As everyone suspected, ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon’ dominated the box office for the second weekend in a row. Having raked in more than $261 million in less than 14 days, ‘Dark of the Moon’ is officially the highest grossing movie (domestically) of 2011. It’s a shame that box office numbers rarely reflect a film’s true quality.
Of the two new nationwide releases this weekend, ‘Horrible Bosses‘ won out with more than $28 million, which is just less than $7 million away from hitting its budget. The film is on track to be the fourth highly profitable R-rated comedy of the summer. (The other three were ‘Bridesmaids’, ‘The Hangover Part II’ and ‘Bad Teacher’.) Like I said in my review, there’s no reason why a comedy of this caliber shouldn’t be just as successful as – if not more than –the others.
‘Horrible Bosses’ follows three best friends, all equally disgruntled employees, who feel that they have to kill the horrible bosses that make their lives a living hell. Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day play the unhappy workers plotting “justifiable homicide” on Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston and Colin Farrell. If ‘Horrible Bosses’ could have used one correction, it would be to include more scenes of the outrageous bosses.
‘Horrible Bosses’ producer Brett Ratner is already threatening to make sequels – the same thing he did to ruin his movie ‘Rush Hour’. Although nothing is official, Ratner says that he’d love to make ‘Horrible Wives’ and/or ‘Horrible Children’. Someone please stop him before he ruins another good thing. (See ‘X-Men: The Last Stand‘.)
Opening in third place is ‘Zookeeper‘, a terrible supposed family flick about a loser zookeeper (Kevin James) who uses dating advice from talking animals to win back his gorgeous ex-girlfriend (Leslie Bibb). Because ‘Zookeeper’ features little typical family-friendly content (the few talking animals scenes, pee jokes and Kevin James falling down gags are hardly enough to turn this human-driven movie into a “family film”), my prediction was that negative word of mouth would put ‘Zookeeper’ out of its misery – which happened a lot sooner than I expected.
On a budget of $80 million (What the hell did they spend the money on?! It sure wasn’t spent on a realistic-looking gorilla suit!), yet pulling in only $21 million in its opening weekend, ‘Paul Blart: Zookeeper’ is already looking like another 2011 family-friendly flop.
‘Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest‘ earned a strong opening gross of $120,000 on only four screens across America. Its per-screen average was more than $30,000, nearly $20,000 more than that of ‘Transformers’.
‘Midnight in Paris‘ finished the weekend in the number 12 spot with $2.7 million, bringing its total gross to $38.6 million. If ‘Midnight in Paris’ makes another $1.4 million – which it certainly will – it will pass ‘Hannah and Her Sisters’ to become Woody Allen’s all-time highest grossing film.
Top 10:
1. ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon’ (Paramount/DreamWorks) – $47,025,000
2. ‘Horrible Bosses’ (Warner Bros./New Line) – $28,110,000
3. ‘Zookeeper’ (Sony) – $21,000,000
4. ‘Cars 2’ (Buena Vista) – $15,209,000
5. ‘Bad Teacher’ (Sony) – $9,000,000
6. ‘Larry Crowne’ (Universal) – $6,264,000
7. ‘Super 8’ (Paramount) – $4,825,000
8. ‘Monte Carlo’ (Fox) – $3,800,000
9. ‘Green Lantern’ (Warner Bros.) – $3,125,000
10. ‘Mr. Popper’s Penguins’ (Fox) – $2,850,000
Josh Zyber
Saw Horrible Bosses yesterday. Pretty funny, I enjoyed it.
When it ended, Transformers was letting out at the same time from the next screen over. On the way out of the theater, I overheard a family’s conversation talking about it. The father asked his kids, “Why do they have to make all the robots look the same? I couldn’t tell who was the good robot and who was the bad robot.”
To anyone who claims that the characters in these movies are perfectly clear, I say: HA! This is a real problem that real everyday viewers (not just snarky critics) have with these movies.
Jane Morgan
‘Transformers 3’ is already at $645M worldwide. This robot confusion you speak of is not just a problem, it’s becoming an epidemic.
‘Transformers 4-5-6’ is looking like it won’t be a reboot. Michael Bay and Shia LaBeouf are out. They want to bring in Jason Statham as the new lead, and make the next trilogy even darker, with more epic sci-fi action.
I say they give the franchise to Jonathan Liebesman, Neill Blomkamp, or Matt Reeves.
Luke Hickman
AuthorCould you imagine Neill Blomkamp tackling it?! Jane, let’s make a petition – I’m FOR it!
Jane Morgan
Will Hasbro give him full creative control to write the script he wants?
Will Paramount be willing to delay T4 until 2015, to work around ‘Elysium.’
Would you rather have him work on Transformers, or his next original IP?
Luke Hickman
AuthorIs anything known about ‘Elysium’ yet? There were SO many rumors flying around the web that I quit reading them. The last thing I read was the casting of Matt Damon.
I think I want his ‘District 9’ follow-up first – that is, if ‘Elysium’ is not it.
Jane Morgan
‘Elysium’ is a sci-fi film with sociopolitical themes, set 150 years in a future, in which Jodie Foster is the leader of an alien planet.
It’s set to release March 1, 2013.
Luke Hickman
AuthorI love how you’re to-the-point. And I’m definitely glad that you can tolerate the rumors enough to pass out the facts when on-the-spot. I want you to be my personal fact-checker!
Chaz Dumbaugh
Well Transformers can say bye bye to those box office numbers come Friday, Harry Potter is gonna spank the shit out of it 😉
I saw it again this weekend, gave it my money twice and I’m sticking to it being a great fun movie, went with 3 friends who hadnt seen it yet and they all loved it, one friend thought it was some of the best action he’s ever seen and no one (from both times I went) said anything about the Transformers all looking a like, TF3 made it pretty obvious who was who, the generic Decepticons that were cannon fodder for Optimus and stuff, yeah they all looked the same, but it didnt matter 🙂
Luke Hickman
AuthorI saw ‘Deathly Hallows: Part 2’ last night and I’m pretty sure it’s going to KILL ‘Transformers.’
Jane Morgan
It will be interesting to see how ‘Harry Potter 8’ competes with its kin.
Box Office – US / WW
HP1 – $317M / $974M
HP6 – $302M / $934M
HP7 – $295M / $954M
HP5 – $292M / $938M
HP4 – $290M / $896M
HP2 – $262M / $878M
HP3 – $249M / $795M
HP8 – $ ? ? ? / $ ? ? ?
No ‘Harry Potter’ film has ever broken a billion worldwide. And its “best” film, ‘Azkaban,’ has performed the weakest at the box office.
Will ‘Harry Potter 8,’ being the climax, rise above all others?
According to box office prophets, ‘Harry Potter 8’ is projected to open softer ($147M) than ‘Transformers 3’ did ($180M).