Weekend Wrap-Up

Lego Three-Peats While Pompeii Blows

By John Hamann

February 23, 2014

Batman is a dog.

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Why so little faith? It received worse reviews than a Paul W.S. Anderson's Pompeii, and tied the same Paul W.S. Anderson film with its Cinemascore. At Rotten Tomatoes, only 25% of overall critics found something to like, and of the top critics at the site, that number drops to 16%. The Cinemascore comes in as a B (which could be for Bad), and audiences gave it the collective shrug and moved on. The good news for Relativity is that 3 Days to Kill cost only $28 million to make, a number this one could match stateside. Next up for Costner is Draft Day, which has Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) behind the camera, a significant step up from McG.

Third place goes to Pompeii, the new film from the director of Mortal Kombat, Solider and several Resident Evil movies. The historical disaster movie debuted to $10 million this weekend from 2,658 venues, and maybe wasn’t as bad as some were expecting, as it earned a 30% fresh rating and a B Cinemascore. The problem here is that the budget is listed at $100 million, and whoever greenlighted that amount should have their head checked. Even if they sold tickets for $1, there aren’t 100 million on the planet who would want to see this movie.

Fourth spot goes to the 2014 version of RoboCop, and even though this shouldn’t have been a Valentine’s Day movie, RoboCop gets blown away compared to last weekend. Last Friday, RoboCop made $6.8 million; two days ago it made $2.6 million, off 62% compared to the Friday before. Making matters worse is the fact that RoboCop was a Wednesday opener, which means there should have been no rush on its first Friday. Over the entire second weekend, RoboCop earned only $9.4 million, which means it was off 57% compared to its opening Friday-to-Sunday. For a film that cost $100 million to make, a second weekend below $10 million is not good news whatsoever. The only positive takeaway for this Sony release is that it made $30 million over its first six days domestically, and has pulled in $100 million away from North America. So far on the domestic front, RoboCop has earned $43.6 million, and looks like it will top out between $50 and $60 million.




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Fifth is The Monuments Men, George Clooney’s World War II Nazi art heist movie. After a fairly strong second weekend, thanks to the holiday Monday, even The Monuments Men gets taken down this frame. The action comedy earned $8.1 million and fell 48% compared to the three-day take last weekend of $15.5 million. The Sony release needs to match the $70 million production budget stateside, and then let the overseas grosses find the profit for this one. So far, with a gross of $58.1 million, that $70 million target is still in play, and the film is slowly rolling out overseas, where it has earned about $10 million so far.

Sixth goes to About Last Night, which we now know was the big, big winner of the Valentine’s Day Friday last weekend. Last Friday, About Last Night earned $12.9 million on Valentine’s Day alone, and then earned only $2.3 million this Friday, giving it a Friday-to-Friday drop of 82%. Over the weekend proper, About Last Night could only find $7.4 million, which means it declined 71% from its $25.6 million opening weekend. For Screen Gems, they spent only $12.5 million to make this one, so a gross so far of $38.2 million isn’t too bad.


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