‘Despicable Me 2’ continues to dominate box office

 

As has
become the norm in Hollywood, the sequels prevailed this weekend. The biggest
grosser was Despicable Me 2, earning
the top spot for the second week in a row. Coming in at number two was Grown Ups 2, the Adam Sandler and Co.
comedy. Pacific Rim, which had been
gaining buzz due to its original monsters vs. robots concept, was left in third
place, underperforming at the box office.

Despicable Me 2 likely earned its second weekend at
number one due to great reviews and its family-friendly content (minions!),
which both children and their parents can enjoy. The film took in about $45 million
this weekend, a 46 percent drop from its opening. This is a similar decline to
the other animated feature still in major release, Monsters University, which
fell 45 percent its second week in theatres. This data puts Despicable Me 2 on track to earn a total
of around $350 million this summer, and to probably become the second-highest
earning movie of the year. The film has so far grossed about $230 million
domestically, or 91 percent of what the original, Despicable Me, earned throughout its entire run. All this success
undoubtedly means that Universal will be rolling out a Despicable Me 3 in a few years’ time.

Despite Grown Ups 2’s extremely negative
reviews—the film only scored a 7 percent critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes—the
film has exceeded expectations at the box office, coming in just $2.25 million
behind Despicable Me 2. The $42.5
million three-day haul is actually better than Grown Ups’ 2010 opening weekend. These earnings can probably be
chalked up to the fact that, despite the film’s crude humor and PG-13 rating,
the opening weekend audiences were more than 50 percent female and more than 50
percent under 25, indicating that many families went to see the film together. Grown Ups 2’s successful debut (the
second highest of any of Adam Sandler’s live-action productions), indicates
that the comedian’s post-Jack and Jill
slump is officially over. Grown Ups 2
has now overtaken The Hangover Part III
to have the largest opening weekend for a comedy this year.

Unfortunately,
that leaves Pacific Rim to place
third this weekend. Despite pretty positive reviews from both critics and audience
members, the film just didn’t have enough appeal to win over a wide demographic
of viewers. With no bankable stars and a heavy reliance on CGI-created action
scenes, the film predictably drew crowds from the fanboy sector, but couldn’t
muster up nearly as many older or female audience members. The $38.3 million
opening is by no means a flop, but it is under what Warner Bros. had hoped for,
especially considering that another recent original sci-fi film, World War Z, scored $66 million its
first weekend in theaters. Of course, World
War Z had the benefit of Brad Pitt and was based on a book with built-in
hype. It is now likely that Pacific Rim
will earn a total of about $110 million domestically, and will rely heavily on
the international market to break even on its reportedly $190 million
production budget.

The female
buddy-comedy The Heat, starring
Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, took in $14 million in its third weekend
out, putting its total gross thus far at over $112 million and keeping it on
track to become the highest-grossing comedy of the summer. Disney’s flop The Lone Ranger continues to struggle along
at fifth place in its second week in theatres. The film has only made $71
million so far, or a third of its $215 million budget. It seems as though Jack
Sparrow just doesn’t translate to the Old West. 

Tentpole watch: 'Pacific Rim' teaser and 'Avatar' update

It's hard to think of tentpoles releasing a year or two years from now when a juicy franchise like The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey comes out just two Fridays from now. But today brings updates on two highly anticipated tentpoles: Pacific Rim and the Avatar sequels.

Guillermo del Toro, the original director of The Hobbit series before dropping out due to MGM's bankruptcy-related delays, turned his attention to Pacific Rim, an aliens vs. robots sci-fi movie that promises to show off del Toro's skills as a creature creator. Warner Bros. just released a viral teaser that reveals part of the plot in the form of a frantic news broadcast. The poor Golden Gate Bridge is cracked in half by an alien, who is then subdued and placed on a ship in the same manner as the T-Rex in The Lost World. When it comes to the blueprints of the robots, which were also released, I'm not quite as excited. They look like giant Iron Men or Transformers. There's not a lot of originality, at least in their form. How they perform in action may be a different story. The movie comes out next July.

 

 

The blue-hued, naturalistic aliens in Avatar will begin their CG creation late this year, according to an interview conducted with writer/director James Cameron in New Zealand, where he's hanging out and finishing up the script for the sequel. Apparently the script for Avatar wasn't finished at the time of production (normally a big no-no), leading to a lot of work for scenes that were later cut. A completed script for Avatar 2 plus working with creatures that have already been created in CG should mean the time from production to screen is shorter, though I wouldn't bet on that. Especially because Cameron imposed a new challenge for the series by setting it underwater, which should multiply the difficulty for both the CG team and the poor humans who have to spend a lot of time in water tanks. Though between Cameron's experience on The Abyss and Titanic, he's at home with the difficult filming conditions. Even with production starting late next year, it's unlikely the movie will release until 2015. By that time, the three-film series of The Hobbit will be done, and audiences will be more than eager to pick up where the 2009 Avatar left off.