A smart ass cars salesman nor a cute five year old fish girl could stop District 9 from obtaining the top spot this weekend. The Peter Jackson boosted low budget science fiction story managed to wrangle in about 37 million. Directed by Neil Blomkamp and starring Shartlo Copley, Jason Cope and Robert Hobbs, it showed that at least the heavy marketing (and two Comic-Con’s worth of it) is starting to pay off.
Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana’s love story, The Time Traveler’s Wife, seemed to bring in the appropriate age group demographic when it took in 19.2 million over this past weekend. Following the tale of Henry and Claire’s relationship that is constantly tested by Henry’s uncontrollable ability to time travel, the Robert Schwentke film looks like it will be able to take in the money it needs to in order to make a little bit of profit.
Continuing on is the Jeremy Piven powered The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard which was able to bring in around 5.3 million. In all honesty, this reporter here is happy that this comedy of sorts was not able to make much, and most likely won’t be able to after what seems to be the peak of it’s money making. Then we swim around to everyone’s favorite fish, Ponyo. Written and directed by the ridiculously talented and creative Haoyo Miyazaki, this tale brought in 3.5 million, which is not bad at all considering that it’s first and foremost a foreign film and that it was not shopped around to the general public for too long. Here’s hoping that word of mouth brings in more audiences to check out the latest from the imaginative filmmaker.
Last but not least, well it literally did make the least out of all of these films, is Summit Entertainment’s Bandslam. The only people who for the most part knew about this film is Disney fans who flocked to see the likes of Vanessa ‘I swear I have clothes on now’ Hudgens or to watch the mini trailer of Twilight Saga: New Moon. From it’s 2.2 million intake, it looks like it attracted some fangirls but not enough to crack it into the top ten.
Jumping into the films that have been out for a little while, it looks like GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra is trying to scrounge together as much as it can for its 175 million dollar budget before the summer movie season dies off. Though it made 22 million, what can be the poisonous word of mouth is starting to seep in. Along with that and the upcoming release of the widely hyped Quentin Tarantino movie Inglorious Basterds, this all American hero will have to rely on overseas in order to get back the remainder of their budget. Enough chit chat, let’s look at the list below:
Weekend Box Office (August 14-16)
- District 9 ($37 Million)
- G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra ($22.5 Million)
- The Time Traveler’s Wife ($19.2 Million)
- Julie & Julia ($12.4 Million)
- G-Force ($6.9 Million)
- The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard ($5.3 Million)
- Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince ($5.1 Million)
- The Ugly Truth ($4.5 Million)
- Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea ($3.5 Million)
- 500 Days of Summer ($3 Million)
For most people who are fellow students this will be the last summer weekend of sorts to rush into the movie theater and enjoy the freedom of summer. It’ll be time to kick things off with films such as Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, Post Grad, Robert Rodriguez’ Shorts, and World’s Greatest Dad.
