Sunday, May 11, 2008

Box Office Buzz: Racer loses Speed...

It's only the second week of the Big Summer Movies and already it disappoints. While Iron Man holds strong at the top spot with another $50m, it's kid-friendly Speed Racer that's tanking. Not a big surprise though as the reviews were not kind and, IMHO, the whole thing just looks.. ehhh. About five months ago, I put this flick on my must-see list for 2008, but the more I actually saw of it, the more interest I lost. And I'm someone who has much love for Emile Hirsch and will watch him read the phonebook! Speed Racer opened in the second spot with only $20.2m. Considering it's a film by the Wachowski Brothers, I doubt it has a small budget. I think we can safely say that Warner Bros. won't be racing to greenlight a sequel.

Cameron D. and Ashton K. fared better with What Happens in Vegas. Their comedy grossed $20m, which is pretty average (and sometimes even good) for what romcoms are making these days. Patrick Dempsey's Made of Honor is doing pretty decent too. It opened last week with $14.7m and has now grossed about $26.3m total domestically. I've seen a lot of Vegas promotion and barely any for Made, so really, it's not doing bad at all. Maybe a March release would've been better, but hey, what do I know?

Next week sees the release of Prince Caspian. I have no faith at all in the summer of 2008.

The numbers courtesy of Box Office Mojo:
1) Iron Man - $50.5m/$177.1m
2) Speed Racer - $20.2m/$20.2m
3) What Happens in Vegas - $20m/$20m
4) Made of Honor - $7.6m/$26.3m
5) Baby Mama - $5.8m/$40.4m
6) Forgetting Sarah Marshall - $3.8m/$50.8m
7) Harold & Kumar 2 - $3.2m/$30.7m
8) The Forbidden Kingdom - $1.9m/$48.7m
9) Nim's Island - $1.3m/$44.3m
10) Redbelt - $1.1m/$1.2m

No comments: