Child Murder Not As Profitable As Expected
And by that we mean children murdering people, not the other way around. Also this week: you guys love your dragons, some of you lovey our Miley Cyrus, and others love your gay midget funeral movies.
1) How to Train Your Dragon — $20M
Man, you people just can't stop training your dragons. I'm getting a little worried, frankly. If you keep training your dragons so much, you're going to pull a muscle. Or, even worse, go blind. From all that movie watching, I mean. But yeah, enough of you sweatily and shamefully trained your dragons this weekend to carry the Norse romp to a (tentative) number one finish, sales dropping only 19% from last week. The sleeper hit of the season! Sleeper is a funny word though, considering you guys aren't sleeping at all. No you're up at your computer all night, feverishly training your dragons. Bootlegs! You're watching bootlegs. Of the animated kids movie. Animated movie for kids. It's animated. It's rated G.
2) Kick-Ass — $19.7M
Well, this opening is being billed as something of a disappointment. R-rated movies about kids don't usually fare all that well — just look at Happiness! — but for all the buzz surrounding this t(w)een amateur superheroes movie, it wasn't exactly the zesty, edgy hit people were hoping for. The Entertainment that comes Weekly tells me that the movie only got a B in the audience exit polling, which doesn't bode all that well for word-of-mouth business. Maybe audiences just couldn't wrap their minds around an 11-year-old girl brutally murdering people? Roger Ebert certainly couldn't. Maybe they were just turned off by the film's lead, British import Aaron Johnson? Though, how could you not like him after his big role in Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging? (Yes, there is a movie called Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, and yes, I have seen it.) Anyway, the news really isn't all that bad. The movie had a higher per-screen average than Dragon, and obviously had a much lower budget. Its ass may not be kicked yet.
3) Date Night — $17.3M
Falling a reasonable 31%, this comedy had an unexpectedly robust second weekend. I guess some moms and dads finally found a night to have a date night to Date Night! Maybe last weekend they had asked Danica from two streets over to watch the kids on Saturday night, but then mom ran into a friend at the supermarket who told her that Danica had been caught drinking and making out (snogging) with a boy while babysitting for the Millers. So that was off. But this weekend Maisey was free and she's always been real good, so off mom and dad went to the movie and they laughed and dad kinda squirmed during the shirtless Mark Wahlberg scenes because he doesn't need to see that, amirite? And afterward they kept kind of chuckling about the movie and reciting lines, but by the time they had gotten to the Applebee's and sat down that game was sort of over so they sat there for a few minutes in a painful silence and they both wondered how they were going to do this for the next forty years, but then the food came and that gave them an activity, so the worried thoughts were gone for now, and when they got home the kids were asleep and it was late and soon they were asleep too. And that was Date Night!
4) Death at a Funeral — $17M
Though a fourth place debut might seem slightly disappointing, this movie was in far fewer screens than the top three pictures, and thus ended up having the highest per-screen average. Meaning people want to see it! Plus, the budget was low. So fear not for the Danny Glover/James Marsden movie. Or the Chris Rock/Luke Wilson movie. The Zoe Saldana/Peter Dinklage movie. However you want to think about it, really. Just know that it's already done way, way better than the stuffy British version. And that one had the unbeatable Alan Tudyk! And Peter Dinklage.
6) The Last Song — $5.8M
Congratulations everyone! This $20m movie has now grossed $50m. This means we can expect to see lots more Miley Stinkvirus movies in the future. Look for Miley in the upcoming romantic drama Jacob Have I Loved, based on the award-winning novel set on an island in the Chesapeake, but with the added twist that Wheeze meets a cute lifeguard named Jacob. Or how about the futuristic Miley Cyrus vehicle Hydrotopia, about a mysterious water planet discovered by Miley and her space crew. On the planet the group finds adventure, while Miley finds a cute lifeguard! I think I'm most excited for Lauren of Arabia, an inspiring crowd pleaser about a spoiled young American woman who gets sent to the Middle East to learn a lot about a foreign and sometimes scary-seeming culture. But most importantly, she learns about herself. Well, actually, most important is that she meets a cute lifeguard. In the middle of the desert. Just go with it.