Don't worry about the numbers, Shia. $19 million is still good enough to win the weekend.
Greed is, in fact, pretty good it seems, as
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,
Oliver Stone's sequel to his 1987 classic, won its opening weekend, taking in around $19 million. Not an overly stellar number, but this weekend was pretty soft all around, making it good enough to take the title.
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'hoole, or
, That Fucking Owl Movie came in second, with about $16.3 million. Not great numbers for a heavily marketed 3D animated flick--one that cost close to $100 million to produce, no less. I guess no one "gave a hoot" about this movie, eh? EH? Goddammit, someone just shoot me now and put me out of my misery.
The only other wide release of the weekend, You Again, the movie that tried to convince us that
Kristen Bell was ugly in high school, that
Jamie Lee Curtis is really good at broad comedy (as if
Christmas With the Kranks wasn't enough evidence of that!), and that people will flock to see
Betty White in literally anything now, came in a pretty paltry fifth, with only $8.3 million on the weekend. Neither Rorie or I could be bothered to see this one this weekend, and I guess neither could anyone else. Hmph. Good.
Not a lot of other news of note as far as indie releases or anything else.
The Virginity Hit, the
Will Ferrell /
Adam McKay-produced teen sex comedy which went into semi-wide release this weekend (on around 700 screens) did a pretty miserable $300,000, good for a $400 per-screen average. Comparatively,
Buried, the
"Ryan Reynolds in a goddamn coffin" movie, which opened on 11 screens, had a $9,500 per-screen average, and the educational documentary
Waiting for "Superman" pulled in an average of over $35,000 on its four screens. Oh, also,
Inception is still on the list for the 11th week in a row. Click on to see the full list and see where it placed (because I know that's the only reason anyone reads the full list anymore).
Box Office Report: 09/24 - 09/26
 | 1. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps $19 million / NEW
Again, not an overly stellar number, but pretty good for a sequel to a movie that came out in 1987, and features Shia LaBeouf at quite possibly his most manic. Mikey Douglas can still put butts in the theaters, I guess!
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 | 2. Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole $16.3 million / NEW
There aren't a lot of movies I root for to fail--especially movies I give not overly terrible ratings too--but I'm sorry, seeing this movie not catch fire does my heart good. This movie is completely superfluous in every way. It exists not to tell any kind of useful or entertaining story, but to let Zack Snyder stroke his three-dimensional slo-mo owl-flying boner. Look, just go home and watch 300, and remember that this dude used to direct the kind of stupid we, as a people, could get behind.
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 | 3. The Town $16 million / $49.1 million
A solid second week intake, and at this point the movie's already more than made its production back. I wonder if this means Ben Affleck will put his whole acting career in his rear view, and stick to directing from here on out. He's certainly got a stronger knack for it than his brother...
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 | 4. Easy A $10.7 million / $32.8 million
See above. Nice to see this movie hang on, and just reinforces the belief that Emma Stone can definitely carry a movie to box office success. Granted, I will probably never see this particular movie, but I look forward to her future projects that aren't high school comedies.
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 | 5. You Again $8.3 million / NEW
This thing looked putrid from the get-go, but I think it was really those god-fucking-awful in-theater behind the scenes promos they kept running for this thing that turned me completely off from this movie. Listening to those women circle jerk each other about how talented and funny they all are, and then hearing the purported "jokes" this movie had on offer...yeah, no. Just no.
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 | 6. Devil $6.5 million / $21.7 million
M. Night Shammy's elevator ride to hell is hanging on with pretty OK second week numbers, which is sort of depressing, but hey, it could be worse. We could still be talking about Takers all the way up here.
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 | 7. Resident Evil: Afterlife $4.9 million / $52 million
Another greater than 50% drop this weekend. This movie is sinking like a stone, and yet some part of me really hopes they make good on making yet another sequel. I mean, by all means, continue to throw money at this money pit of a franchise. It ain't like that cash could go to infinitely better causes.
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 | 8. Alpha and Omega $4.7 million / $15.1 million
Deep down, I'm kind of glad we skipped reviewing this one, just because it means I have not contributed dollar one to this dog shit's bottom line. Gonna bet this doesn't even stay on the list next weekend.
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 | 9. Takers $1.7 million / $55 million
T.I. is going to make more movies, and it's all you peoples' fault. I hope you're pleased with yourself, American film-goer.
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 | 10. Inception $1.2 million / $287.1 million
Loathe as I am to say it, this is probably going to be the last week we get to talk about Inception on this list. It's been a hell of an eleven week run, but it's probably time for it to retire. I ran out of "we need to go deeper" jokes and trailer mash-up vids weeks ago. I am completely out of material, people. It was a good run while it lasted.
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Dropped Out: The Other Guys,
The American,
Machete Source: Box Office Mojo
As for the movies on the list I still need to see "Easy A" and "The Town." Everything else I do not care about one bit. (Except Inception, of course.)
I was actually a big fan of Heat, haven't seen Ronin but I'll check it out. The thing that put me off about it was the fact that every newspaper around where I live was capitalizing on the fact that "Eh, it's filmed in Chahlztown guy!" and I just got sick of hearing about it. I don't think I'll be able to ignore it on DVD.
Also, I sure hope Inception hangs on ANOTHER week, just for the laughs.
Neither opening film this week (I'm disregarding You Again, just like how America did this weekend) will probably make much money in the long run. Wall Street cost about $70-80 million to make, so it needs strong international box office to be in the black, while Owls better pray that it makes $100 million overseas to even keep afloat.
Just a hunch but it seems that Zach Snyder's current (Owls) and previous film (Watchmen) are now big underperformers, and while I'm looking forward to Sucker Punch, that movie looks to be in the Kick-Ass/Scott Pilgrim realm of "internet fanboy hype =/= box office success" too. I know it's much to early to be saying this, but still, it's gotta be something that's in the back of business executive's minds; maybe they won't take a risk on Snyder in the future.
Ronin's fucking excellent.
Fairwell, Inception! We hardly knew ye.
I almost want to see just to spite you.
No, not really. I was schadenfreuding it up along side you. I really liked what Zack Snyder did with the Dawn of the Dead remake, and Watchmen to some extent, but the slow-mo/fast forward stuff is really tiresome now.