Watch out, upcoming 'Dirty Dancing' remake and 'Rock of Ages'; if this week's box office is any indication, the '80s nostalgia wave is over. Last week's winner, 'Real Steel,' beat all three newcomers, including reboots of two Reagan Era titles. According to Sunday's studio estimates, the robot-boxing saga edged out the re-do of 'Footloose' and beat the tar out of horror prequel 'The Thing.' Meanwhile, not even a trio of comic heavyweights could make a birdwatching comedy fly, so 'The Big Year' debuted in ninth place with a paltry $3.3 million.
With its father-son drama as well as boxing-'bot action, 'Real Steel' is proving a stronger family draw than pundits initially predicted. This week, it performed as expected, declining a modest 40 percent from last week's debut to finish with an estimated $16.3 million. To date, the film has earned a total of $51.7 million in North America and another $22 million overseas. Not bad, but still a long way to go to recoup its reported $110 million budget.
'Footloose' was expected to give 'Real Steel' a run for its money. Indeed, many pundits predicted that the remake would come out on top this weekend. (In fact, it still could; its estimated total is just $200,000 behind 'Real Steel,' close enough that they could switch places on the chart when final figures are released on Monday.) Still, despite the popularity of dance films among young audiences, this virtual shot-for-shot remake of the 1984 film seemed designed to appeal more to middle-aged fans of the original than to kids the same age as the movie's teenage rebels; studio polling found that just 27 percent of the audience was under 18. Young men were especially uninterested, as the audience turned out to be 75 percent female.
'The Thing' proved to be the latest in a series of horror flops. The prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter classic (itself a remake of a 1951 creature feature) came in third with an estimated $8.7 million, well below predictions of $12 to $16 million. Blame lackluster reviews, weak buzz, and confusing marketing. (Many viewers may not have known it was a prequel, since it had the same title, plot and setting as Carpenter's film, so moviegoers may have dismissed it as just another remake.)
Holding strong at fourth and fifth place were 'The Ides of March' and 'Dolphin Tale.' In its second week, 'Ides' slipped just 28 percent, to an estimated $7.5 million, for a total so far of $22.2 million. That's pretty good for an Oscar-hopeful drama about the thorny subject of presidential politics; having George Clooney and Ryan Gosling as leads certainly doesn't hurt.
As for 'Dolphin,' it continued to hold its own despite family audience competition from 'Real Steel' and competition for religious viewers from 'Courageous' (holding up well at No. 8 after three weeks). In its fourth week, 'Dolphin' slid just 31 percent to an estimated $6.3 million, for a total of $58.7 million to date.
This weekend's other new wide release, 'The Big Year,' boasted an all-star comic cast -- Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson -- yet it could muster no better than a ninth-place debut and an estimated $3.3 million. Not that pundits expected much: a comedy about birdwatching is a hard sell, but the movie's indifferent marketing didn't even try, leaving viewers with no clue what the film was about. Still, a cast this noteworthy could have drawn between $6 and $9 million on the movie's 2,150 screens. That it performed only half as well as its most pessimistic predictions suggests that 'Big Year' has little chance of earning back its reported $41 million budget.
All told, this was a bleak weekend at the box office, with a total take of only about $90 million. This October's take is about 11 percent off from last October's, while earnings for the year to date are still 3 percent off from 2010 ($8.15 billion compared to $8.45 billion).
'Real Steel' - Trailer No. 1
The full top 10:1. 'Real Steel,' $16.3 million (3,440 screens), $51.7 million total
2. 'Footloose,' $16.1 million (3,549),
new release3. 'The Thing,' $8.7 million (2,996),
new release4. 'The Ides of March,' $7.5 million (2,199), $22.2 million
5. 'Dolphin Tale,' $6.3 million (3,286), $58.7 million
6. 'Moneyball,' $5.5 million (2,840), $57.7 million
7. '50/50,' $4.3 million (2,391), $24.3 million
8. 'Courageous,' $3.4 million (1,214), $21.4 million
9. 'The Big Year,' $3.3 million (2,150),
new release10. 'The Lion King,' $2,7 million (1,970), $90.5 million
[Photos: DreamWorks, Paramount, Universal, 20th Century Fox]
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\n\nDrive has already inspired a lawsuit and a courageous hot dog attack, and for that we should be forever successful, but still the film's awesome scorpion jacket cloaks more treasures waiting to be unearthed. The Coen brothers have now hammered from that film Oscar Isaac, the actor who played Carey Mulligan's shit head husband, for the lead in Inside Llewyn Davis, their film about the '60s folk scene in Greenwich Village. That film currently only has distribution in France and a few other territories through Studio Canal, so if you would like to distribute this the United States or elsewhere, please do so, because no one is doing that yet, and I would like to see this Coen film. Also, if you would like throw any more hot dogs at anyone due to Isaac's filmography, please do that, too. We need more Heroes like you.
The sordid failure of "The Change-Up" is so ingrained in its design that only a total overhaul would have saved it. First, doing another body-switching film is a pretty dangerous venture. How many twists and turns can you really do in a film genre like this? Second, the humor is dirty, cheap, crude and really, really dirty. Sure, it makes you laugh at times but those cheap thrills and a story that's so used-up (and without any semblance of effort on their part to actually change the formula) will turn that smile into an instant frown once you realize you have been robbed. "The Change-Up" just doesn't make any sense and it is a film that should never have seen the light of day.
"Rakenrol" in essence is a very messy film. It is a confusing smorgasbord of random scenes, characters and plot lines that contribute little or nothing to the movie. Actually, come to think of it, the movie has no clear direction on what it wants to do or where it wants to lead the audience. It's not as straightforward as what we are used to seeing - even for indie films we have seen from the past. Bottomline, "Rakenrol" is a huge disappointment. It is a film that looks and feels like it has a serious case of ADHD and not even the cameos by the greats of Pinoy rock can salvage this film from utter doom.
