Box-Office Wrap-Up: Sep. 17 – Sep. 19, 2010

I never had a chance to see it, but it seems most people I talked to liked it. Working on an $8 million budget, I’m not sure what kind of money was spent on advertising, but I have to assume this little gem is already working in the black. And once again, someone give Bustray a cookie, with a $18.9 million prediction he was only off by $.7 million. Nice work.

Devil is also likely to give Universal a little bit of profit with its $10 million budget, just not as quickly as Easy A. I’m still wondering if this is worth the price of admission. Any of you see it?

The Check Spot was the closest in the prediction column with $14.4 million.

Another film I didn’t get a chance to see, but it wasn’t screened for critics the same as Devil. I’ve heard it has some serious highs and lows in quality, which I can only assume comes as a result of a lot of attention being paid to 3D action sequences and less time spent concentrating on story. Oh well, I still may give it a shot before it hits DVD. However, on a $60 million budget I can’t see how that Resident Evil 5 Jovovich is promising is a sure thing.

Dennis Hopper’s second to last film outside of Linda Yellin’s The Last Film Festival. My assumption is this one will be doing bigger business than that one, but at least Hopper’s face will be seen in Yellin’s picture. As for Alpha and Omega, I anticipate its box-office lifespan will be short with Legend of the Guardians opening next weekend, which I saw yesterday and should play well with the kids. The Check Spot had another spot on prediction here with an $8.2 million pick.

Takers vs. The Town, which one is more entertaining. If you ask me, on an entertainment level Takers wins by a long shot. On a filmmaking level The Town certainly wins, but The Town doesn’t have T.I. embarrassing himself as he narrates Paul Walker’s armored car heist, a performance so bad it tips the scale in Takers direction.

Next question, with Takers now at $52+ million which one will end with a larger domestic haul?

It’s not funny to look at comments on my review of The American and see people hating it so much, it’s tragic the lengths Focus had to go to sell the film. The trailers certainly sell it as much more of a shoot ’em up actioner than it is, while my review reminds people of how slow it is and how it’s more of a cerebral picture than a visual assault.

With just over $2 million, Inception has now made the top ten ten straight weeks in a row. It is only $1.2 million shy of $500 million in foreign markets and is over $733 million in combined worldwide box-office returns. Quite impressive for a thinking man’s actioner.

Over $115 million domestically for this one sounds really nice. The fact it was made for $100 million makes that $115 million sound not so nice. It’s hard to look at a film that makes that much money as a financial failure, but that $100 million budget is reported before prints and advertising so how much of a loss is Columbia looking at here?

To be fair, the ten spot is a tie at the moment, but my system operates with ten films so Machete is on the outside looking in at the moment as both it and Eat Pray Love managed $1.7 million. I’m sure actuals will sort it all out on Monday, but for now Julia gets the spot.