It was kind of a blase weekend at the box office. No real movie dominated the scene with its prowess. Evan Almighty came in on top, but only by $12 million dollars. That's small potatoes compared to what we saw at the end of May and the beginning of June. Evan Almighty really needed to hit that top spot, since it cost a mint to make. $32 million isn't bad for a comedy, but the film earned less than a quarter of its budget back. This is one of those pleasant little films that's not going to generate a lot of buzz or word of mouth. It will more than likely make its money back on the home video circuit.
This week's other new release, 1408, did quite well for a genre picture. It brought in a nice little take of $20 million. Horror took a hit earlier this month when Eli Roth's Hostel: Part II failed miserably with just a $9 million opening take. It has already faded from theater screens. 1408 is more scare/less gore. And it's a pretty great little flick. Word of mouth should keep this one around for at least the rest of July.
Hot on its heels in third place was the comic book adaptation and sequel Fantastic Four: Rise of The Silver Surfer. Its $20 million take brings its cumulative gross close to the $100 million mark. That's great for a flick in its second week, which hasn't exactly been getting much praise. I've heard its way better than the first film. I can't really comment. I haven't seen either of them.
This week's other notable new comer was A Mighty Heart. It is generating a lot of Oscar buzz, and it actually killed one of my colleagues at the Arc Light this weekend. While watching the film, which made a tidy sum of $4 million dollars on just a handful of screens, Anderson Jones had a heart attack. He died an hour later at the hospital. He'd be proud to know that he helped get the film into that coveted number ten spot.
The rest of the weekend chart is made up of holdovers from the previous weeks. Ocean's Thirteen came in at fourth place with $11 million. That's about half the salary of one of its stars, of which there are thirteen. The film is close to making it to the hundred million dollar mark. One more weekend should do the trick.
Knocked Up and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End continue to sit on each other's neck. The Seth Rogen/Judd Apatow comedy nabbed another $10 million, putting its overall take at $108 million. It is an official blockbuster now. Good on them. Johnny Depp and his crew of pirates slipped another notch to 6th place. It only earned $7.2 million. But don't feel to bad for this ship. To date, it has earned an amazing $287 million stateside.
Most of these movies are going to take a massive hit this coming weekend. The long awaited follow-up to Die Hard: With a Vengeance, entitled Live Free or Die Hard, is going to hit like an A-bomb this Wednesday, the 27th of June. And then, just a couple of days later, on July 3rd, Transformers is going to stomp its way across the cinematic landscape, killing everything in its path.
If tracking estimates are correct, Transformers should defiantly be the biggest film of the summer.
Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman, Lauren Graham, John Goodman, Wanda Sykes, John Michael Higgins, Jonah Hill, Jimmy Bennett, Graham Phillips, Johnny Simmons, Meagen Fay
CONTEST: Win Big with Our Evan Almighty Prize Pack! Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 - Not only are celebrating the upcoming release of the film but we're also excited about the Steve Carell microsite, Steve Almighty!
EXCLUSIVE: Stan Lee Talks Superheroes! Thursday, November 30th, 2006 - The iconic comic book king discusses his new video game Marvel Ultimate Alliance, as well as the upcoming films Iron Man and Fantastic Four: Rise of The Silver Surfer.
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