Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
August 25, 2008
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: The House Bunny, the Anna Faris comedy that blurs the line between fiction and The Girls Next Door, opened to $14.5 million. If you're Sony, are you pleased with this result?
Reagen Sulewski: This is a pretty solid late-summer opening, considering how lousy and formulaic this looked. Dumb girl comedies are a tougher sell as well, so that's another way I consider this to have out-performed its baseline. Anna Faris is one of the few actresses I can think of playing this with the right level of irony to even make this palatable, so that's a nice feather in her cleavage as well.
Pete Kilmer: I think so, for the budget that this thing had I think a $14.5 million take is rather solid during these dog days of summer. Anna Faris has become THE go to girl for quickie comedies. The plus for that is that she is really quite good and makes these things watchable. If I was Sony, I'd lock her down into some projects.
Kim Hollis: I agree that it's a pretty solid little opening. Faris is completely charming and appears poised to have a nice-sized hit at some point very soon. For The House Bunny, we're looking at a profitable run followed by some good money when it hits DVD. It's really more of a DVD-type flick, anyway.
David Mumpower: I agree with Pete. In fact, I think it's time to allow for the possibility that Anna Faris is a box office draw, at least in these roles. Oddly, she's the modern day Goldie Hawn more than Kate Hudson is.
Scott Lumley: What exactly did this cost to make anyways? I'm going to go with somewhere between not much and diddly squat. This might already be profitable.
Sean Collier: Two straight-up comedies were released this weekend. Both were decidedly under-advertised, with been-there-done-that plots that wouldn't grab anyone's attention. Both were the first star vehicle for a talented but untested comic performer. Both seemed a little too dumb for grown-ups, but weren't exactly the talk of teen audiences. One of these films was named The House Bunny. It made $14.5 million. The other was named The Rocker. It made $2.8 million. Considering the two films were virtually interchangeable, Sony should feel like it won the Powerball.
Daron Aldridge: Kim's original question implies that the Girls Next Door isn't already fiction. Sony should be thrilled as they have the best box office opening ever for a film featuring the children of Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis and an American Idol runner-up.
Brandon Scott: Sony has to be happy and bouncin' like a bunny here. It's all but assured of being a money winner with a production budget at about $25 million. I would rather watch Girls Next Door (Kendra, you know my address), but I am kind of happy for Anna Faris. When you have been around as long as she has and really not proven yourself as an actress on your own (not that this appears to be an Oscar caliber performance or anything), its always nice to see someone have success. Early word is that this could catapult her into much larger roles in the near future, so congrats to her.
Jason Lee: Bunnies:1 Statham:0 With a score like that, I think Sony has to be happy. I mean, the only thing that could have made this better would have been a trailer showing Anna Faris kissing Scarlett Johanson. D'oh!
Studios should institute a box office fight to the death. Of course, Rainn Wilson would totally be out right now.
Kim Hollis: Universal's Death Race, starring Jason Statham, Tyrese Gibson and Joan Allen, opened to $12.6 million. Do you think this result is good, bad or indifferent?
Reagen Sulewski: It's no Transporter sequel, I guess, but it's better than a couple of Statham films have done lately, namely War and The Bank Job (with Statham's mistake with the latter being to actually make a good movie for once). The focus of these films is largely on the rental market, so in terms of not being a big embarrassing bomb, it's done its job.
Max Braden: I'm still boggling at what Joan Allen was doing in this. Did she look at the script and say "ah, so it's a thinking man's Running Man"? Even more surprising than her casting is that I think it won't even hurt her for her next feature. While we're on this genre, I'll note that I rented Wesley Snipes' direct to video The Art of War 2 this weekend. Please Mr. Statham, don't head down this path.
Pete Kilmer: For a schlock film that is a remake of a schlock classic, I think it's fine. This will make tons of money overseas and in the North American rental market. And it allows Joan Allen a chance to play a role she otherwise would never get a chance to play and not get hurt by it career-wise.
Kim Hollis: I think it might be a mildly disappointing opening, but not too much so. I'm a little surprised that the trailer didn't bring in more of the Fast and the Furious-type crowd, but I do think it appears to be solidly in line with what we expect from Statham these days.
David Mumpower: For a project that has been rumored for most of my adult life (and I'm old enough to remember a time before cell phones), this seems like a largely abandoned movie. I thought the trailer was pretty good but tracking down a commercial for it was like looking for a needle in Haystack Calhoun.
Daron Aldridge: Joan Allen's mortgage company must be getting ready to foreclose because she apparently really needed the money. The subprime mortgage crisis claims another victim. The lack of a character named Frankenstein was this one's downfall. It avoided the campiness and gave us a pretty generic looking action film that looks like The Running Man in cars minus the bodybuilders, wrestlers, football players and Hogan's Heroes alumni.
Brandon Scott: I thought that this film had bigger numbers in mind, so its a bit of a downer. I like Statham but these types of roles are just cookie-cutter for him and Black Ty aka Baby Boy aka Tyrese. Statham needs to keep trying to help Guy Ritchie get his mojo back and that is when I will be happiest. He's a consistent earner now with audiences but has yet to take that next step and quite frankly, he has had more than his fare share of chances. Al Swearengen, the great Deadwood character played by Ian McShane who co-stars here, would probably have some choice words for this one.
Scott Lumley: I think this performance is sucktacular. This film looks like it might have actually cost a fair amount of coin to make, so a $12 million dollar opening weekend is brutal. The window for this one might have passed.
Jason Lee: It's ahead of War (last year's August release starring Statham) but slightly behind Transporter 2 (ditto but for 2005). I think Death Race's weekend is pretty standard and consistent for Statham. That is, it's as standard and consistent as you can be with a movie named Death Race.
Sean Collier: I don't have anything to add, but I worked three shifts this weekend at the local multiplex. Once on each night, someone asked me "What's Death Race about?" I couldn't help but answer, "Well, it's about this death race, mostly."
Fred Durst would like to tell you all that you can take that cookie and stick it up your (yeah)
Kim Hollis: The Longshots opened to $4.1 million. Do you consider this a bomb or is it too early to tell?
Reagen Sulewski: I know they barely tried pushing this, but considering how well Ice Cube has done lately in the family film realm, it's hard to consider this anything but a bomb. But then I'm pretty disinclined to be charitable to anything Fred Durst is involved with.
Tim Briody: It's extremely disappointing. Fred Durst is going to go break stuff now.
Pete Kilmer: I thought it would have done a bit better considering Ice Cube's family comedy run....but it will do fine on the secondary market and it's made Fred Durst a filmmaker. That's a good thing, isn't it?
Kim Hollis: It seems like an Ice Cube family film ought to have been marketed to a stronger opening than what we saw here. I literally saw not one single commercial or trailer for the movie. It was never going to be huge or anything, but the movie's release could at least have been a nice little advertisement for the DVD. At this rate, I'm not even sure it's a success on that front.
Brandon Scott: If you mean a bomb as in an incompleted deep pass, then yes. The Limp Bizkit frontman turned director made a limp film. This looked bad from the jump which meant I thought it was going to do three times better than it did. Rarely does Ice Cube fail at the box office but here's one for him. To borrow from his discography, Cube just signed his own Death Certificate. Today wasn't a good day. I have to be honest, I am mad at Cube. He always talks about how he is going to change the world and he puts out this garbage. Its certainly not happening through film, O'Shea. Now take that pent up angst and put it on wax. Stick to your roots!
Scott Lumley: This isn't a bomb, this is a flaming pile of dog poop on MGM's front door. Does that number even cover the catering bill for this one?
Daron Aldridge: Bomb should be reserved for talk of Speed Racer and Meet Dave but this is definitely a disappointment. It seems that MGM keeps its track record of not knowing how to sell a film as this could have at least done a decent fraction of the business of The Game Plan. I guess Cube is no Rock.
Jason Lee: I don't think anyone even knew that this was in theaters. It's got a horrible poster and a bad title. I think anyone talking about Longshots this weekend was discussing the basketball team from Spain up against the United States in the Olympics.
David Mumpower: I think The Moneyshots would have done better despite the NC-17 rating.