On any other weekend an opening of $53 million, which is what The Green Lantern did, making it No. 1, would be great news. However, not in this case. With a production cost, including marketing, of $300 million , according to the New York Times recently, that’s not good enough.
Even if you take its eventual overseas take, which is where the real money is made for most movies, the film is going to come up short, making much less than the $600-700 million it needs just to break even. Considering that Fast Five, which was made for much less, is already near the $600 million mark worldwide, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Stranger Tides is already past $900 million worldwide, heading well past $1 billion, there’s going to undoubtedly be a lot of finger pointing at Warner Bros over what went wrong with Lantern. (How about making a good film first?)
In the meantime, it’s the smaller, more modest films that continue to impress people, like Bridesmaids and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, which is on its way to becoming his biggest box office success in years, perhaps ever. In fact, the film is now being advertised on TV. I can’t recall the last time there were TV ads for an Allen film, and it’s proof that the the film is doing so well that Sony Classics can afford to spend money on TV ads, and that it has a real shot of breaking out beyond the usual (small) crowd that frequent Allen’s films.
Here’s this week’s list:
1. Green Lantern 3D (Warner Bros) Weekend $5
2. Super 8 (Paramount) Weekend $20.5M, Cume $7
3. Mr. Popper’s Penguins (Fox) Weekend $1
4. X-Men: First Class (Fox) Weekend $11.5M, Cume $120M
5. The Hangover Part II (Legendary/Warner Bros.) Weekend $10M, Cume $232.8M
6. Kung Fu Panda 2 (Paramount) Weekend $8.6M, Cume $143.3M
7. Bridesmaids (Universal) Weekend $7.3M, Estimated Cume $136.6M
8. Pirates Of The Caribbean 4 (Disney) Weekend $6.2M, Cume $220.2M
9. Midnight In Paris (Sony Classics) Weekend $5.1M, Cume $21.7M
10. Judy Moody (Relativity) Weekend $2.2M, Cume $11.1M