There is some good, some awesome, some sad and some well excepted news in this weeks box office results.
Coming in at number one for the weekend, 21 Jump Street makes a splash with $35 million, and it’s very good news. To see a successful TV adaptation that proves you can be R-rated, have a completely unexpected tone and still work is a wonderful trend starter for the industry.
Hollywood is a copy cat industry and if remakes and reboots have to happen, the only way you can maintain some artistic credibly is to bring something fresh to the table. Hopefully this success can grease the wheels with other creative folks and deliver something unexpected with these name brands. It will be interesting to see how the zany Dark Shadows is received in the wake of this win.
The well expected news comes in the form of our second place finisher, The Lorax. This Suess adaptation is performing well above initial expectations and is proving to have strong legs as it fell another soft 40ish percent to nearly $23 million. The Lorax will take a hit next week, but is well on it’s way to crossing the $200 million bar.
It pains me to say that the sad news is the plummeting of John Carter. It fell hard in it’s second week, killing off any hope that it could break the $100 million mark and let strong overseas numbers limp it to a success. Alas, only $13.5 million this weekend pretty much guarantees the fate of this franchise-to-be.
It should be noted that the failure of this movie is not being overblown. With it’s poor second week, John Carter now sets behind Prince of Persia and 10,000 BC after the same number of days in release. Ouch.
That said, there is some really awesome news to lift your spirits after that downer. Casa De Mi Padre cracked the top 10 on less than 400 total screens this weekend. Coming in at number 9 with $2.2 million, this odd ball Spanish language film staring Will Ferrell is actually being watched. Movies like these are grand cinematic experiments, and to see such an experiment make an impact on the box office radar gives this humble box office reporter some hope.
Next weekend brings on the first of 2012’s blockbusters in waiting. The Hunger Games opens wide on Friday, and with strong early reviews and source material that has never been more popular we should be seeing some major numbers next weekend.
Hey, isn’t it March? What happened to waiting for the Summer for these giant event films? Oh yeah… over crowding! This year will be fun folks, and for the blockbusters it begins in earnest in just a few days!
1 21 Jump Street – $35,000,000
2 Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax – $22,800,000
3 John Carter – $13,515,000
4 Project X – $4,005,000
5 A Thousand Words – $3,750,000
6 Act of Valor – $3,678,000
7 Safe House – $2,800,000
8 Journey 2: The Mysterious Island – $2,460,000
9 Casa De Mi Padre – $2,200,000
10 This Means War – $2,125,000
