'Shrek Forever After' outperforms 'Greek,' Splice,' 'Killers' and 'Marmaduke'

By Sarah Sluis

As predicted, Shrek Forever After dropped 41% to come out on top for the third week in a row. The family animated comedy brought in $25.3 million for a three-week total of $183 million. Not so bad for a third sequel.

Among new releases, Get Him to the Greek soared the highest, opening to $17.4 million. Judd Apatow produced the comedy, which stars Jonah Hill and Russell Brand. Both of these rising comic actors already have a few starring roles lined up after the film, as does director Nicholas Stoller. Stoller's last movie, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, also opened to $17 million, so his performance, at the very least, is consistent.

Killers may not have been screened for critics, but it still finished third with $16.1 million, slightly behind Greek. According to the budgets posted by Box Office Mojo, however, Greek is two times the winner: its $40 million budget was just over half of Killers' $70 million budget.

Bowing in sixth place, Marmaduke barked up $11.3 million. Movies about pets and especially talking pets are something of a kiddie movie mainstay, and it's never too much of a surprise when they succeed. I think I must have seen Homeward

Bound half a dozen times as a kid, and I'm not even an animal person.

Sci-fi/horror movie Splice debuted to $7.4 million, lower than expected. The movie was cast with a prestige film lead (Adrien Brody) and reviews revealed that the movie covers "chewy issues like bioethics, abortion, corporate-sponsored science,

commitment problems between lovers and even Freudian-worthy family

dynamics." However, any arthouse audiences might have been scared away by the intensely frightful trailer. Which was it supposed to be, Warner Bros? A horror movie or a creepy Gattaca? Because I'll see the second but avoid the first.

With so many different genres of movies opening this weekend, the returning films fell heavily, in the 50-60% range. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time fell 53% to $14 million, and Sex and the City 2 plummetted 60% to $12.3 million.

Finishing just outside of the top ten, Raajneeti opened to $917,000 in 124 theatres, giving it a higher per-screen average than any film in the top ten. Bollywood-produced movies without all the musical numbers have been making a quiet splash at the box office, occasionally opening in the $1 million range. My Name is Khan opened in February to $1.9 million, for example.

This Friday, The A-Team will battle against The Karate Kid.

For 'Shrek Forever After,' $71 million is a not-so-happy beginning

By Sarah Sluis

The second and third installments of Shrek both opened to over $100 million, so perhaps it's fitting that the final movie, Shrek Forever After, started winding things down, with a $71.2 million debut. DreamWorks

Animation probably saw the writing on the wall with Shrek 3, which earned just 2.6 times its opening weekend. By comparison, the first Shrek movie earned an astonishing 6.3 times its opening weekend, while Shrek 2 earned 4.1 times its opening weekend. Most animated movies have better-than-average holding power, but Shrek movies have started to play more like franchise blockbusters, drawing in first-week audiences but then failing to catch on among a wide audience or those who have grown tired of the franchise. Good reviews for the fourth film could help this movie in coming weeks, as will its three competition-free weekends before another 3D animated sequel hits the market, Toy Story 3. Even with diminished returns the fourth time around, if Shrek Forever After can bring in three times its opening weekend, it's set for over $200 million in the U.S.

"Saturday Night Live" skit-turned-movie MacGruber attracted just a small subset of SNL viewers for an

underwhelming $4.1 million weekend and sixth place finish. The comedy was the first SNL skit to be made into a movie in ten years, and its poor performance does not bode well for another skit adaptation to hit theatres. I personally was not even a fan of the skit, which was pretty one-note, and it appears many other viewers felt the same way and passed on the movie.

A Bollywood movie cracked the top ten this week. Kites brought in $1 million to debut in eighth place. Our critic Frank Lovece described the movie as "not what most audiences think of when they think Bollywood," but the Bollywood-lite emphasis on fate, romance, melodrama, and action may have been just what American audiences were looking for. An even shorter version, Kites: The Remix, will open this Friday, intent on attracting mainstream audiences.

The strongest returning films in the top ten were Letters to Juliet and Date Night. Letters to Juliet dropped just 32% to $9.1 million in its second weekend. Summit predicted strong word-of-mouth two weeks ago after holding sneak previews of the film, and it appears they were right. Date Night held steady with a 26% slide in its seventh weekend, earning $2.8 million. The stars of these two films are among my favorites and most "likable," which I think has something to do with their movies' holding power.

Among specialty films, Solitary Man had the highest per-screen average, $22,500. Michael Douglas "delivers one of the finest performances of his career," according to critic Kevin Lally. With an 81% positive Rotten Tomatoes rating, this movie is poised to do well in coming weeks.

This Friday, female audiences will finally have their turn to make a film go to number one with the debut of Sex and the City 2, and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time will seek to enchant younger-skewing and family audiences.

An early look at 'How to Train Your Dragon,' 'Shrek Forever After' and 'Megamind'

By Sarah Sluis

In the world of animation, Pixar may be getting most of the press and awards, but DreamWorks Animation is sneaking up on them. While Pixar is releasing an average of one film a year, DreamWorks Animation has three movies lined up for 2010, all in 3D.

At a presentation in New York yesterday, I saw 10 minutes of Megamind (releasing November 5th), 30 minutes of Shrek Forever After (releasing May 21st) and a feature-length version of How to Train Your Dragon (releasing March 26th).

How to Train Your Dragon is the most Pixar-esque of the bunch, eschewing pop culture references and humor in favor of a universal story and an intricately conceived world. The cinematography is stunning, and represents a huge step forward in CG animation. As directors Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders explained to us, the animation and lighting teams are typically separate departments that do their work without even talking to each other. They brought in frequent Coen Brothers cinematographer Roger Deakins (who is also listed as a visual consultant for Pixar's Wall-E) to give a talk on linking the lighting and animation steps--he ended up staying to supervise the whole project.

The end product has a dynamic use of light that reflects the dim, candlelit world of the Vikings in the story. While CG animation started out with very flat lighting (think: Toy Story), How to Train Your Dragon at times looks like an animated version of Barry Lyndon. Because of the cinematography and story (and perhaps the fact I got to see the whole thing), this movie impressed me the most. Even in an unfinished version, with the score and certain scenes only roughly animated, it had the most epic, timeless feel. Later, we found out that Steven Spielberg was responsible for one cluster of scenes at the end that were only barely sketched out in animation. The ending had recently been tweaked based on Spielberg's comment after a viewing--a change the directors quickly incorporated.

Beyond the cinematography, little details like hair were rendered with incredible detail. The odd thing with animation is that the closer it approaches

reality, the more hyperreal it looks. Getting the kind of definition

you'd see on natural hair makes it stand out instead of blend in.

Storywise, producer Bonnie Arnold called Hiccup, the film's protagonist, a "teaching hero," an "Obama-type" character because of his emphasis on change--a rather timely comparison. Because the movie is based on a series of children's books by Cressida

Cowell, the team had a J.K. Rowling level of detail to work with. At the press lunch, everyone from Jay Baruchel (voice of the lead, Hiccup) to producer Bonnie Arnold showed an

expansive knowledge of the film's world beyond what appears in

the movie. If How to Train Your Dragon is a success--and it should be--expect a sequel or two in the works.

Shrek Forever After continues to do what the franchise does best: pleasing both children and the parents sitting with them in the theatre. The fourth installment takes its inspiration from It's a Wonderful Life. The filmmakers

even have gambling, corrupt townspeople and partying witches (the PG

allusion to the prostitutes populating Pottersville). But instead of intervention-by-angel, it's all motivated by an evil creator of magical contracts in fairy tales: Rumpelstiltskin. For those that have watched the first three Shrek movies, the "what if" scenario will be a huge payoff, rewarding viewers for their investment in Shrek's world.

Megamind takes the trio of superhero, villain, and damsel in distress and turns it on its head. In this version, the villain is the center of the story, and it was hinted that he, not the superhero, ends up with the damsel in distress. With its snappy dialogue and voice performances from Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, and Brad Pitt, this movie appears to be the next step forward after last year's superhero tale Monsters vs. Aliens, which also played with the genre.

With so many movies in the works, DreamWorks Animation is poised to take advantage of the rising sucess of 3D movies at the box office. With a final sequel and two original titles releasing this year, one with definite franchise potential, the studio will be one to watch.