"Failure" Fails To Fail At The Weekend Box Office
By now it's downright ridiculous, but once again the weekend's box office winners are also the week's critical duds, with the aptly named "Failure To Launch" balancing a Tomatometer of 30 percent with an opening B.O. of $24.6 mil.
That's right, the Matthew McConaughey-Sarah Jessica Parker rom-com that gave all the scribes fodder for their cannons with its title alone managed to debut at #1 last weekend, with an impressive per-screen average of $8K. According to Variety, we have the over-25 female demographic combined with the hunky powers of McConaughey to thank for this.
Coming in second last weekend was Tim Allen's mongrel of a flick, "The Shaggy Dog," which actually tied "Failure to Launch" with 30% on the Tomatometer but performed well below at the box office with a total of $16 million from 3501 theaters.
Third in theaters last weekend was the Alexandre Aja - Wes Craven remake, "The Hills Have Eyes." Faring slightly better with critics (51% on the Tomatometer) seemed to do little good for the mutant hill-people slasher, which brought in $15.5 million (but played in only 2620 theaters and had a much narrower, bloodthirstier audience than the top two flicks).
Interesting results came with the performance of Oscar winner "Crash," which Lions Gate re-released last week following the Best Picture win. Opening in only 175 theaters, the pic brought in a disappointing $357,000, according to Variety.
Also, the mighty "Madea" was finally knocked off its cushy perch by the top three openers and last week's "16 Blocks," which pulled in $7.3 million to take number 4 at the B.O. "Madea's Family Reunion" added only $5.8 million to its total so far of nearly $56 mil, and dropped from #1 last week to #5.
For the complete returns from last weekend, click over to the Rotten Tomatoes Box Office page.
JT Martin
Most people have significant others that they enjoy taking to the movies. Rom coms are the perfect mixture of romance for girls and comedy for guys. Not really surprising it finished first, especially considering there hasn't been a real romantic comedy in a while.
Mar 13 - 02:47 PM