'Heat' scorches 'White House Down'

Both The Heat and White House Down earned "A-" Cinemascores from their audiences, but one movie overperformed while the other fell short of expectations. This is summer movie season, and Monday morning results aren't always fair.

The Heat soared with $40 million. That's much better than openings for either Melissa McCarthy movies (Bridesmaids opened to $26 million, Identity Thief to $34 million) or Sandra Bullock's latest (The Blind Side and The Proposal both opened around $34 million). While Bridesmaids and The Blind Side were both word-of-mouth hits, earning six to seven times their opening weekends, audiences here already knew they were dealing with a great product featuring known stars and a specific style of comedy. Since initial awareness was so high, The Heat's subsequent weeks won't be quite as hot as Bridesmaids, but its strong rating in exit polls should stoke this comedy right up to $150 million.

White House Down should have opened north of $30 million, but instead the action movie, the second to focus on an attack on the White House in a year, disappointed with $25.7 million. Historically, similar movies don't always lose by coming out second--meteor disaster movie Armageddon did much better than Deep Impact. But in this case, Olympus Has Fallen opened $5 million higher in March, despite a cheaper budget, a lesser-known star, and weaker reviews. White House Down should level out in coming weeks, but one of its biggest problems is the amount of competition out there. World War Z's second week earned $29.8 million, while Man of Steel, brought in $20.8 million and upcoming pictures including Lone Ranger and Pacific Rim. For star Channing Tatum, who has appeared in four $100+ million movies in the past eighteen months, this underperformance will be a slight knock to his reputation as a skyrocketing box-office star.

I'm So Excited had a strong debut, averaging $20,000 per screen in five locations. I suspect Sony Pictures Classics may have timed the release to Pride festivities this weekend. After all, Slate's Dana Stevens quipped that the Pedro Almodóvar work is "a sassy disaster-movie spoof that might as well be titled Gays on a Plane."

On Wednesday, Despicable Me 2 and The Lone Ranger will kick off the long Fourth of July weekend.