'Disaster Movie' a Disaster and 'Tropic Thunder' Aims for Third #1

I am starting to think the RopeofSilicon Oracle is throwing darts at a board. I will give him last week because it was a close one and Death Race disappointed slightly and House Bunny did better than many thought, but if current estimates hold out Laremy’s pick for #1 will end up at … (drum roll) … #7. Gasp and shock and pick me up off the floor. Okay, it’s not that big of a deal, but I think it has been four weeks since he got the #1 slot right including this week. Wanna know what film that was? Let’s take a peek…

First off, Babylon A.D. has performed well despite all the trouble surrounding the picture including problems on set, in the editing room, lack of publicity and a director that seemed to want to sabotage his own film. Babs took the #1 spot on Friday and is expected to end the weekend with a #2 finish. On Friday the flick pulled in $3.5 million besting Tropic Thunder by $.5 million. Tropic, however, is expected to jump ahead of Babylon for the weekend overall #1 for the third weekend in a row with an anticipated take of $11.5 million, proving it isn’t taking a whole lot of money to take the #1 slot in this extremely lackluster weekend.

The Friday #3 belonged to The House Bunny, which performed well last weekend coming in second and after $2.7 million on Friday it is expected to end the weekend at #4 with $8.5 million just below The Dark Knight, which added an additional $2.1 million to its tally on Friday and is expected to end the weekend somewhere around $8.8 million in the third slot.

To this date The Dark Knight sits at just over $493 million and should the weekend estimates hold out it will finally crack the $500 million barrier. A big deal was made only recently at how the film had bounced above Spider-Man on the adjusted for inflation list at Box-Office Mojo. Personally I think those inflation numbers don’t exactly take everything into account and are a little misleading considering folks had to see films like Gone with the Wind in theaters when it was released or they wouldn’t see the damn thing again for decades. After it was shown in 1939 it wasn’t re-released until 1989. The Dark Knight hit theaters in July 2008 and will be on DVD, Blu-ray and most likely in some digital format by December, not to mention all the pirating going on now. Sorry, that inflation business is for someone else, not me.

Getting back on track, coming in at #4 on Friday was the Don Cheadle starrer Traitor, which I guess is good considering Cheadle isn’t yet a household name, but people aren’t going to be happy with what they get considering I saw a few TV spots today and they are selling it as some kind of Jason Bourne style thriller when it is more a flick of conscience. Expect this one to fall in the following week, and perhaps hard, but for now it made $2.3 million on Friday and is expected to finish the three-day with $8.4 million.

Now we get to Laremy’s favorite for the weekend, and when I say favorite I mean pick, but I think he actually told me he went to see this yesterday. If so, he may be dead, because I haven’t heard from him since. Disaster Movie managed a meager $2.2 million on Friday and came in at #5, but it is expected to only cume $6.3 million for the weekend and fall down to #7. I guess the only consolation here is that the equally awful looking film College didn’t even crack the top ten on Friday with just $660k and is expected to only finish with $2.2 million. Is it possible audiences have finally learned these movies suck or are they just staying home? The US Open can’t be that intriguing can it? Especially with Ana Ivanovic losing early and Maria Sharapova not even playing. What gives dummies?

That does it for new releases unless you count the expansion of Hamlet 2 which bested College on Friday with $2 million falling just shy of the top ten and is expected to hit $2.5 million for the weekend and perhaps wage war with Mirrors for the tenth slot, but estimates don’t look good that it will make it.

Overall, it’s a lousy weekend. Studios are holding on for the end of September with only Burn after Reading, Appaloosa and Ghost Town hitting theaters in the coming weeks to occupy our imagination. September 26 has some goods to offer, but it won’t be ’til October and the release of RocknRolla for things to really start picking up as we move into Award Season.

Check out the complete Friday estimates below courtesy of Fantasy Moguls and you can head on over there to also check out the 3-day estimates and 4-day weekend estimates. Laremy will be here to wrap up the weekend and explain his “disaster” pick, but I think I have given him a hard enough time that he can just shrug and say, “Oh well.”