Not yet recovered from M.I.A.'s 9-months-pregnant body dressed to resemble a Minnie Mouse head? Coldplay in colorful, matching melody-pirate outfits? You have a Grammy hangover. Take some box office numbers and go back to bed:
What color is your Monday morning misery? Pink slip? Blue pregnancy-test result? Black asymmetrical mole? Desaturate the pain with some box office numbers:
Greetings from the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, where your Defamer team is currently piled into a Park City youth hostel, blissfully unaware that we'll soon be tortured by international-film-buyers for sport. Your box office numbers:
No remedy works better for that piercing Golden Globes hangover than the all-natural, FDA-approved wonder drug that is Monday Morning Box Office:
The Holidays™ are over. We hope yours ended on a lighter note than ours did—curling up with a 60 Minutes story about a seven-year-old girl decapitated in the back of a limo by a drunk driver.
Studios found no happy surprises beneath the Chrismukkah bush today, as snowed-in audiences opted out of Will Smith's messianic broodiness and Jim Carrey saying "yes" more times than Tara Reid at the Promises buffet line.
Rainy days and Mondays got you down? Buck up your holiday mood with a bit of apocalyptic egg nog we like to call Monday Morning Box Office:
The weekend kicked off with a mild rumbler and closed out with a sputter, as not even Lionsgate's completely stupid Punisher remake of a remake of a remake managed to connect with completely-stupid-movie-loving audiences. Still, things continued to bode well for indepe—we mean specialty films—with Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, and a number of other brain-fertilizing offerings continuing to show specialty legs. That said—buckle-up for a ride on the post-Thanksgiving Deja Vu Express, aka the Grove Trolley to Movie Hell:
Fears that the R-word would keep audiences from the movies this weekend were unfounded, as the name "Reese Witherspoon" still proved an impressive multiplex draw. Have another helping of turkey-chip pancakes topped with cranberry syrup and a pat of yam, as we grind down to the last of the leftovers and run down the box office numbers:
It was the weekend that moviegoers gave blood whether they wanted to or not; take a moment, relax and recover with us as we comb through the Monday Morning Box Office: 1. Twilight - $70.6 million Multiplex chains were forced to summon crisis counselors after Twilight's $33 million opening day, the screeching tween torment of which rang in shellshocked staffers' ears even as grosses slowed into the weekend. Meanwhile at Summit Entertainment — the indie that bankrolled the the teen-vampire-romance phenomenon — execs are assembling one of the nicest fruit baskets ever to send to Warner Bros., whose bumping of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince from Nov. 21 to next summer gave Twilight a green light to plunder at will.2. Quantum of Solace - $27.4 million The 007 thriller plunged 60% from its record-breaking opening a week ago, once again triggering Broody Bond's thirst for revenge that will be explored in the series' stake-wielding 2011 installment, Message For Twilight. 3. Bolt - $27 million Disney's 3-D canine pseudohero took a massive dump on its owner's carpet over the weekend, underperforming by at least $10 million below expectations. After a stern talking to, the pooch is expected to behave a little better for the studio's Thankgsiving guests; another mess like this and it's straight to the shelter. 4. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa - $16 million On the other hand, runaway zoo animals never require discipline from their masters at DreamWorks Animation, though Madagascar's own 54% drop was unusual for a famliy film, even one featuring the giraffe-voicing talents of David Schwimmer. 5. Role Models - $7.2 million David Wain's bid for mainstream success has apparently been accepted by, well, the mainstream, with his R-rated mentoring comedy grossing $48 million to date. Congratulations, David!
Congratulations—if you're reading this, you've survived another round of layoffs. Everyone else: double congratulations. You may no longer be employed, but you're also still in bed, where we all really should be right now. Your box office numbers: 1. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa - $63.5 million Exceeding even DreamWorks's loftiest expectations for the CGI bestiary, Madagascar 2 had the highest opening weekend of any animated film this year—$500k more than even Wall-E—and the seventh best animated film opening of all time. Many would no doubt credit scheduling for the success, with a post-election America ready to put the "issues" aside for a few hours of family-friendly entertainment. But it would be a discredit to its superstar cast of voice talent not to praise their fine achievements—and in particular, Sherri Shepherd, who plays a lioness mother worried her infant cub might stray from the pride and float right off the side of the Earth, or, even worse, end up in a zoo in some Sodomite metropolis halfway across the world where lions have won the legal right to lie with other lions.2. Role Models - $19.251 million 5. Zack and Miri Make a Porno - $ 6.521 million Surprising everyone was how well this R-rated child-mentoring comedy fared after Zack and Miri Make a Porno's underwhelming debut. No doubt the Weinsteins are at this moment scratching their heads at the unpredictability of public tastes, though one theory involves Models's bold decision not to replace stars Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott with stick-doodles on all marketing materials. 3. High School Musical 3: Senior Year - $ 9.293 million HSM3 fell just 39% in its third week, a strong showing attributable to encore business from this franchise's core fan constituency of lusty Zacamaniacs, who simply can't wait until Disney's HSM: TOTALLY UNRATED DVD release ("Featuring the raunchy Troy Bolton shower scene you've been dying to see!") for their HSM repeat-viewing fix. 4. Changeling - $ 7.281 million Clint Eastwood has likely already surrendered all the great Oscar hopes he held for this bleak period drama ever since reading EW's Oscar pundit Dave Karger fascinating theory that the Academy only plans on rewarding movies celebrating man's "innate human goodness" this year, like The Dark Knight. 6. Soul Men - $5.61 million Hey—don't feel so bad about the performance of Bernie Mac's last film. He was also a voice in Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa! That's got to be the first time a deceased actor was in two movies in the top five—but we're too lazy to actually look that up, so feel free to correct us if we're wrong.
Never in our wildest dreams did we think our Halloween gift to you—the Do-It-Yourself Grazerhead mask—would become the runaway success that it did, with literally tens of thousands of the Officially Sanctioned Headshots™ swarming the streets of L.A. Friday night, each accompanied by their very own candy-appraisal attaché. (Grazerhead: "What do we think about Nerds?" Attaché: "We like them.") We urge you to send in your Night of the Living Grazerheads Photos; in the meantime, unwrap some box office numbers from your premium candy pile:1. High School Musical 3 - $15.035 million Every sweeping social movement in this country's history came with its own stirring soundtrack, from "Yankee Doodle" to "Amazing Grace" to Joan Baez singing "We Shall Overcome" to a field of rain-soaked Woodstock participants. And as we too now stand at the crossroads of hope and progress, we can think of no better accompaniment than East High's eunuch basketball team singing "Now or Never." The times, they are indeed a-changin'. 2. Zack and Miri Make a Porno - $10.682 million As we predicted, the Seth Rogen comedy fell about $4 million shy of the HSM kids. (Who, it should be pointed out, had already explored that topic well over a year ago, when tweens still found the DIY-porn-thing cool.) The blame-flinging begins momentarily, in a heated phone exchange between Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Smith, the beleaguered Weinstein Company head shouting, "You just HAD to tell the toilet story, didn't you? Because when people want to forget their problems for a few hours with a laugh and perhaps a glimpse of some Elizabeth Banks skin, what they're really crying out for is the image of you taking a dump and shards of porcelain suddenly flying off in all directions. Bravo, Kevin. Bravo. No really. Well played, my friend," before mumbling a "Jesus Christ," and hanging up in disgust. 3. Saw V - $10.11 million We're torn. On the one hand, we're thrilled to have Jigsaw and his little tricycle-riding puppet Billy come out against Prop 8. On the other hand, did they really have to rig the voting booths so that a bear trap clamps down on your head if you press "Yes?" Enh, why not. 4. Changeling - $9.407 million Clint Eastwood's latest earned an average $5,085 per screen—more than any other movie in the top ten—meaning that at least a few people might have understood why you were rollerskating around Santa Monica Blvd. Friday night with some brown Cabbage Patch Dolls, a 1920s hat, red lipstick, and not much else. Everyone else just figured you were another naked freak at the parade. Either way, however, you're bound to see yourself in Frontiers magazine next week. Congrats! 5. The Haunting of Molly Hartley - $6.009 million Chace Crawford's leap to the big screen is looking to be one of this year's big Razzie frontrunners, earning a solid 00% on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie's hormonal fanbase, however—while feeling it "dragged in spots" and could have "been scarier,"—strongly felt that the star's own performance was, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH CHACE I WANT TO HAVE YOUR BABIES AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!" Distributor Freestyle is hoping that could translate to robuts home video sales.
Low energy? Have a nutritious boost with this recipe for a Defamer Monday Morning Power-Up Smoothie: · 2 cups weak coffee · 47 hazelnut Coffee-Mate single servers · 128 Sweet n' Lo packets · Container of papaya yogurt with Post-It on it reading "Charlene's. DO NOT TOUCH." · Just the turkey slices from leftover platter of sandwiches · Petrified piece of Costco birthday cake · 1 scoop printer toner Pour all contents into paper shredder. Enjoy with a garnish of box office numbers, after the jump!1. High School Musical 3 - $42 million The biggest opening ever for a movie musical has Disney walking on air (and Vincente Minnelli spinning in his grave), as HSM's familiar cast of nonthreatening triple-threats successfully made the leap to the big screen. In the series's most mature storyline to date, the entire Wildcats team reveals that it's gay. East High's student body quickly rises to the occasion, however, mounting a bake sale to send their beloved basketball-dance team to the Teen Gay Olympics in Vienna, all of which culminates in the showstopper, "We're All in This Together (Lemon Bars For Change)." 2. Saw V - $30.5 million Saw lovers piled into theaters once again for the fifth installment of Lionsgate's Halloween tradition, though budget restrictions wouldn't allow for some of the series's more elaborate killing sequences. Instead, shots of Jigsaw riding his tricycle in front of a green screen were superimposed over stock footage of a pork slaughterhouse in Virginia, with V.O. of actors shouting, "Those aren't pigs! Those are human beings!" added later in post to enhance the chilling effect. Fans agreed it was the best installment yet. 3. Max Payne - $7.6 million Having virtually nothing left to say about Max Payne, we'll just point out that it took in an average of $2,248 per screen this weekend. By comparison, Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom—yet another cult cable show to make the leap to the big screen this weekend—took $32,200 per screen. The lesson? Gamers might be an obvious built-in audience, but never underestimate fans of a black, gay Sex and the City. (Even if the movie's title disturbingly recalls Gay Vito's savage demise). 4. Beverly Hills Chihuahua $6.916 million You know that scene where there's literally thousands of chihuahua extras dancing and singing in Oaxaca? Wagandstuff mounted all of them. 5. Pride & Glory - $6.325 million One thing is for certain in this gritty cop drama: Colin Farrell WILLNOTAPOLOGIZEFUHDOINWHATHEDO! Particularly if what he do is wander in and out of an unconvincing New York accent.
Time to unzip your Happy Weekend Suit and step back into your Monday Morning Iron Maiden: The work week is again upon us. Quick—jumpstart your productivity with some box office numbers before someone finds your position detrimental to the bottom line: 1. Max Payne - $18 million Fresh off his ass-whispering turn on an especially excruciating, Sarah Palin-boosted episode of SNL, it's Mark Wahlberg who's doing most of the laughing today: The actor's latest cinematic foray clicked with young male moviegoers, despite being dismissed by most critics as being hyper-stylized junk, like some spiraling turd floating in the Wachowski brothers's septic tank. Still, not all were left unimpressed, as a giddy Colin Powell, his eyes reflecting a steady downpour of slo-mo bullets, gushed to his wife that the "transformational" third-person-shooter adaptation who would "electrify" our country's fanboy electorate.2. Beverly Hills Chihuahua - $11.2 million Audiences continued to roll onto their backs and squirm in delight as they had their bellies rubbed by Disney's bat-eared superstars. Not surprisingly, then, the hit's microscopic sequel—Fleas of Beverly Hills Chihuahua, about a poor, parasitic insect family that hops from rich chihuahua to rich chihuahua so that their children can enroll in the area's public schools—is being rushed into production. 3. The Secret Life of Bees - $11.05 million Gracefully developing, is-she-or-isn't-she-stroppy? superstar Dakota Fanning and friends balanced out the vast gender divide for Fox, giving their Searchlight label the women who avoided Max Payne like the plague. "We had something for everyone," explained Fox VP Bert Livingston, temporarily forgetting about the 99.999999% of the world's population interested in neither. 4. W. - $10.55 million Let's run down W.'s numbers: It's Oliver Stone's fifth-best opening ever, right behind Natural Born Killers. Exit polling showed 47% of audiences were over 40, 90% don't like the President, 80% were voting Obama, and 6% McCain. A round 100%, however, thought the movie was intermittently engaging, but by and large a cojones-deficient mess. 5. Eagle Eye - $7.343 million "If you want to live, you'll do as I say. Now get wasted, hook up with Adrian Grenier's girlfriend, and lose a pinkie nail in a near-fatal car accident at the corner of Hollywood and La Brea. You'll get your next instruction there."
It might be a holiday for some of you, but even on Columbus Day, the whip cracks for the number-crunchers and trend-spotters at Defamer HQ. Their work today yields the surprising latest installment of Monday Morning Box Office, in which a low-budget thriller surprised even its own studio and Leonardo DiCaprio is furious after stomping out a flaming bag of chihuahua crap. Read on for the details.1. Beverly Hills Chihuahua — $17.5 million Disney unleashed its vast canine army for a second straight week, prompting mad scientists at competing studios to commence top-secret experiments to engineer another, equally lucrative breed. Word on the street has Miramax taking the early lead with Tribeca Guard Dog, the story of a vicious German Shepherd named Henrik who unexpectedly finds love with a pug who persuades him to let her owner out of captivity in a dank Manhattan editing facility. Scott Rudin will produce, natch. 2. Quarantine — $14.2 million The stunning opening gross for Sony's horror film exceeded its budget by $2 million, thus inheriting the B-schlock mantle from the retiring Saw franchise and guaranteeing another five years of sloppy, utterly forgettable viral marketing. Well done, America. 3. Body of Lies — $13.1 million We never thought we could be accused of being too generous to Ridley Scott's spy-flick folly, but there you have it. 4. Eagle Eye — $11.1 million The Shia LaBeouf thriller sustained exceedingly well in its third weekend, dropping less than 40% percent and inspiring DreamWorks to scour the Hitchcock canon for the third thinly veiled Gen-X updating between their young star and director D.J. Caruso. The front-runner to date: Nutso, one of Hollywood's hottest unproduced scripts, which would feature Shia as a rural motel proprietor on the outs with his mysterious, Klonopin-addled stepmother. A green light is forthcoming as soon as the judge lifts the injunction. 5. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist — $6.5 million Continuing a new tradition, expect the disappointed producers of The Express — the highly touted footbal biopic that nevertheless finished a distant sixth behind Playlist — to launch an inquiry into ticket fraud and other Michael Cera-inspired box-office shenanigans by the end of the day.
Hard times got you down? Well don't expect the weekend's box office numbers to cheer you up any: 1. Beverly Hills Chihuahua - $29 million Since we first glimpsed its trailer—a jaw-dropping depiction of 45,000 CGI chihuahuas line-kicking to a song about burrito condiments on the steps of a Mayan ruin—we've made little secret of our obsession with this movie. Sadly, a painful ingrown toenail prevented us (yes—all of us; when one hurts, the others feel it just as deeply) from actually paying to see it. Enough did, however, to earn Disney its highest-ever October opening. They were mostly struggling American families, looking in this canine rags-to-riches story for a distraction from their growing financial woes, like Little Orphan Annie offered during the Great Depression. Unfortunately, the plan largely backfired, as all hungry audiences could see in place of the film's adorable Mexican lapdogs were delicious, charcoal-broiled rotisserie chihuahuas floating across the screen.2. Eagle Eye - $17.7 million Meanwhile, this hi-tech thriller starring Shia LaBeouf (in his last pinkie-nail-intact role) continued to draw them in, in which he and Katie Holmes's MI3 stand-in play two strangers taunted mercilessly by That Lady Who Offers Voicemail Options. 3. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist - $12 million We had high hopes based on the cleverly culled clips used in the commercial, but came away extremely disappointed, as just about everything in this movie—from the queer band members cast by obviously straight dudes, to the CW-caliber dialogue, to the most disgusting sequence we've ever endured involving a wad of chewing gum—came off as just plain wrong. (With the exception of Michael Cera, who emerged unscathed using his mutant superpower of being insanely cute.) 4. Nights in Rodanthe - $7.355 million While we're not ones for Hallmark porn, we're confident that Richard Gere has achieved in Rodanthe yet another heart-shaped turd to toss onto his ever-growing shmalzography pile. 9. An American Carol - $3.810 million 10. Religulous - $3.5 million Bill Maher's amazing voyage inside the heart of bible-thumping America performed strongly, earning around the same as what David Zucker's execrable An American Carol—a profoundly unfunny satire paradoxically geared to an audience born without satire-detection capacities—managed on three-times the screens.
We realize that it's not exactly Monday morning anymore, but we're hopeful that you'll find it in your hearts to forgive us for scrambling a bit at Defamer HQ today. Won't you play along as we recap the weekend in which America finally ditched the outdoors and regained its collective appetite for boxes of Junior Mints and huge tubs of buttered popcorn? 1. Eagle Eye - $29.2 million This opening —the biggest since The Dark Knight juggernaut took off in July— officially marks Shia LaBeouf's entrance into the elite (and diminishing) club of actors who can actually open a movie. Just goes to prove that if you pay your greenscreen dues by battling nefarious CGI robots and swinging on digital vines (not to mention befriending Steven Spielberg), you too can become a major motion picture star!2. Nights In Rodanthe - $13.6 million The latest, thoroughly formulaic film from the canon of literary lightweight Nicholas Sparks was a big hit with the older female quadrant. If house porn is your thing, you could do a lot worse. 4. Fireproof - $6.5 million Kirk Cameron is back, baby! We can only hope that his agents strike while the B.O. iron is hot and sign him up for a project that reunites him, Boner Stabone and Eddie Zeff in a Superbad meets The Big Chill type of caper, perhaps one in which they could track down the present whereabouts of hotties from ABC's late '80s lineup like Jamie Luner, Khrystyne Haje and Tracy Wells. 9. Miracle At St. Anna - $3.5 million Despite getting a push from Oprah Winfrey last week, it looks like Spike Lee's latest will have a struggle to top Letters From Iwo Jima's $13.7MM domestic gross. Score one for Clint. 14. Choke - $1.3 million Opening in limited release (just 435 theaters), the latest Chuck Pahlaniuk adaptation fared admirably with a $3,069 per screen average. That said, we have our doubts as to whether Middle America is ready to embrace a film whose climax involves the passing of lost anal beads.
We're finding out the hard way this morning that an Emmy hangover is the worst kind of malaise: All rank breath, regrets and resentment, bundled up in a headache of knowing there must be something else you missed while watching the television industry implode. And now we know — it was an only slightly less torpid weekend at the movies. Still, it's never too late to wash down some of that bitter aftertaste with a run through the Monday Morning Box Office: 1. Lakeview Terrace — $15.6 million Well, we nailed this one, finally locking down the complex Audience Demand Formula™ for Lakeview's known quantities: Samuel Jackson as a bad guy multiplied by interracial lust, raised to the negative power of Neil LaBute's post-Wicker Man directorial efforts, and that total divided by R-rated date-movie competition from Dane Cook. You try it!2. Burn After Reading — $11.3 million The Coens' latest dropped barely 40% in its second week, forcing hive-mind Clooney haters to spike their semi-annual "George can't open!" pieces for at least two years until he returns in the admittedly challenging Men Who Stare At Goats. At which time all bets are off, even ours. 3. My Best Friend's Girl — $8.3 million Or about $5 million less than tracking indicated. Maybe Dane Cook was right — his vagina-like face doesn't sell tickets after all. 4. Igor — $8 million All over America, families warmed to the story of a hunchback pursuing his lifelong dream of becoming a second-rate bit of animation left to dangle in the marketplace by Harvey Weinstein to the tune of $3400 per screen. 5. Righteous Kill — $7.7 million. Go ahead — insert your "De Niro and Pacino kept it up for a whole week" jokes here.
It's a special day for moviegoers — the first time in three weeks those studio jokers didn't leave the equivalent of a flaming bag of crap on our doorstep Friday morning. Thanks, Hollywood! Their reward? One of the best non-Labor Day September weekends in years, as illustrated by our regular browse through the Monday Morning Box Office: 1. Burn After Reading — $19.4 million The Coen brothers' admirable, totally nonsensical spy farce rode its all-star ensemble like a rented mule, albeit sort of a haunting mutation of mule — one with frosted tips, a hoof-full of Oscars and an unusually foul mouth that nevertheless enticed enough curious viewers to make Burn the biggest opening of the Coens' career. And it's almost enough to settle Focus Features' therapy bill incurred after Hamlet 2.2. Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys — $18 million Add another fun fact to Defamer's Tyler Perry Encyclopedia: Five of his six films have now opened among their respective weekends' top two grossers. On roughly two-thirds as many screens as this week's No. 1. With virtually no white people in the audience. Be impressed. 3. Righteous Kill — $16.5 million And it would have been even more had Robert De Niro and Al Pacino not already fulfilled most Americans' demand to see them sleepwalk through scenes together. 4. The Women — $10 million Critics be damned — Picturehouse was determined to make this work if it was the last thing it ever did. And, alas, it was. 5. The House Bunny — $4.3 million The Cult of Anna Faris kept her in the Top 5 with barely a 20% drop from last week. Seriously: If Tyler Perry had an adventurous bone in his body he'd write her into a Madea film and let the Brinks truck do the rest.
