Man, who knew a movie about black maids would make four new releases bleed half to death? That's right,
The Help climbed to the top of the box office this weekend with $20 million, easing 23 percent and bringing its total up to $71.3 million in 12 days. You can't be entirely surprised. The movie started off strong last weekend with $26 million and then there's the positive reviews from critics (
including mine) and strong word-of-mouth.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes got knocked down to second place after two straight number one weekends, dipping 42 percent to $16.1 million, raising its tally up to $133.6 million in 17 days. Let`s get to the new releases.
The only top-grossing new release was
Spy Kids: All the Time in the World and it only reaped $11.6 million on 4,400 screens at 3,295 locations, so not only is it the worst-reviewed Spy Kids movie (22% on Rotten Tomatoes), it is also the worst-performing Spy Kids movie by far. It even fell short of last summer's
Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. Despite its so-called "4D" presentations (3D with Aromascope), they only accounted for 44 percent of the gross. According to The Weinstein Company, 67 percent of the audience was female and 65 percent were kids under the age of 12 years old. Luckily, the film cost $27 million to make, so the future doesn't look bleak for this sequel. However, I can't say the same for
Conan the Barbarian. The film debuted in fourth place and only grossed $10 million on 4,500 screens at 3,015 locations, which is definitely a huge step back from the 1982
Conan, whose gross was much similar ($9.6 million), but three times the attendance. Its budget is reported to be $90 million, so it'll have a very hard time trying to make back its budget. I guess Jason Momoa can probably stop writing the sequel. 3D was 61 percent of the movie's take and Lionsgate's exit polling indicated that 65 percent of the audience was male and 69 percent was over 25 years old.
Another 80's remake made less than Conan, but unlike the former, it had a better marketing campaign.
Fright Night made $7.7 million on 4,600 screens at 3,114 locations, debuting in sixth and the gross was much worse than
Priest and last summer's critically-panned
Vampires Suck. The original film made $6.1 million in the summer of 1985. 3D presentations made up 61 percent of the gross, same as Conan. Produced by Dreamworks and distributed by Disney, their exit polling gave a demographic breakdown of 60 percent male and 60 percent over 25 years old. So who edged out
Fright Night for fifth?
The Smurfs, down 43 percent, bringing in $7.8 million to $117.5 million in 24 days.
Final Destination 5 fell 57 percent, grossing the same amount as
Fright Night and very few showed up for
One Day, another new release. The Anne Hathaway/Jim Sturgess romance ranked ninth with only $5 million. There was some good news though: Woody Allen's
Midnight in Paris crossed the $50 million mark. We'll see if it grosses even more when it comes back to wide release this Friday.
Now, in this time and age, I'm not exactly what you call a fan of remakes. I don't know about the
Fright Night remake, mainly because I haven't seen the original. But when MGM announced they would remake WarGames, one of my favourites, I wasn't angry. I didn't react by saying stuff like "Why the f@#k would they remake that?``. I simply just said, Cool. I mean, this is WarGames. They`re obviously going to set the film in modern times and seeing as we`re in a world filled with better technology, Gadhafi, and the death of Osama Bin Laden, I think this could be a pretty good remake. Seth Gordon (
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters,
Horrible Bosses) is set to direct and it`s just been announced that Noah Oppenheim will script the film. I didn`t hear of him, so I decided to search him up. Turns out he was part of TV production for the
Today show and
Hardball With Chris Matthews.
Disney held the second-annual D23 Expo this weekend in Anaheim and judging by all the concept art, footage, and news about all their upcoming films that went about there, it`s easy to understand why they skipped Comic-Con this year.
Monsters University, Pixar`s prequel to
Monsters, Inc., had a panel hosted by director Dan Scanlon and animator Ricky Nierva. Concept art was shown during the panel and the pictures, via
FirstShowing.net, are very clear too:
Notice how Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sully (John Goodman) look younger? That`s because the film is set during the years they were in university. The movie will show how these characters, who were bitter school rivals, weren`t pleased to discover they would become roommates on their first day of college and how they had to learned to get along and form the bond that drives the original film. The film is still in development and is slated for release June 2013. Pixar also revealed that they`re working on an untitled film about dinosaurs. Already, I`m hooked. The film, directed by Peter Sohn and Bob Peterson (
Up) scheduled for a May 2014 release, involves a young boy and his brontosaurus. PixarTalk already released a photo of Ricky Nierva standing in front of concept art for the film:
Those aren't the only things they announced. They also announced another Toy Story short film, entitled
Small Fry, which follows Buzz Lightyear getting replaced by a fastfood kids meal version of Buzz Lightyear. It'll be attached with
The Muppets, out November 23.
Now enough about Pixar, let's get to another film I've been excited for some time now: Tim Burton's
Frankenweenie, the first 3D black and white stop-motion animation film. Based upon his original short film from 1985, the feature film centers around a boy named Victor who tries to rebuild his dog Sparky after he's been hit by a car and killed. Featuring the voices of frequent Burton collaborators Winona Ryder, Martin Landau, Catherine O'Hara and Martin Short and (like all Burton films), scored by Danny Elfman, the film will be released on October 5, 2012.
Disney also revealed
Wreck-It Ralph, their next 3D animated film, which tells the story of an arcade game bad guy who wants to be the hero. Ralph is voiced by John C. Reilly and the game's real hero, Fix-It Frank, is voiced by
30 Rock's Jack McBrayer. Ralph gets the chance to prove himself when a new bad guy comes in, but he accidentally releases another villain that could threaten the entire arcade. Here's the logo of the film and two images as well:
But of course, one of the biggest events there was the panel for
The Avengers. Other than the cast talking about the film, new footage was shown there as well. No one has the footage and it won't be released online for some time, but /Film has a very detailed description of the footage. You can
click this link here to read the description, but beware of spoilers. BEWARE!!!
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