Yet again The Avengers ruled the box office, and boy did the rest of the top five stink up the place.
The Avengers added another $55 million to its box office haul in the U.S. and it is now Disney’s highest earning film in history both here and worldwide. The domestic total stands at $457 million and $1.18 billion worldwide. While I think everyone thought this movie would do well, I really don’t think anyone could have predicted this outcome.
Coming in an embarrassing second place was Battleship with $25.3 million. This is shaping up to be the new John Carter: $200 million+ budget, dismal opening weekend, decent overseas numbers. This has “shipwreck” written all over it. (Course, I’ve been saying that since this project was announced …)
Third place went to The Dictator with $17.4 million, well below expectations. Can’t say as I’m surprised by this one either.
Dark Shadows fell to fourth place from number two last weekend with a 57% slide to $12.7 million.
What to Expect When You’re Expecting opened in fifth place with $10.5 million, also well below projections.
In short, this weekend was a disaster for any film not about a team of superheroes.
Next week sees the Chernobyl Diaries open pretty wide alongside Men in Black 3. I’m calling it now, though, MiB is going to open soft. It may very well beat The Avengers, but it will only be due to the age of the film by then. The advance buzz is weak at best, so I’m not expecting a lot out of it.
Even in its second weekend, The Avengers continues to dominate the records.
Following its $207.3 million first weekend, pundits began to wonder what The Avengers could do in its second weekend. No film had ever done more than 75 million in a second outing, and no comic book film has ever lost as little as 50%. Well, this one did both. Falling 50.3%, the film brought in another $103 million, bringing its domestic total to $373.1 million in just 10 days. Combined with it’s foreign box office results, it is has pushed past the $1 billion benchmark in just 19 days. It now looks set to breeze past $500 million domestic.
Coming in a very distant second was Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows with an anemic $28.8 million. Combined with a traditionally soft weekend and The Avengers to deal with, this film had next to no chance, even with Johnny Depp in the lead role.
Third place went to Think Like a Man with another $6.3 million to add to its tally. With a $12 million dollar budget and $81 million at the box office already, this film is making some executives very happy.
The Hunger Games continues to hold on with another $4.4 million which was enough to secure it a fourth place finish.
Rounding out the top five was The Lucky One with another $4 million.
Wednesday will see Sascha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator opening wide, and Friday will see What to Expect When You’re Expecting and Battleship will take their respective bows nationwide. As The Avengers has already over performed by leaps and bounds, some analysts are already calling next weekend a threepeat with the numbers for all of the movies opening being adjusted downwards for their opening tallies. We’ll have to wait and see what happens, but I can’t say I disagree with those assessments.
Don’t even try to act surprised that that it won the weekend.
Not only did The Avengers take first place this weekend, but it absolutely trounced a number of records in the process:
Biggest opening weekend
Biggest Weekend
Fastest to $200 million
Biggest midnight opening for a superhero movie
Biggest Saturday
Biggest Sunday
Basically it just broke every record it could and broung in a cool $200.3 million. Combined with its foreign take, the film has already bypassed $641.8 million in worldwide gross making it the number one film for Marvel. Domestically it has already passed The Incredible Hulk, Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor, and has only Iron Man 2 and Iron Man to pass.
Considering the rave reviews and good word of mouth already going around, I won’t be too surprised to see a $100 million second weekend.
Coming in a very distant second place was Think Like a Man $8 million.
The Hunger Games held on to third place with another $5.7 million. This movie just keeps bringing the folks in and it makes you wonder just how well the sequels will do.
Fourth place went to The Lucky One with another $5.51 million.
The kid-friendly The Pirates! Band of Misfits fell from second to fifth with $5.4 million.
As every studio was smart enough to not take on The Avengers, there were no other big releases this weekend. Next weekend will see the Tim Burton/Johnny DeppDark Shadows project hit the screens, and as much as I like it when these guys work together, the commercials and trailers just aren’t getting me that amped up for this. I’m thinking they’re going to wish they had put a bit more distance between themselves and The Avengers.
At long last a trailer has been released for Tim Burton’s upcoming Dark Shadows, and I think we may now know why they waited so long to release it.
While the original Dark Shadows television series wasn’t exactly the height of high brow entertainment, playing a big budget film version of it totally for a camp factor may not be the wisest of moves. Even as a fan of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, this film just lost a ton of appeal for me after seeing the trailer you’ll find below.
While I find some of the lines amusing, the idea of heading to a theater to catch this has definitely dropped down my list of must-see films this summer. Yes, I loved the two Addams Family films, but that was always played for laughs, while this could have been played as a great dark, creepy black comedy if you must go that direction, not campy.
While I’m sure I’ll see this eventually just as I do with every Burton film, it has certainly dropped down my list now for what was shaping up to be a great year for fun movies. Guess I’m just back to The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises now. Be sure to check out the gallery of images as well and see if you think this went off the rails somewhere along the line.
After the jump you will find a large collection of new official stills. Continue Reading ->
Have you ever had a mad desire to sit down and watch a complete DVD set? I do it quite often with short series, and sometimes I even do multiple seasons, but I can’t say that I’ve thought about tackling 1,225 episodes across 131 discs and 457 hours.
With Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows filming starring Johnny Depp heading into theaters on May 11, of course there will be some interest in the TV series that ran from 1966 – 1971 that inspired it. But at a suggested retail price of $600 for the limited edition, how many people are actually going to pick this mammoth set up? I think it’s safe to say that this is definitely for the original fans, and when you think about how much content you’re getting, the price really isn’t that bad.
But 131 discs? Does it come with a small forklift to move it around your home?
You can read the full press release after the jump, and while this isn’t something I normally would cover, the sheer size of it compelled me to. I think it may have a gravitational pull as it’s the size of a small planetoid. Continue Reading ->
Due for release on May 11 of this year, the early promotional work for Dark Shadows has been nearly non-existent. Beyond a cast photo released a few months ago, there hasn’t been anything else in the realm of official promotion. No posters, commercials or trailers, but at least we now have a few still images of scenes to take a look at.
The first shot shows Johnny Depp as the vampire Barnabas Collins apparently saying something unsettling to Michelle Pfeiffer as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard.
And a solo shot of Depp as Barnabas.
Hopefully there will be some sort of larger publicity push in the not too distant future so we know exactly where this film is going in terms of style … you know, besides just being a Tim Burton film.
Deadline is reporting that 20th Century Fox, which bought the rights to the novel last spring, are in talks with Tim Burton to helm the project. Considering his resume of odd films, this is a project that is tailor made for him. Here’s the official synopsis of the book:
A mysterious island.
An abandoned orphanage.
A strange collection of very curious photographs.
It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.
A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.
Yep, this sounds like Burton to me.
The only issue is that this will have to be down the line for Burton as he is currently wrapping up Dark Shadows, and has already lined up Frankenweenie and a stop-motion version of The Addams Family, so it would be some time before he could get to this film.
While this isn’t a done deal, I can’t see 20th Century Fox not making sure this happening.
At long last, Johnny Depp’s dream project of a Dark Shadows movie is becoming a reality, and of course he brought Tim Burton along for the ride.
For those unfamiliar with the property, Dark Shadows was a gothic soap opera that ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971. It centered around the mysterious Collins family and included all sorts of mysterious overtones and, oh yeah, a vampire. Over the course of its run it built a huge cult following that lasts to this day, and counts amongst its number Johnny Depp and Tim Burton.
This is a project that has circulated around Depp for years, but due to the fairly niche audience it would go for, no one was really willing to fund it. However, when your name is “Depp,” and you’ve stared in nearly half of the highest grossing films of all time, apparently people will take a gamble on you finally. Add in the fact that he wanted to play the lead of Barnabas Collins – yes, the vampire – and you can understand why someone finally coughed up the budget for this.
A cast photo has been released for the new film that you can see below which seems to have been in reaction to some leaked set photos that showed Depp wearing heavy amounts of make-up that made him look nothing like the original character. Now we’re left to wonder what was up with those images because in this photo he looks dead-on with the original series. (click the image for a slightly larger view)
And here is a cast photo from the television series.
For those who care to learn more about the production, you can read the initial filming press release after the break. In the meantime, judging by this picture, Tim Burton has gathered up the usual suspects for his films with a few new additions. (Oh yeah! Chloe Moretz from Kick-Ass! Woo!) How this will play with audiences, who knows, but Burton & Depp have yet to let me down when they team up.
Yet again The Avengers ruled the box office, and boy did the rest of the top five stink up the place.
At long last a trailer has been released for Tim Burton’s upcoming Dark Shadows, and I think we may now know why they waited so long to release it.
If there was ever a film project with the name “
