Greetings and welcome back to the Weekend Warrior, your weekly guide to the weekend’s new movies. Tune in every Tuesday* for the latest look at the upcoming weekend, and then check back on Thursday night for final projections based on actual theatre counts. (*NOTE: We will probably be pushing the Weekend Warrior back to Wednesdays, at least over the summer so that the Warrior can use the weekend to do other things.)
If you aren’t already doing so already, you can follow The Weekend Warrior on Twitter where he talks about box office, movies and all sorts of random things.
Updated Predictions and Comparisons –
UPDATE: Well, folks, for the first time in a long time, we’re taking a mulligan this week because various additional information seems to point to Fox’s Marmaduke not faring as well as we originally thought… and it’s not just that we hated the movie. (Review is coming soon.) That gives Nick Stoller’s comedy a better chance for second place and both Killers and Splice should do slightly better than we originally predicted. Of course, if we were right originally and Marmaduke ends up bringing in big audiences, we’re going to be mildly annoyed at the forces who convinced us otherwise. Many of the returning movies that have been out for a couple weeks are also losing more theaters than we originally projected so those are adjusted accordingly.
1. Shrek Forever After (DreamWorks Animation/Paramount) – $22.5 million -48%
2. Get Him to the Greek (Universal) – $19.4 million N/A (down .2 million but up one notch)
3. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Disney) – $15.0 million -49% (same but u one notch)
4. Killers (LIonsgate) – $14.5 million N/A (up .1 million and one notch)
5. Sex and the City 2 (New Line/WB) – $14.0 million -55% (up .5 million and one notch)
6. Marmaduke (20th Century Fox) – $13.7 million N/A (down 6.7 million and four notches… Yikes!)
7. Splice (Warner Bros.) – $11.2 million N/A (up 1 million)
8. Iron Man 2 (Marvel/Paramount) – $8.3 million -49% (down .1 million)
9. Robin Hood (Universal) – $5.5 million -48% (down .2 million)
10. Letters to Juliet (Summit) – $3.1 million -47% (down .2 million)
Weekend Overview
June kicks off with a weekend where there are no sure-things, especially after last week’s abysmal showing over Memorial Day weekend that looks likely to put the nail in the coffin for this summer. Either way, one probably shouldn’t expect any one movie to make more than $25 million this weekend as everyone waits for Pixar to (hopefully) save the summer with Toy Story 3 in a couple of weeks.
With neither of last week’s new movies performing particularly well, two very different new movies stand a shot at taking first place, Nick Stoller’s R-rated road comedy Get Him to the Greek (Universal), reuniting Jonah Hill and Russell Brand from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, or the PG-rated family film based on the popular comic strip dog Marmaduke (20th Century Fox), featuring the voice of Owen Wilson and others. While the former is likely to win Friday, the latter is likely to make up the business and overtake it over the weekend, though neither may be strong enough to dethrone Shrek in its third weekend. Either way, it’s likely to be an incredibly tight race with all three ending up in the low $20 million range but not much higher.
The weekend’s oddest offering may very well be Killers (Lionsgate), an action-comedy that pairs Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher, both whom have their own fanbases but neither who seem particularly well-suited for this type of movie. It’s just not very clear who this movie is for, men or women, which may mean it will have a problem getting either, especially against so much competition for all potential audiences. Still, Kutcher’s popularity among younger women should help bring in enough audience to stay ahead of at least one of last week’s returning movies, but just slightly.
The mixed genre message of Killers is not likely to affect the genetic horror thriller Splice (Warner Bros.), conceived by Cube director Vincenzo Natali and produced by genre favorite Guillermo del Toro. Starring Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, it’s likely to bring in the older guys not interested in “Greek” as well as horror fans intrigued by the strong commercials. Still, it’s looking for a fairly low placement in the Top 10 due to the number of other movies in the market.
This week’s “Chosen One” is the documentary Cropsey by Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio which you can read more about below.
Yeah, so last summer was kind of a strange one, because there was an extra weekend in between Memorial Day and the first weekend of June, so first we’ll cover the bonus weekend where the animated Up (Disney/Pixar) topped the box office with $68.1 million on its way to becoming one of the biggest hits of the summer. Sam Raimi’s horror flick Drag Me to Hell (Universal) choked, opening in fourth place with $15.8 million, which was quite disappointing.
The following weekend, the actual first weekend in June saw three new comedies opening, but only one succeeding, as Todd Phillips’ The Hangover (Warner Bros.) became the surprise sleeper hit of the summer, topping the weekend with an astounding $45 million on its way to $277 million total. Will Ferrell starred in the comedy based on the Sid and Marty Krofft Saturday morning television show Land of the Lost (Universal), but it opened with a disappointing $18.8 million, possibly due to the confusing marketing that made it look like a kid’s film. It fared better than the return of Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) in My Life in Ruins (Fox Searchlight), which tanked with $3.2 million in 1,164 theaters for ninth place. In both weekends, the Top 10 grossed between $158 and 160 million, but unless Marmaduke or Get Him to the Greek really break out, this is going to be another down weekend for the box office.
Sorry, no “Battle Cry” this week due to the number of movies being released, but hopefully, we’ll have a new one next week or maybe our second “DVD Corner” as it’s been sometime since we did one.
Marmaduke (20th Century Fox)
Starring Owen Wilson, Lee Pace, Judy Greer, William H. Macy, Steve Coogan, Sam Elliott, Fergie, George Lopez, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Emma Stone, Kiefer Sutherland, Marlon Wayans
Directed by Tom Dey (Failure to Launch, Shanghai Noon, Showtime); Written by Vince Di Meglio and Tim Rasmussen (License to Wed, Smother)
Genre: Comedy, Family
Rated PG
Tagline: “Live Large”
Plot Summary: The popular comic strip Great Dane Marmaduke (voiced by Owen Wilson) is on the move with his family and their pet cat Carlos (George Lopez) to Orange County, California, where the dog has to deal with all the teenage issues of moving to a new place – finding new friends, adjusting to the different customs, etc. Ookay.
Mini-Review: In a desperate attempt to provide entertainment for those whose age and/or brain capacity are roughly the age of a 3-year-old, here’s another silly talking animal comedy that’s only worth mentioning since it attempts to take those semi-cute one panel comic strips that have appeared in newspapers for decades and turn them into some sort of cohesive feature film.
From the opening, we’re immediately inured to the idea that Marmaduke, the large-size Great Dane from the comic books, will be narrating the entire thing in the voice of Owen Wilson with all sorts of lame puns and quips about everything going on around him. It starts simply enough by showing him interact with his family on their Kansas farmhouse, but once the story moves to California, it’s more about his encounters with the local canines, including a Doberman named Bosco, voiced by Kiefer Sutherland, and a hot collie voiced by Fergie… no, not the Duchess, the other one. From there, the movie turns into a rivalry between the geeks (the mutts) and the Greeks (the pedigrees) at the dog park that pretty much goes exactly where it’s expected. From there, we’re subjected to every bad pun, farting jokes and moronic physical humor–this one contains it all–and when that doesn’t seem to be working, they put the dogs on a surfboard and try to throw in a bit of family drama, as Marmaduke’s family is having trouble adjusting to their new environment. None of it works, and even a quick “Almost Famous” gag is not enough to ease the pain.
Who knows what Lee Pace or Judy Greer did in a past life to deserve being booked onto such an atrocious abomination of a movie. As the head of the household, Pace spends the entire movie either at the mercies of Marmaduke’s misbehavior or his boss’ Type-A demeanor, hamming it up and making faces to the point where you feel like saying to him, “There, there, someday you’ll get enough therapy to make you forget this experience.” His boss is played by William H. Macy in another one of those bill-paying roles that will probably be left off the montage when he receives his Lifetime Achievement Oscar. On the other hand, Greer gets a few reaction shots but little else – a complete and absolute waste of her abundant talent, though at least she never resorts to the embarrassing behavior of Pace.
Most of the canine voice work never rises above the normal paycheck-collecting actors sometimes like to do in order to justify taking smaller movies of considerably more value for less money. While there’s certainly a brief thrill seeing Emma Stone and Christopher Mintz-Plasse reunited after “Superbad,” the latter plays such an annoyingly dimwitted character it’s impossible to enjoy the reunion. At least the former is slightly better as a potential love interest for Marmaduke. Bad voicework aside, it’s hard to determine which is the worst animal-related CG offense of the movie; using it to make the dogs talk and dance, or the wanton CG removal of dog genitals throughout.
“I wish you could hear what I was saying,” Marmaduke tells the young boy in the family during one of the movie’s forced moments of sentimentality. Surely, the audience will feel otherwise and will probably wish the filmmakers took a cue from “Babies” and just showed dogs cavorting without all the awful dialogue. It ultimately turns into an adventure of Pace trying to rescue Marmaduke, but everything is so predictably laid out, you probably won’t care.
If you’re idea of fun is watching talking dogs dance and even surf then please… get the f*ck away from me, because “Marmaduke” is probably the type of crap you’ll eat up regardless of what anyone tries to tell you to save your time and money. But seriously, there is a special place in hell for filmmakers who deliberately force audiences to endure a worse dog movie than both “Marley & Me” and “The Shaggy Dog” remake put together. “Marmaduke” is painful for anyone watching and embarrassing for all involved. Rating: 2.5/10
Analysis:
The relationship between 20th Century Fox and dogs goes well beyond releasing bad movies like I Love You, Beth Cooper and Max Payne, because the studio has had great success, not only with movies featuring the lovable furry pets, but also by bringing popular comic strip and cartoon characters to the screen. That was first proven when they produced a movie starring the cartoon strip character Garfield, voiced by Bill Murray, which grossed $75 million opening in early June 2004. That movie’s success probably helped pave the way for Fox picking up the rights to bring Alvin and the Chipmunks to the screen, which led to two $200 million blockbusters.
Hoping at least for the success of the former, Fox have decided to repeat the process by bringing the lovable newspaper strip Great Dane Marmaduke created by Brad Anderson in 1954 to similar CG life. “Marmaduke” has been a mainstay in newspapers from the largest cities to the smallest towns ever since his creation, currently appearing in over 600 newspapers across the globe. While there many not be that many people who have been dying to see Marmaduke at the movies, there are certainly enough dog lovers out there who will be as interested in the movie for its adorable dog antics as for the namebrand value of this particular dog. The fanbase of the comic strips certainly helped the first Garfield movie open well despite a similarly crowded June weekend in 2004–in fact, it opened just below Shrek 2 in its third weekend–although the quality of the movie wasn’t good enough that anyone cared when Fox made a sequel to it.
Voicing Marmaduke is Owen Wilson, whose last big hit, for 20th Century Fox in fact, was the dog movie Marley & Me, which brought in an enormous amount of dog lovers to the tune of $143 million. Pairing Wilson, once thought to be down and out in terms of a career, with a dog worked well, so it makes sense to have Wilson provide the voice of a dog in hopes of bringing in a similar audience. He’s joined by a diverse voice cast including George Lopez, who provided his voice in Disney’s talking dog movie Beverly Hills Chihuaha, which was an even bigger hit, grossing nearly $95 million. The trailer also mentions the voices of Kiefer Sutherland (playing Marmaduke’s Doberman rival) and Black Eyed Pea’s singer Fergie as his love interest. Indie favorite William H. Macy seems to be in his dumbed-down Wild Hogs mode for this movie as well.
Essentially, Marmaduke will mainly be targeting family audiences as the summer kicks into high gear and schools start letting out. Warner Bros. had huge success with the first Scooby-Doo movie by opening it early June and it defied all expectations with a $54 million opening. Disney’s Beverly Hills Chihuaha is another good comparison, although that opened in October, and one certainly can’t forget Disney’s attempt to bring the cartoon Underdog bombed to realize that not all talking dogs are the same. The latter may have suffered by being a known property handled in a completely different way.
For more discerning moviegoers, Marmaduke is going to look ridiculously dumb and one shouldn’t expect any good reviews, but the commercials and trailers are geared to appeal to the same suburban crowd who helped make Marley & Me and the “Alvin and the Chipmunks” movies such big hits for Fox i.e. dog lovers and kids/parents who don’t know better. However well this may do this weekend, expect it to have problems taking on stronger family fare like The Karate Kid and Toy Story 3 in the following weekends, though it should have a strong first week at least.
Why I Should See It: This looks like another talking CG dog movie, the kind that Americans seem to just love.
Why Not: This one kinda lost me at the dancing dogs.
Projections: UPDATED: $13 to 15 million opening weekend on its way to roughly $40 to 45 million total.
Get Him to the Greek (Universal)
Starring Jonah Hill, Russell Brand, Rose Byrne, Sean Combs, Elisabeth Moss
Written and directed by Nicholas Stoller (director Forgetting Sarah Marshall, writer of Yes Man, Fun with Dick and Jane)
Genre: Comedy
Rated R
Tagline: “Arriving This Summer (Hopefully)”
Plot Summary: Junior A&R guy Aaron Green (Jonah Hell) has a chance to make points with his boss (Sean Combs) at the record label, while fulfilling a life-long dream by agreeing to bring rowdy rocker Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) from London to a reunion concert at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles in three days, but Aaron soon finds that Snow is impossible to control, and the cross-country mission has put Aaron at odds with his girlfriend (Elisabeth Moss),
Interview with Nick Stoller (Coming Soon!)
Review (Coming Soon!)
Analysis:
Trying to give the family movie a run for its movie is the second R-rated comedy of the summer after the recent bomb MacGruber, this one spinning-off characters from the 2008 sleeper comedy hit Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which grossed $63 million in the spring of 2008. It specifically follows Russell Brand’s rock star character Aldous Snow as he hits tough times following his break-up with Marshall and subsequent break-up with his sexy British girlfriend Jackie Q (played by Rose Byrne in a very different role for her). Once again, Brand has been teamed with Jonah Hill, who played the obsessed maitre d’ in that movie, though this time, Hill takes center stage playing a different character.
At this point, Brand is still somewhat of an unknown property, having only appeared in three movies including a tiny part in the long-delayed Christina Ricci romance fantasy Penelope. Even so, Brand is fairly popular among the younger set, having hosted a number of MTV awards shows over the years. Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which was directed by “Greek” director Nicholas Stoller, was a big break for Brand, which was somewhat squandered when Sandler convinced him to appear in his Disney family movie Bedtime Stories. Since then, Brand has become better known for his engagement to popular singer Katy Perry than for any of his movies.
Jonah Hill is generally liked among young audiences and the college set, something he owes very much to Judd Apatow, who gave Hill a small role in his first movie The 40-Year-Old Virgin, an even bigger role in his second movie Knocked Up and even more to do in last year’s Funny People. More importantly, the Apatow connection helped get Hill cast in a leading role in Seth Rogen’s Superbad, the R-rated summer megahit that grossed over $121 million after opening with $33 million. Hill hasn’t done that much since then to prove he’s a draw on his own and besides playing a secondary role in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, his only significant non-Apatow-affiliated appearance was in Ricky Gervais’ The Invention of Lying.
The movie also includes the likes of Sean Combs a.k.a. rap mogul P. Diddy, who is featured quite prominently in the ads, and many feel steal the movie from the bigger comedy stars. Also, “Mad Men” star Elisabeth Moss plays Hill’s girlfriend, and she’s mainly being featured in the commercials that are trying to entice younger women and couples for the film’s relationship humor.
That last bit of marketing could very well be attributed to the fact that rock movies have not had a very good run at the box office. Even This is Spinal Tap, which became a huge cult film in the years after its release, did not perform particularly well in theaters. Other comedies and semi-comedies like The Rocker and Rock Star failed to make much of a mark, although the latter, which teamed Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston, could be attributed as much to its poor choice of release weekend. Apatow previously produced the musical biopic comedy Walk Hard starring John C. Reilly, which bombed pretty badly during a busy holiday season, and Get Him to the Greek has a similar behind-the-music feel to it. At least Jack Black had success playing a rock star (sort of) when he starred in Richard Linklater’s School of Rock which helped break out the comic star big time, although it was also a PG movie that appealed to a wider range of audiences.
The biggest hurdle the movie faces, besides the questionable draw of Hill and Brand, is whether the premise and the title are things that may interest mainstream moviegoing audiences beyond the hip college set who will be on break from school. It doesn’t seem like taking a rock star across country is something that many can relate to. On top of that, R-rated comedy has started to wane in the last few months not just with MacGruber but also with hugely-hyped comedies like MGM’s Hot Tub Time Machine, which didn’t perform as well as some may have hoped. Even the R-rated action flick Kick-Ass couldn’t make more than $20 million its opening weekend despite a ton of advance buzz and hype. That makes this a little less of a sure thing than it may have been last summer where comedy was king.
Even so, the movie is being marketed a bit like last year’s The Hangover, focusing more on Hill being driven to partying by hanging around with Aldous Snow; Universal has also been doing a similar amount of cross-country campaigning for the movie as Sony did for Superbad, hitting some of the cities featured in the movie for promotional screenings. That should certainly help it among the younger college-age crowd who’ll talk about the movie on social networking sites.
While this should do well among the 18 to 25 MTV set, it’s doubtful older audiences will have much interest in it, although being a very funny movie, reviews should generally be positive. Likewise, word-of-mouth should help the movie have decent legs, as should the fact it’s one of the few original movies in a summer full of sequels and remakes.
Why I Should See It: Jonah Hill and Russell Brand were hilarious in their small bits in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, so a full-on spin-off movie is certainly well deserved, and this one has as many crazy laughs as last year’s hit The Hangover.
Why Not: Will a movie about taking a rock star across country have as much resonance as waking up in Vegas with a hangover? Probably not.
Projections: $18 to 21 million opening weekend and $65 to 70 million total.
Killers (Lionsgate)
Starring Ashton Kutcher, Katherine Heigl, Tom Selleck, Catherine O’Hara, Katheryn Winnick, Kevin Sussman, Lisa Ann Walter, Casey Wilson, Rob Riggle, Martin Mull, Alex Borstei
Directed by Robert Luketic (The Ugly Truth, 21, Legally Blonde,
