Stallone and his bulbous bunch of buds managed to keep the vamps away this weekend as Vampires Suck failed to unseat the reigning king of Man Cinema. As for the other movies that opened this weekend, well, to paraphrase Nigel Tufnel, this week's Top 5 goes to 8. Your weekend receipts are here.
And what a dubious honor it is. Vampires Suck, the latest anti-comedy from the Date Movie brain trust, managed to just barely eke out a win over Sly's crew of dudes in The Expendables, though they may yet win the weekend. Meanwhile, the rest of the five films that opened last night were scattered throughout the rather wan box office receipts, with Jennifer Aniston's The Switch, thudding into eighth place. Your Friday Box Office is here.
The numbers are in for the second, far more limited, and presumably final weekend of release for Joel Schumacher's outlandish, preposterous teen-excess drama Twelve. And they're not good: A week after grossing a stunning $477 per screen (adjusted up from the original $463 average), the film tumbled to an even more abysmal $286 average on (appropriately) 12 screens. The total gross as of Sunday was $181,591, meaning roughly 17,000 Americans paid money to see a film with a 4-percent fresh Rotten Tomatoes rating. If you're among them, Movieline wants to hear from you!
Looks like the agents for Hulk Hogan, Mr. T, Carl Weathers and Steven Seagal should wait by their phones: The Expendables exploded the box office this weekend, meaning Ari Lerner's dream of a sequel remains quite alive. In other box office news: Julia Roberts will have to hope for Julie & Julia-like legs and Scott Pilgrim ran out of quarters. Click ahead for the weekend receipts.
Sorry ladies: this weekend at the box office is all about the men. The Expendables -- Sylvester Stallone's paean to the power of protein shakes -- crashed to the top of the charts on Friday night, besting newcomers Eat, Pray, Love and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World with ease. Of the latter film: Yikes. Universal will have to find a cheat code to keep Edgar Wright's whizbang graphic novel adaptation out of fifth place. Click ahead for the top-five.
Hoo boy: Joel Schumacher's slick, abysmally reviewed privileged-teen drama Twelve earned an estimated $107,000 over its opening weekend -- averaging out to a lower-than-anybody-expected average of $463 per screen. (And that figure's on the high side; another analyst is calling it for $90,000, or $380 per screen.) It's by far the worst opening of Schumacher's career. Among films over-narrated by Kiefer Sutherland, meanwhile, it rests comfortably as No. 1 all-time. [Box Office Mojo]
As it turns out, the fourth time wasn't the charm for Inception. Christopher Nolan's Scrooge McDuck-inspired blockbuster was knocked out of the top spot at the box office this weekend by Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg and a cadre of Prius jokes. Click ahead for the full assortment of weekend receipts.
For the third weekend in a row, Inception topped the box office charts, a feat not accomplished since the last Shrek flick. Steve Carrell had to settle for number two, while poor 'ol Cats & Dogs and Zac Efron duked it out for the fifth and sixth spot, respectively. Your weekend receipts are here.
Not even the ethereal quality of Angelina Jolie could stop the dream police of Inception. For a second straight week, Christopher Nolan's blockbuster awoke on Sunday as the top movie in America. Click ahead for some weekend receipts.
It was a dreamy weekend indeed for Inception as it ruled the box office with a fantastic haul of $60 million. But The Sorcerer's Apprentice had no magic at all, with a fizzled opening at third place. Your weekend receipts are here.
Early estimates for The Sorcerer's Apprentice's opening day are in, and they could most charitably be called "alarming": The Nicolas Cage fantasy drew $3.7 million on 3,385 screens in the U.S. and Canada, setting some five-day projections below $30 million. That would result in the second straight Disney/Jerry Bruckheimer underperformer after Prince of Persia. Clearly it needed a better iPhone app. [Deadline]
As we make the clubhouse turn into the dog days of summer, it seems like we have ourselves our first bonafide surprise hit of the summer. Despicable Me made a stunning debut at number one, giving success-starved Universal Studios a small taste of the good life. Bumped down to number two are the glittery, goo-goo-eyed gang of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, while Predators comes into at number three. Here are your weekend receipts.
If breaking records is all you care about when it comes to box office, then Eclipse isn't the movie for you. Despite owning three -- opening on more screens than any other film in history and breaking the records for midnight screenings and Wednesday gross -- the third Twilight film didn't have enough gas in its tank to surpass Spider-Man 2 over Fourth of July weekend. What a failure! Of course, there is the matter of the millions and millions of dollars that Eclipse has earned thus far, which makes that pedantic record seem kinda moot.
Perhaps it's just my bleeding-heart, Catholic nature, but I tend to feel at least a pang of sympathy for even the most despicable of subjects. So I actually feel a bit bad for both Grown-Ups and Knight and Day. I mean, sure, they're both lazy variations of genre films that already have been ground into dull, formulaic powder, but you have to feel just a smidge bad that they brought their already-crappy game against the dynamic, heartfelt Toy Story 3, surely one of the best movies of the year. And once again, it was Toy Story 3 that ruled the box office roost, while Adam Sandler and company pulled in a respectable second place, and Tom Cruise thanked the floating celestial ghost of L. Ron Hubbard that he didn't completely eat it at third. Grab your commemorative Knight and Day travel pillow and click on for the hard numbers.
Finally, finally, FINALLY. After months of forcing ourselves to dine on just-decent enough movies -- yeah, I guess Iron Man 2 was fun, Mickey Rourke was a hoot at least -- we have ourselves a true blue certified, Good Movie to talk about...contrarian d-bags be damned. And as a result, the moviegoing masses -- sick of having to subsist on a thin diet of gruel and MacGruber -- flocked to Toy Story 3 in record breaking numbers. Oh, and Jonah Hex totally bombed. Grab your favorite strawberry-scented bear and click on for the weekend receipts.
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