Weekend Wrap-Up

Jennifer's Body Crushed by 3-D Meatballs

By John Hamann

September 20, 2009

Aw, a Skittles commercial! Isn't it adorable?

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Finishing second is Matt Damon in Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!, a comic thriller about an oddball whistleblower. Just taking second place should be a win for Warner Bros., as the marketing for this one was a screwy as the main character. Still, The Informant! managed to earn $10.5 million from only 2,505 venues. It had a venue average of $4.210. While Matt Damon has no worries about a miss or two, Steven Soderbergh needed a win with The Informant!, and got it. Soderbergh was coming off of two Che Guevera flicks that failed badly and hadn't had a successful non-Ocean's movie since Traffic in 2000. The Informant! finished at 77% fresh at RottenTomatoes, which is a win for both actor and director, as this isn't the usual glossy The Good German/Erin Brockovich/Out of Sight kind of movie. It looks bad (much like its character), so it will be interesting to see how word-of-mouth plays out in the coming weeks. According to IMDb, the budget for The Informant was $21 million, so this is going to end up as a win for Warner Bros. and their partners.

Last weekend's winner, Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself, drops to third after opening to $23.4 million last weekend. Tyler Perry is known not only for bringing consistent big openers to movie theaters; he is also known for precipitous second weekend drops. I Can Do Bad is no different. This Tyler Perry entry earned only $10.1 million at the box office and sees a heavy drop of 57% in its second weekend. Last year's Tyler Perry September entry was The Family That Preys, which opened to $17.4 million before falling 58% to $7.3 million in its second frame. The good thing for Lionsgate is the low budgets. I Can Do Bad cost only $13 million to make, so over the opening weekend, production costs and advertising were most likely paid for, making this one another HUGE win for Tyler Perry. So far, I Can Do Bad All By Myself has grossed $37.9 million after only ten days of release.




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Universal's Love Happens happened this weekend, though almost nobody saw it happen. The usually very reliable Jennifer Aniston and The Dark Knight's Aaron Eckhart couldn't get this one moving, as the romantic drama debuted to only $8.5 million. Out to only 1,898 venues, Universal obviously didn't have a lot of confidence in this one, and neither did critics. Love Happens received only nine positive reviews out of 58, giving it a fresh rating of only 16%. I expect it to disappear fairly quickly.

The big miss this weekend comes with our number five film, Jennifer's Body. Starring tramp vamp and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen star Megan Fox, and written by Diablo Cody (of Juno fame), Jennifer's Body was to be the next big horror franchise. That all ended on Friday, when the horror flick earned only $2.8 million for Fox on opening day, and finished the weekend with a terrible score of only $6.8 million. Released to 2,701 venues, Fox gave this the marketing push it needed, but folks failed to show. Some say females detest Megan Fox, and some say that the Transformers sequel was so bad moviegoers didn't want to see its stars anymore (I wish). Whatever the case, this B-movie horror flick will be out of theatres before anyone can say Revenge of the Tranformers Ticket Buyers.


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