-Up scored a mere $13.5 million, followed by Captain America with $13 million, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 with $12.4 million, and Crazy Stupid Love with $12 million. Beyond seventh place, nothing else managed to score even $5 million.

The coming weekend is heavily favored toward the supernatural slasher film, Final Destination 5, while the comedy 30 Minutes Or Less and period-comedy The Help are underdogs this coming weekend. The X-Factor is the 3D-powered GLEE concert movie, which boasts the weakest screen count but will be the first test of the FOX TV powerhouse ratings series on the big screen.

Lucky 7 for Avatar!

Seven… count ‘em, seven… weeks atop the charts for James Cameron’s Avatar is the longest any single movie has reigned in a mighty long time; and sad to say, but even though business was down on Avatar to only a $30 million weekend in the US, it was still nearly twice as much as the nearest competitor raked in.

You could buy a lot of metal buildings with Avatar’s $594 million domestic gross, but when you add in $1.44 billion from overseas sales, you have a weekend in which Avatar went over the $2.0 billion mark in worldwide box office. That’s impressive.

The Mel Gibson thriller Edge of Darkness did better than I expected it to do, possibly benefiting from Avatar-exhaustion. It was a distant second place with $17.1 million in its opening bow.

The movie I expected to do better than Mad Mel’s, rom-com When In Rome, pulled in only $12 million for the former Veronica Mars and Heroes star, Kristen Bell. Duane “The Rock” Johnson’s The Tooth Fairy was the only other movie to top $10.0 million… gaining almost exactly that.

On the horizon for next weekend are Dear John, another rom-com with dramatic pretensions that probably won’t register against Avatar; however, From Paris With Love is also debuting, featuring John Travolta in his fiftieth comeback attempt, or something like that. It doesn’t look like my cup of cocoa, but who knows? If Avatar drops below $27 million and Avatar-exhaustion kicks up another notch, From Paris With Love could knock Avatar from atop the box office charts without even deserving to.

If neither of them do the trick, though, look for Avatar not to make it nine in a row, because with rom-com Valentines Day, a remake of the classic Universal horror flick The Wolfman, and the Harry Potter-wannabe movie, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief all debuting on February 12, there’s no way Avatar can hold off the challenges any longer for box office domination.

You heard it here first.