Hark, a new film hath unseated The Help for the #1 crown! All it took was Steven Soderbergh's hypochondria-inducing Contagion, a picture that will surely also boost worldwide sales of Purell during flu season. And while there's no love lost in seeing last week's Shark Night 3D and Apollo 18 drop precipitously down in the ranks, the heartstrings pull for Warrior, a finely acted MMA film that only got a fraction of the theater count of its competitors, and performed accordingly. But! At least it fared better than Bucky Larson...
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How appropriate: Your Labor Day holiday is on track to be owned by The Help, a movie about domestic workers. The female-driven, '60s-set lit adaptation has been dominating the charts for three weekends in a row, plowing through the end-of-summer competition left and right, and you know what? Not even sharks and astronauts and spies can slow down the Help train. The pic's on track for The Blind Side-esque awards buzz and an estimated $121M cume by the end of the four-day weekend. Is it crazy to imagine franchise potential here? Drop your The Help 2 sequel pitches below on your way to those Labor Day BBQs!
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As you fire up the grill and wax philosophical about the meaning of Labor Day this long holiday weekend (i.e. it means no work on Monday!), take a moment to think about the underdogs struggling to do battle at the box office. Killer sharks, astronauts, even the mighty Helen Mirren -- none of this week's new releases may have the power to unseat the chick-lit segregation drama The Help, which could well sweep all comers under the rug with another #1 weekend showing. Bet you never envisioned the summer blockbuster season would end this way, did ya?
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New Yorkers may have been left unimpressed by the magnitude of Hurricane Irene (not so much folks in the less fortunate cities in her path, let's remember), but the much-hyped weather event left an indubitable mark elsewhere: all the way across the country in sunny Hollywood, where studio execs were likely cursing the name "Irene" as the box office tallies rolled in. With hundreds of theaters shut down across the East Coast due to hurricane panic and ticket sale losses estimated at $25 million, how much did new releases Colombiana, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, and Our Idiot Brother feel the impact of Irene?
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Looks like not everyone gave The Help a pleased-as-punch A+ CinemaScore rating; in an open letter released this week, The Association of Black Women Historians decried the film and Kathryn Stockett's source novel of the same name, citing what they describe as "widespread stereotyping" in the film's depiction of the black experience in the Jim Crow South.
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It's crazy to think that Viola Davis's Oscar-nominated breakthrough in Doubt came only three short years ago, considering how forcefully the theater and film veteran has emerged as one of the more compelling actresses of her generation. As Aibileen Clark, an unassuming middle-aged maid in 1960s Mississippi in Tate Taylor's ensemble drama The Help, Davis wears the emotional toll of the Jim Crow South in her gait and gaze, an everywoman living through one of the most difficult times in America's past. And yet, thanks to the film's origins and the controversy surrounding her role, Davis nearly balked at taking on the "extraordinary" project.
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With Vin Diesel and The Rock currently muscling their way to global domination and Thor set to kick off the summer's action-packed slate with his comic book brawn, there's already a surplus of testosterone at the box office. But looking forward to the next few months, the field's only going to get more crowded with bromantic buddies, pirates, alien robots, superheroes, and cowboys mixing it up at the multiplex. Where have all the ladies gone?
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With summer movie season nigh, Movieline turned to the critics to see which blockbusters and potential sleepers are at the top of the experts' most anticipated lists. From star-powered vehicles to long-awaited sequels, space superheroes to Spielbergian sci-fi, our pundits' picks ran the gamut, but one film emerged the clear front-runner. Is it the same event movie you can't wait to see?
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Another day, another set of publicity stills from upcoming movies for all of us to wrap our snarky heads around. Peek into the distant future (all the way to fall 2011) and help Movieline figure out what's going on in these images from Brett Ratner's tower heist flick Tower Heist, Tate Taylor's period novel adaptation The Help, and John Singleton's Abduction, AKA Taylor Lautner Gets $7.5 Million to Play Tom Cruise.
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