How is that the worst-looking movie of the year \u2013 a family flick that mixes CG blue cartoon characters with live action \u2013 and an over-hyped genre-blender could finish the weekend in a dismal tie? Until the final numbers come in this afternoon, we won’t know who the true winner is.
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Weekend estimates reported by the studios point to a tie between Jon Favreau’s first film since the ‘Iron Man’ movies, ‘Cowboys & Aliens<\/strong>‘, and the part CG\/part live-action version of the classic cartoon series ‘The Smurfs<\/strong>‘. Both films’ studios have reported estimated weekend earnings of $36.2 million. While the estimate is right on track with predictions for ‘Cowboys & Aliens’, ‘The Smurfs’ earned over $7 million more than expected.<\/p>\n Considering that ‘Cowboys & Aliens’ teasers began running over a year ago, you might expect the alien invasion twist on the Wild West theme to be a creatively successful mix. But a soft $36 million opening for a large summer blockbuster is underwhelming.<\/p>\n Although ‘The Smurfs’ has apparently tied with ‘Cowboys & Aliens’ in the way of box office revenue, its attendance was less than that of ‘Cowboys & Aliens’. ‘Cowboys’ opened only on 2D screens, while ‘The Smurfs’ had the advantage of inflated 3D ticket prices to increase its weekend total. (Had ‘The Smurfs’ won in attendance too, I might have lost a lot of respect for America’s general audiences.) It’s estimated that 45% of ‘Smurf’ revenue resulted from 3D ticket prices. The 3D audience percentage is still down from the beginning of summer, but not as low as it has been for movies such as ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides’ or ‘Cars 2’ which topped out at 40%.<\/p>\n