Image Credit: DreamworksThis weekend definitely won’t be hitting the record books. Despite four new releases vying for the top spot, the box office is destined to be down some 20 percent compared to last year at this time when The Hangover opened to $45 million and Up scored big in its second weekend. In fact, none of these new releases will gross more than $20 million for the frame, with the R-rated Russell Brand, Jonah Hill comedy Get Him to the Greek likely to be on top of the new films and should do around $17 million for the weekend. It grossed some $6 million Friday night.
Shrek Forever After earned an estimated $6.8 million for Friday, putting its weekend gross in the $24 million range and its 3-week cume in the $180 million range. Killers will likely take third place. The Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher-starring action comedy earned over $5 million on Friday with a weekend gross likely to hit $15 million. The other two wide releases, Marmaduke and Splice won’t make it into the top five. Prince of Persia and Sex and the City 2 will fill the fourth and fifth slots. Though both of those films in their second weekend are likely to be down some 60% for the frame. Persia earned another $4 million Friday for a weekend take that’s unlikely to be more than $13 million. That would put the Jake Gyllenhaal-starrer movie in the $58 million range after two weekends in release. SATC 2 also earned some $4 million Friday night, down 67% from last Friday and on track to gross a bit over $12 million for the frame for a total cume of $73 million.
As for Marmaduke, this kid’s flick from Twentieth Century Fox is fighting for a double-digit opening. The PG-rated movie which didn’t seem to get the full attention of the studio’s marketing department earned a bit over $3 million Friday night for a weekend that could reach $10 million. The R-rated sci-fi thriller Splice didn’t do much better despite receiving really strong reviews. Earning around $2.5 million Friday night, the film will be struggling to cross $7 million for the weekend.
Check back tomorrow for a complete report.
Nerwen Alderion is a huge loser
I knew this summer was going to be HORRIBLE. The ONLY movie I’m waiting for is “Inception”.
Add Toy Story, and I’m in agreement.
Agreed. After, Toy Story and Inception, this summer’s going to be pretty pathetic.
Inception for me as well. I can’t believe this summer sucks so bad. WTF? Where are all the movies?!
yup me too for Inception. I’m not even worried about TS3….too many kids for my taste. I am intrigued about Pirahna 3d though.
Lay Jeno is even worse.
This summer movies suck! Still haven’t seen Iron Man 2, Shrek, Robin Hood nor Persia… and don’t plan to! Waiting for Inception.
Saw Iron Man 2 (it was good enough, mainly because of RDJ). I haven’t seen Shrek or Persia and I’m not in any hurry. There’s literally nothing else coming out this summer that I’m dying to see, except Inception.
Who didn’t see this coming? You could look at the summer lineup months ago and see that the only sure things were Iron Man 2, Toy Story 3, and Twilight. This is bad
Hello, what about Inception? This is going to be huge!
Inception is what I am waiting for
Saw the 2 trailers for inception. It gives away the whole movie. It copies heavily from the Matrix and doesn’t seem all that complex. It sounded better when it was a mystery and before the spoiler trailer.
Well NEXT summer is about to be a BANGER with Thor, Green Lantern, Captain America, Transformers 3(if you can still be excited about that movie), X-Men, and Hangover 2. It “should” be a treat…
Don’t forget the second Deathly Hallows movie! That’s going to be EPIC.
Next summer will deffinetly be the biggest on record.
Don’t forget the new Winnie the Pooh movie.
I would take X-Men off of that list. After the horror that was X-Men Origins: Wolverine I have absolutely no faith in another X-men movie.
Eh. Most of those are comic book movies and Hollywood has already stopped being inventive with comic book adaptations. “Kick-Ass” is the only good one I’ve seen in a while, but the genre’s getting pretty stale. And I’m sick of seeing troubled men in costumes save the day. Please just don’t even bother with the token love interest.
And yeah, X-men: The Last Stand and X-men Origins: Wolverine were boring and awful, respectively, so not looking forward to the next X-men flick. :-/
Twilight?? LMAO
It’ll make a ton of money guaranteed, so the inclusion of Twilight to the big summer movies isn’t a big deal
It probably will, but considering it’s coming out less than a month, there’s not a lot of publicity surrounding it. They’ve only released two whimpy trailers and the fans don’t even seem too excited about it.
Does anyone else think that this years bad summer lineup had anything to do with the writers strike a few years back. It takes years to make movies so the time line fits and also explains while the summer of 11 and 12 are so stacked.
That’s very possible the majority of movies this summer are not very interesting
I think you’re right. I know the writers’ strike had an effect on last year’s movies, and it’s probably the same for this summer, too. The strike was a big reason why WB moved Harry Potter to July 2009 instead of November 2008; they needed a sure thing to bolster the ’09 income.
No. The strike impacted television but not really features. As a last resort, studios have a ton of bought spec scripts that they could have put in production if they were desperate.
This summer is weak simply due to a lack of tent pole pics available.
The economic crisis is what really impacted Hollywood. Studios are now simply going for pre-branded properties with very few risks being taken on spec or non-franchise films.
Ah, someone flamming on someone else… must have a pathetic life… ANYWAY, I watched Greek and thought it was a decent film, but yeah this summer seems to be a disappointment, I don’t have high hopes for the A-team next week but I will watch it anyway.
wow, this summer season is really bad.
This is just like the summer of 2005. Very few great movies. But like that year we also have two anticipated fantasy releases in Novmber and Decmber. “Harry Potter” and “The Chronicles of Narnia.”
I remember last year that almost every weekend came out with about a $70 million plus top gross. (Hangover, Up, Wolverine, Terminator 4, etc.) Even if half of those movies were okay at the most, it’s still a step up from this year. Only surefire of this month is Toy Story 3 (Can’t wait!). Then Eclipse on the last day of the month which may hold strong or drop rapidly like New Moon did.
Eclipse will probably have a very big opening, but then will drop off rapidly just like New Moon did (~70% drops each week).
Hey Dave. Any thoughts about the winner of the Belmont later?
Sorry Shirley, I don’t follow horse races very much.
I actually think that Eclipse will DECREASE on New Moon’s gross, as many third films in a franchise do See: The Matrix, Pirates, Shrek, Harry Potter, Spider-Man. It’ll still do well, obviously, but I think fatigue’s set in, you don’t see NEARLY the amount of wall-to-wall coverage that you did when New Moon came out (for which I’m thankful) and plenty of people (including my own gf) didn’t like New Moon at all.
Harry Potter was the only one of those franchises that actually improved creatively with the third installment. And I’m one of the few teenage girls I know who has never seen a Twilight film (nor read the books), and I plan to keep that streak up.
POA was creatively better than the previous two HP films, because Alfonso Cuaron is such a genius. However, it did earn less than all the other HP films. I think twilight has been too constant. It never goes under the radar like Potter, so I think even it’s fans are getting tired of it (with any hope).
HP is a case where one movie’s gross is determined by how many people liked the movie before it. The HP movie grosses dropped consistently until Azkaban, because people were kind of lukewarm on the films up to that point. But people like Azkaban so much that Goblet made a significant amount of money more on the next go-around. So while Azkaban did gross the least, its quality and creative genius actually HELPED the series BO in the long run.
And I agree that it seems like a lot of people, even fans, are sick of Twilight, and there isn’t nearly as much publicity for it as there was for New Moon. I think they’re gonna regret rushing to get Eclipse out. But of course, they couldn’t have released it in November…
I’m going to see Splice today. It sucks that a quality movie won’t be in the top 5. If the sci-fi plot scares you off, then at least pay for a ticket to Splice, and go see Shrek or that Sex movie. If people only pay to see crap, that’s all that will get made.
Given that you haven’t actually seen Splice yet (and that it looks like Species 5 to me), how can you be so sure that it is a “quality movie”? My favorite line from a Marmaduke review “Garfield, come home – all is forgiven.”
Jason, your ‘Species’ argument might of made sense, you know if ‘Species’ wasn’t about aliens. The last i heard ‘Splice” was about a clonig experiment.
Because Jason, I was going to see it for the second time. Duh.
yeah it’s a shame, it actually got good reviews. somehow bad horror movies like Nightmare on Elm Street make a ton of money, but quality ones bomb. America, learn to spend your money better.
i can wait till the releases hit cable
The Killers is a very awesome movie, people dont just not want to go see this movie because Katherine Heigl is in it,because this movie really did turn out to be great, I thought it would suck,but it was funny from the start to the end.
Are you on crack? I saw this movie last night and I want my money back.
@ fernando – Who are you really, Ashton Kutcher? You can’t punk me Ashton. Everybody knows there’s no such thing as a good Katherine Heigl movie.
Hey, I bought 27 Dresses on DVD. It was way above average for a romcom.
I also enjoyed 27 dresses, ugly truth was garbage and although I haven’t watched killers it dosen’t look very good
There’s also no such thing as a good Ashton Kutcher movie.
Heigl at least was good in “Knocked Up.”
Actually, there is a such thing as a good Katherine Heigl movie. Remember Valentine? That movie was awesome and Roger Ebert gave it four stars!
Yes, Anna you’re right about Katherine Heigl being good in “Knocked Up.” Too bad she bad-mouthed the film after it turned her into a movie star though.
I’m pretty sure, if anything cut back the audience for this movie, it would be how Bounty Hunter turned out
Hollywood is putting out too much product. The audience can’t keep up! No wonder why everything is perfoming below expectations.
Know why the summer BO sucks so far? Because nearly everything (save for Iron Man 2, in my opinion) out so far has been either disappointing or outright crap. And except for Toy Story 3, June looks equally dismal. July has Inception. August has…nothing, that I can see. Maybe we’ll get a Hangover-like surprise, but I’m not shocked that a summer line-up of Twilight, Shrek, a Karate Kid remake, Jonah Hex and another Shyamalan movie isn’t making people get terribly excited.
I totally agree! I saw Iron Man 2 again (hey, it was a great movie!) yesterday and it reminded me of what a lot of films have to live up to. Toy Story 3 should have a pretty good opening at the box office, but other than that, we have to look forward to Eclipse (ugh!). Harry Potter will definitely bring in money in November. Can’t wait for that!
“I saw Iron Man 2 again (hey, it was a great movie!) yesterday and it reminded me of what a lot of films have to live up to.”
Meh, Iron Man 2 didn’t even live up to its original. I agree, though, that compared to the crop of godawful big studio disasters this summer, Iron Man 2 was relatively decent.
Scott Pilgrim vs The World (Aug 13) – it may not be a HUGE moneymaker, but in terms of quality it looks pretty awesome
Agreed.
I agree. The trailer was in front of Get Him to the Greek and it look pretty interesting. Maybe it will pull a Hangover.
Yes! Cannot wait!
If the Shymalan movie had actually followed its excellent source material instead of tossing out tons of research, world building, humor and plot in exchange for “atmosphere” and “darker and edgier”, I’d be excited. As it is…not so much.
I think next week’s the karate kid will be huge.
Please tell me you are joking. A remake no one asked for starring Will Smith’s son??
Agreed. I can’t decide if this is supposed to be something kids will want to see and ask their parents to take them (which I doubt), or a film they think parents will feel nostalgic about and take our kids (which ain’t happening in my house). It will probably do okay, just because there’s not much out there, but it looks completely WRONG. Wrong age of the kid, wrong mentor, wrong situations, and obvious outcome. Thumbs-down!
Who asks for ANY remakes?
Really what can people expect here. This is one of the weakest summer movie lineups if not the weakest i have ever seen. Money is down because interest in these movies are non existant. Inception is the one summer movie i’m half interested in and really i’m not super excited to see it. It seems like we had a stronger movie line up in feb-april.
God, Nicole Sperling is a terrible writer.
Omg Nicole Sperling is such a retard!