Box Office - Decade at a Glance: May - August 2002

By Michael Lynderey

August 25, 2009

He's king of the world...or the girder, anyway.

New at BOP:
Share & Save
Digg Button  
Print this column
The rest of the month wasn't as strong, but it wasn't completely shabby, either. Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams came out just a little over a year after the first film, and it doesn't look like anyone minded: the reviews were once again strong, and the film had no problem turning a $16 million opening into an $85 million total. Good for Robert Rodriguez, a director whose biggest grossers remain, ironically, his kids movies, and not his beloved genre action films. Blue Crush, a decent surfing flick that gave Kate Bosworth her first lead role, finished with an all right $40 million. That was also the exact total for Master of Disguise, a widely-panned comedy that remains Dana Carvey's last leading role to date (if you'd like to know why, see the movie). Meanwhile, Robin Williams played a villain for the third time that year, and very well, too, with One Hour Photo, a good little indie thriller that ended up with a very respectable $31 million gross. Clearly, there's more to Williams than his manic comic persona.




Advertisement



On the downside of the box office scale, we find Blood Work, another excellent Clint Eastwood thriller (he directed and starred). Despite some good critical notices, this one failed to inspire any more interest than his similar 1999 film True Crime, and totaled $26 million. Eastwood's Gran Torino box office days were still ahead of him. August 2002 losers included the Matthew Perry vehicle Serving Sara, the weird Al Pacino satire S1m0ne, the overwrought horror film Feardotcom (a precursor of sorts to the torture subgenre), and the notorious Eddie Murphy comedy Pluto Nash, which cost $100 million and grossed exactly $96 million less than that. Murphy had been coming off a decent string of hits (Bowfinger, Nutty Professor II, Shrek), but first Showtime and then this film gave him a very troublesome 2002 indeed. Where's Norbit when you really need him?


Continued:       1       2       3       4       5

     


 
 

Need to contact us? E-mail a Box Office Prophet.
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
© 2024 Box Office Prophets, a division of One Of Us, Inc.