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发帖数: 755 | 1 Weekend Box Office: Hop Tops Again, Soul Surfer Surprises, Your Highness
Underwhelms
Posted: 04/10/11 08:18 PM ET
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Natalie Portman , 20th Century Fox , Box Office (Weekend Rundown) , Soul
Surfer , Hanna , Hop , Insidious , Rio , Scream 4 , Your Highness ,
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For the second weekend in a row, Universal's Hop was the number one film of
the weekend. The Easter Bunny animated epic dropped 42% in its second
weekend, grossing $21.6 million. That's a bit heavy for an animated film,
but the lack of school for many kids has meant decent midweek showings,
draining the 'must see on the weekend' factor. Regardless, the $63 million-
budgeted film has already grossed $68 million in the first ten days. If it
can fend off Rio next weekend (which is basically being sold by Fox as '
Angry Birds: the Movie'), it positions itself for a strong fourth weekend,
which is of course Easter itself. Frankly, it will be fun to watch, as
agnostic, atheist, and/or not-Christian families will check out Hop over
that holiday weekend, while the more overtly Christian families will opt for
Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family. This is another big win for
Illumination and a solid hit for Universal. $100 million seems guaranteed
and beyond that is mainly a matter of demo competition (a bunch of kid-
friendly films over the next month) and whether it can keep screens as
summer starts. As for those who read last week's roundup, I did see the film
that Sunday, and it's relatively mediocre but utterly harmless. My three-
year old enjoyed it, which counts for something, and it does make an effort
to go in a different direction than many other talking-animal films (too bad
it literally gives away the ending in the first scene of the film... WHY???
).
There were four new releases this weekend and frankly none of them did all
that well. Oddly enough, all four releases were at-least partially female-
driven, which likely means that they should have been spread out a little.
Instead they all hurt each other. The top of the new releases was Warner
Bros' Arthur remake. The Russell Brand romantic comedy pitched hard to the
older crowd that remembered and/or cared about the 1981 Dudley Moore
original. But the film grossed just $12.6 million, which is brutal for a
romantic comedy that somehow cost $85 million (as rival studios claimed),
unless it only cost $40 million (as Warner Bros claims), which makes it a
mediocre debut but not a disaster. Russell Brand may be funny and a genuine
asset, but he's not an 'open the film' movie star yet. Jennifer Garner has a
supporting role, and the initial marketing tried to convince audiences that
she was the main female lead/love interest, but eventually they had to fess
up that the real lead was little-known Greta Gerwig (they even kept Gerwig
off the first poster). The film scored a 'B' from Cinemascore, so legs are
not likely. The film had a tough time selling the idea of a childish and
spoiled billionaire in a time of severe economic suffering, but maybe it's a
simple case of the world just not needing a new version of Arthur. |
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