Optimus Rises, Everyone Else Falls
Nobody at Paramount Pictures this morning had to worry about the overall box office (and those that do should get their head examined) intake totaled in so far for action mainstream director Michael Bay’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Joining The Dark Knight in its gigantic numbers (despite the huge wave of negative reviews), Transformers 2 raked in a cool 108.9 million, bringing in over 200 million domestically ever since its June 24th release. Too bad Philip guesstimated a little too far (121 million) even though judging from the ridiculous lines in front of movie theaters all over the nation, you’d think it did accumulate that much.
"...and then Optimus shoots and KABOOM!"
Don’t forget, for those of you who actually remembered, there were two other openings during this past weekend. Then again, of course almost all of us would forget My Sister’s Keeper amidst the huge robots beating the ever-loving crap out of each other. The overly melodramatic film centering on a young girl suffering from cancer and her sister demanding emancipation in order to choose whether or not she wants to literally give a part of herself to her sibling in order to let her live. Starring Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin and Sofia Vassilieva among many others, the film only managed to scrape in 12.4 million (unlike the 9 million prediction).
There also is the recent release of the Michelle Pfeiffer romantic drama, Cheri. Based off a novel of the same name, the story follows a courtesan as she straightens out a friend’s young adult son, only for him to fall for her and turn his life upside down once they depart from one another. Since its in such a limited release, Cheri managed to only make 405,701 total. Another honorable mention of new releases goes to the Kathryn Bigelow directed war drama, The Hurt Locker. Only in limited release in Los Angeles and New York (until July 10th) the film took in 145,352 and has the nice nod of having the best per screen average despite its ridiculously limited release.
Overall, the only films that seemed to show a little bit of promise despite the monstrous takeover from the Autobots and the Decepticons was the remainder of the top five (The Proposal, Up and The Hangover). Check out the rest below:
Weekend Box Office (June 26-28)
- Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($108.9 Million)
- The Proposal ($18.5 Million)
- The Hangover ($17 Million)
- Disney/Pixar’s Up ($13 Million)
- My Sister’s Keeper ($12.4 Million)
- Year One ($6 Million)
- The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 ($5.4 Million)
- Star Trek ($3.7 Million)
- Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian ($3.6 Million)
- Away We Go ($1.7 Million)
Everyone sharpen up their 1930’s dialect, because this week blasts off on Wednesday with the release of the anticipated Michael Mann film, Public Enemies, starring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale and Marion Cotillard. Along with it on Wednesday comes the third installment of the Twentieth Century Fox film, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. On Friday comes The Girl From Monaco and I Hate Valentine’s Day.
