What a weekend at the old box office. Two *cough* new redoes of films from the ‘80s tanked, leaving the anemic Real Steel (itself a highly puffed up revamp of an old Twilight Zone episode) to retake the box office championship:
Real Steel garnered $16.3 million for a two week aggregate of about $54 million. It’s made another $56 million overseas. Unfortunately, it cost a hundred million to make, meaning that once the theaters take their cuts, it is maybe halfway to making it’s money back. Not counting prints and advertising costs.
Footloose came in second with $16 million, drawing a pretty lame $4500 a theater. The budget was about $25 million, so again, it’s about a third of the way to coming within spitting distance of breaking even. Good luck.
The Thing prequel did even worse, drawing a paltry $8.7 million on a $35 million budget. With DVD sales cratering, there’s not much chance of this ever hitting profit, unless it does a hell of a lot better than that overseas.
[Sure looking good for those Top Gun, Red Dawn and Scarface redos.]Elsewhere on the horror front, the $50 million dollar Dream House, starring Daniel Craig, continues to be a money pit, coming in 11th at the national box office this week and taking in $2.5 million. It’s total take so far is about $18.4 million. Craig really needs to get that next Bond money going, because everything else he does is a bust.
The biggest disaster was The Big Year, though, which despite an all-star comedy cast (or would have been an all-star cast five years ago; see also The Tower Heist) of Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson, drew a downright pathetic $3.3 million, drawing about $2100 a theater. Ouch! And that’s with further supporting cast of John Cleese, Joel McHale, Kevin Pollak, JoBeth Williams, Diane Wiest, Anthony Anderson, Brian Dennehy, Jim Parsons AND Angelica Huston.
George Clooney’s Ides of March will probably at least break ever, but barely and solely because of the film’s rock bottom (for Hollywood) $12.5 million budget. It should make a little money—a little—from TV and home video sales, but like many of the current crop of films—Moneyball, for instance—seems unlikely to travel well if at all overseas.
The most successful out there right now is Courageous, a Christian film from the company that did Fireproof. With a $2 million dollar budget—probably far less than any of the three leads of Big Year made—the film has grossed over $21 million already.
The only real Hollywood hit this fall was been The Help, which has currently socked away $165 million on a thrifty $25 million budget.
