When Monday comes you can expect to hear a loud ugh screaming out from the very depths of Los Angeles. As studio execs moan and groan about how the public never goes to theaters on labor day weekend, they'll need to ask themselves something... did we give them something worth seeing?
The answer. No.
This weekend's box office pathetic showing might just set a new record of low, as the top 4 films will all crawl their way into the 10-12million range. Currently leading the pack are The Final Destination with $3.575m and All About Steve with $3.570m. Following closely are Gamer ($3.3m) and Inglourious Basterds ($3m). Halloween has flopped on back to the 6th spot, with D9 ahead in 5th, and Extract tanking faster than a Jeremy Piven movie in 7th (with only $1.73m).
In the end don't be shocked to see a movie end this weekend with only a $14m gross, or even less for that matter, as Extract, Gamer, and All About Steve will struggle to recoup any expenditures. Now let's be honest, Labor Day weekend is the last true day of summer, and people tend to not go to the theater on those days... but even this is a really sad showing.
Yet there's on truth in it all if you make a movie people really want to go see, it doesn't matter when you release it they will. All About Steve, the continued series of bandwagon films pushing Bradly Cooper and Sandra Bullock, currently holds only a 6% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. While Gamer, the next in a long line of awful Gerard Butler action films following 300, plopped in at only 21% at RT.
In fact if you add up The Final Destination, All About Steve, Halloween 2, and Gamer's RT rating you get only 76%, that's a C. While Inglourious Basterds at 88%, and District 9 at 89% both sit nicely well above the combined efforts of all 4 of those films. Not to mention they all have similar total budgets so it's not that reason. The reason is just simple: you make crappy films enough people will catch on... sometimes.
In the end I'm not upset about this weekend. Everyone knew this weekend was just an awful weekend, nothing new coming out worth running to see, probably a bunch of films that would have been equally successful with direct to dvd releases... maybe.
1 better thoughts:
I've really wanted to see a big bad studio production the past few weeks -- uh...not so much. I really kind of hate the months of August and September. There seem to always be a flood of rated-R horror/thrillers, video-game action movies and chick flicks. It's like bland central out there.
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