We chose our “teams” for fantasy summer box office on last week’s Frotcast, a game which will hopefully make these box office-wrap up posts a little more interesting (again, thanks to the Masters of None guys for the idea). We each chose four movies and one bomb pick, person with the highest combined numbers based on domestic opening weekend (plus the inverse of your bomb pick’s budget minus opening) wins. You can see the standings thus far here, but long story short… it looks like I’m screwed.
My second pick, X-Men: First Class opened this weekend, and although those horrible posters and generally terrible marketing campaign didn’t affect the reviews, they do seem to have affected the numbers, with X-Men pulling its weakest opening of the franchise, an estimated $56 million. That was behind Thor ($65.7 million) and comparable to The Incredible Hulk or Watchmen. Not exactly a disaster, unless you count making Brett Ratner look good through no fault of his own yet again a disaster, which it kind of is. Said Ratner, “Huh?” and scratched his balls, when reached for comment.
| Film | Weekend | Per Tht | Cum. Total | ||
| 1 | X-Men: First Class | $56,000,000 | $15,380 | $56,000,000 | |
| 2 | The Hangover 2 | $32,445,000 (-62%) | $8,970 | $186,871,960 | |
| 3 | Kung Fu Panda 2 | $24,300,000 (-49%) | $6,149 | $100,440,458 | |
| 4 | Pirates 4 | $18,010,000 (-55%) | $4,541 | $190,256,277 | |
| 5 | Bridesmaids | $12,128,000 (-27%) | $4,155 | $107,254,000 | |
| 6 | Thor | $4,200,000 (-56%) | $1,511 | $169,072,904 | |
| 7 | Fast Five | $3,244,000 (-49%) | $1,450 | $202,058,310 | |
| 8 | Midnight In Paris | $2,916,224 (-51%) | $19,838 | $6.942,963 | |
| 9 | Jumping The Broom |
$865,000 (-53%) | $1,469 | $35,927,391 | |
| 10 | Something Borrowed | $835,000 (-55%) | $1,215 | $36,660,317 |
As you can see, pretty much everything else suffered big drops of 49% or higher – led by The Hangover II, down 62% from last weekend. The only movie with any holding power was Bridesmaids, still making decent money in its fourth weekend. My mom saw it over the weekend. She liked it.
[via CHUD, BoxOfficeMojo]
NEXT PAGE: FANTASY BOX OFFICE STANDINGS
Frotcast Fantasy Box Office Standings
Vince’s Picks:
1. Harry Potter
2. X-Men: First Class ($56 million*)
3. Green Lantern
4. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Ben’s Picks:
1. Cars 2
2. Super 8 (opening next weekend)
3. The Zookeeper
4. Friends with Benefits
Brendan’s Picks:
1. Transformers 3
2. Captain America
3. Bad Teacher
4. Mr. Popper’s Penguins (opening next weekend)
Bret’s Picks:
1. Cowboys and Aliens
2. Smurfs
3. Spy Kids 4
4. Horrible Bosses
*Based on early estimates — actual numbers tomorrow
They can all act smug now, but we’ll see how smug they look after this weekend, when Super 8 finally opens (note: they’ll probably continue to look smug). Then we’ve got Green Lantern and Mr. Popper the week after that. Amazingly, even with Zookeeper‘s $90 million budget and a god damn gorilla rapping in the trailer, no one had the balls to bet against Adam Sandler and Kevin James. I’m assuming that movie got made much the same way.