Coens Poised to 'Burn' Tyler Perry at the Box-Office?

Whenever a Tyler Perry film makes its way to the theater you can pretty much count on it taking the top spot. Unless I am mistaken Meet the Browns is the only Perry film that didn’t take the #1 spot on opening weekend and it came in second to Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! Not bad if you ask me and it is in a tight race for #1 this weekend with the Coen brother comedy Burn After Reading (read my review) with Friday estimates showing a mere $0.16 million separating the two with Burn edging out Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys by a notch.

For the Coens this is a pretty big score considering their films aren’t exactly box-office draws, but it appears the trailers may have had just enough mad cap behavior and the overall positive reviews told audiences it was safe to head to theaters. Actually, I would say this is one of the Coens’ more accessible black comedies and I am surprised the critical masses were so kind to the feature considering they know what kind of material the boys can turn out. When compared to their most recent comedies (Intolerable Cruelty and Ladykillers) it’s certainly a score, but it ain’t no O Brother, which may be exactly what general audiences needed.

Steve Mason at Fantasy Moguls predicts Burn will stick it out and top Perry’s Prey by $1 million with $19 million for Burn After Reading, which is great for the Coens considering the $12.6 million Ladykillers earned its opening weekend was the brothers best opening weekend to date. However, I don’t expect Burn to match the $74.2 No Country for Old Men ultimately took in, but I am sure they are right now just interested in matching the $37 million production budget for the comedy.

The Al Pacino and Robert De Niro release Righteous Kill (read my review) is doing moderate business with $6.23 million on Friday. The film has an awful Rotten Tomatoes score (23%), but a lot of that has got to do with the fact that the film is only an above average thriller, but it shows that sometimes the RT score can be a little misleading.

The Women (read my review) is this weekend’s other new release and it deserves the critical savaging it is getting, but as I assumed would be the case the estrogen filled skin sacks are still heading to the theater to check it out as it earned $4 million on Friday and came in fourth where it will most likely finish with approximately just under $12 million.

The only big news for already released films would be that Tropic Thunder (read my review) broke the $100 million mark on Friday night adding an additional $1.3 million to its tally. The film will end up being the second best comedy of the year so far just topping Step Brothers and You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, but still falling short of the $128 million earned by Warner’s Get Smart. Not bad for an R-rated comedy and it certainly outlasted Retardgate relatively unscathed.

The complete list of Friday estimates are below and Laremy will be here Sunday with a full weekend recap.