Weekend Wrap-Up

Cars 2 races to the top spot

By Kim Hollis

June 26, 2011

Their eyes follow you everywhere.

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Bad Teacher takes second place, earning a very solid $31 million in its debut weekend. The Cameron Diaz/Justin Timberlake/Jason Segel film is already well ahead of its $19 million budget, which is great news for Sony since the word-of-mouth may be middling. Of 133 reviews counted at Rotten Tomatoes, 61 were positive, giving the film a Rotten rating of 46%. Still, the prospect of Cameron Diaz acting like her bawdy ol’ self may be enticing enough to give this movie some legs, particularly since it will be the freshest, newest comedy choice during the Fourth of July weekend.

For Diaz, the result for Bad Teacher lags a bit behind her earlier film this year, Green Hornet, but she wasn’t really the star of that film. It’s definitely a step up from Knight and Day, which disappointed last summer when it opened to only $20.1 million. As for comparisons to her comedy flicks (not counting the animated Shrek series), Bad Teacher is well ahead of What Happens in Vegas ($20.1 million debut), In Her Shoes ($10 million opening) and The Sweetest Thing ($9.4 million in its first weekend). Bad Teacher gives a nice bump to her recent resume, not to mention bolstering Segel and Timberlake’s.




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Our third place film of the weekend is Green Lantern, which takes a heady drop from its opening weekend performance to earn $18.4 million. This number is unsurprising given the shabby word-of-mouth and kid competition from Cars 2. The problem with making your superhero film accessible primarily to children is that you can’t hope to compete when a known commodity such as a Pixar film enters the market. Green Lantern’s decline from last weekend is 65%, which means that it is really going to be struggling to be a profitable property for Warner Bros. Its production budget was $200 million, and the studio spent a lot on top of that for marketing. Even with overseas revenues, Green Lantern will be a financial disappointment even if it probably is performing about as well as could be hoped. Its domestic total so far is $89.3 million, and its worldwide number is around $110 million.

Super 8 falls two spots to fourth place as its decline becomes a little bit more precipitous. The J.J. Abrams-directed film earned $12.1 million and fell 44% from the previous box office frame. So far, the kid-friendly flick has earned $95.2 million, quite a bit more than its $50 million production budget, and that’s before overseas revenues are added in. Super 8 should get past the $100 million mark this week.

Fifth place goes to the Jim Carrey kid flick Mr. Popper’s Penguins, which falters in the face of those beloved Cars. Mr. Popper’s Penguins took in $10.3 million this frame, a drop of 44%. So far, the 20th Century Fox production has earned $39.4 million, not a horrible number compared to its $55 million production budget, though the film is pretty clearly going to have to make most of its money on home video, a place where it should truly flourish both in sales and rentals.


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