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Thanks for the upscaling. My grandmother was having difficulty reading the charts.

"Thanks for the upscaling. My grandmother was having difficulty reading the charts".

hahahaha cheeky bastard

Surprise, surprise. Yet another underperformer from WB (Ant Bully). Oh well. If Sony can recover from a disasterous last year, then I suppose WB can do the same next year.

I really did want to see "Clerks 2," but at this point, I guess I should just wait for the DVD. I mean, what's three weeks gonna hurt?

wow. Lady in the water is all dried out now. Ant Bully really bombed. my neighbor's kids liked it but looks like most kids are in pools this weekend.

I can honestly say it's not too many times I have to back up 20 feet to read a chart ;)

Anyone else surprised at Miami Vice's opening day gross? Uni beter hope that it's not all front loaded gross.

Talladega is coming!!

Has anyone heard of those five limited-release movies at the bottom of the list? Any of them any good?

I think that "Freedom to Fascism" one is Chucky on the Moon's manifesto against contemporary America.

Could the "Ant Bully" under-performnace be blamed on toon overload? I mean, think about it: "Monster House" last week, "Barnyard" next week.... Don't you think some parents (maybe MOST parents) have only so much money than can budget for movie tickets?

It's also worth noticing that Superman Returns is now out of the top ten.

Brothers of the Head is interesting, if flawed. It's the narrative (though done as a faux-documentary) feature debut from Pepe and Fulton who have made a bunch of "making of" featurettes and the documentary Lost in La Mancha.

And, Joe, by the end of the year all will be on DVD, and parents can pick up all three and the kids can watch over and over and over again for the price of taking four or five kids (plus parent) to only one of them in the theater.

The graphics gave me a flashback to Win95 and Netscape 3. The horror!!!

Scoop's doing about what I thought (2.6 for weekend)... Little MIss Sunshine isn't doing bad and that's pretty good for an expansion or two.

"Could the "Ant Bully" under-performnace be blamed on toon overload?"

Of course it is. If I was a studio holding on to a computer-animated feature, I'd delay it until at least next March - or maybe even later, with the exception of "Shrek the Third." The folks behind "Barnyard" are in for a long weekend.

I think computer animation is common enough now that it isn't a draw in and of itself. There's no gee-whiz factor, so something like Ant Bully sinks because it looks like it offers nothing that twenty films before it did not.

I wish Monster House had found a larger audience-- I really loved it.

Shouldn't be surprised about the Clerks drop, but damn. I hope Kevin Smith has realized that the well has run dry for the Askewniverse.

I think if you're the third ant CG movie, you've got to offer something really new and/or different. Instead they appeared to offer Over the Hedge meets Honey I Shrunk the Kids meets Antz meets A Bug's Life. It feels too home video. There's so much more potential with CG animation that when someone does something truly new and different, it will excite at the B.O. as well.

Yikes - as Josh implied, Barnyard is pretty much guaranteed to do even worse than Ant Bully.

I wish Miami Vice had opened better. It needs Collateral-like legs.

"Freedom to Fascism" is a nut-job treatise on why no one has to pay the income tax. I'm surprised it's doing as well as it is.

And "Sunshine" isn't just "not doing bad." 103K on 7 screens? That's a Friday only PSA of 14K. It's doing phenomonally.

The true story of the weekend? "John Tucker Must Die" could do 18M this weekend, and may well be one of the most profitable major releases of the summer.

'"Freedom to Fascism" is a nut-job treatise on why no one has to pay the income tax. I'm surprised it's doing as well as it is.'

I think you explained why people might be into it in your first sentence.

Here's the other thing that killed Ant Bully--I think they were counting on Imax to help drive the gross (as 3D helped drive Monster House and Imax drove Polar Express). Because Superman is doing so well and because Ant Bully had lack of attraction to adults, looks like a lot of Imax screens aren't giving Ant Bully full days of shows. (E.g., Loews Lincoln Square in NYC is running only one showing of Ant Bully and 3 of Superman.)

Nice job on John Tucker, David. On the contrary, I think teen girls are hard to track because they're so fickle because they always see thngs and immediately say "I want to see that" and then don't. That's the problem I see with teen girl tracking. This was one of the cases where they delivered, but I'd have to compare tracking to other movies to see if this was a fluke or not. I do know that it wasn't tracking at all in any other quadrant... but still, Fox should make the money they would have made with Super ExGF last week on this one for a budget that's probably a third the amount. It all evens out... well, at Fox anyway.

"Maybe Manoj can direct Transformers 2".

Ouch!

I don't know who said this - maybe it was Poland - but I think Shyamalan would make a perfect Rod Serling type for the new millenium - maybe have his own anthology show.

Who are the Axis of Idiots?

Shyamalan is going to have to rein in his need to provide 'lessons' to the audience if he wants to continue with his career. To be fair, the preachier Twilight Zones were also the weakest for Serling, too.

agreed, using a term like "axis of idiots" without context or reference is bad journalism.

"bad journalism?"

Oy.

It was not a MCN headline. It was a blog note.

It's an attempt not to end up in endless flame wars with fools. Buck up... you can all figure it out easily enough.

So the answer to my question "who are the Axis of Idiots" is 'figure it out for yourself'?
I don't mind if that's what you're saying, it doesn't seem to be very imporant at all. I just want to make sure.

Although calling martin and myself 'fools' is not endearing.

No one called you "fools." Unless you think you are part of the Axis of Idiots. I don't.

Thanks.
But I don't know who the Axis of Idiots are so I'm hyperventilating in terror that the unthinkable could be true!!!
(is Wells one?)

Dave, i imagined you meant finke, wells, friedman, and/or drudge (3 out of 4 haters). But uh Finke and Drudge both are saying Vice did well... so I'm at a loss. What other box office commenters are saying vice bombed. Gitesh Pandya was pro on it. The Mojo guy doesn't comment on fridays afaik, um... Yeah, no effin clue.

Finke is definately one of the Axis of Idiots....this is taken from her post today.

That would make this Michael Mann's biggest movie opening of his directorial career as Vice took in $8.8 mil Friday for what will probably be a $27 mil finish. (Mann's last big film, Collateral, starring Tom Cruise in his first villain role, opened at $24 mil.) That's hardly blockbuster status, especially considering the $150+ mil cost, because Mann movies tend to be better received among critics than at box offices. (Which still doesn't explain why studios make movies with Mann...)

She's what referred to in the Latin.....a dorkus malorkus. I think thats Latin.

They make movies with Mann because he gets it done! Dammit Nikki Finke!

ah, that's what I get for glancing through her article quickly. FYI, Drudge's link calls the film a hit... So is he part of the Axis of Idiots simply for linking?

They make movies with Mann so at the end of the year they can say, "Look, we did at least one adult theme movie by an adult director, what more do you want?"

he keeps getting budgets because one way or another his films generally hit the black and get good or great reviews. He's been on the "cusp" for awhile where they think yeah, this is the time for his huge break-out box office success, plus we know he'll get good reviews too. Let's be realistic here, Vice will probably do about $90 domestic another $150 foreign then $80 on DVD and 20 on tv deals and what have you. It will make a modest profit. Not as much as Collateral, but ok money. And it looks good on the balance sheet. It may be a bit harder for Mann to get another $150 budget anytime soon, but he's still strongly in the game after this one and may do more next time. When the studio hired mann and gave him this budget, these are the numbers they expected. They were aiming for more, certainly, but these numbers are neither a surprise nor a disappointment to them.

"Yikes - as Josh implied, Barnyard is pretty much guaranteed to do even worse than Ant Bully."

You never know, Barnyard is really being aimed at young kids like Curious George. It could easily do around $12mil, but agreed, it could die at the box-office too.

I always thought John Tucker could do decent business. There hasn't really been a movie for teen girls in a while. Anywhere between $15-$20mil is a triumph.

Barnyard freaks me out. Why does the lead character, a male cow(ie bull) have an udder? WTF? It makes my brain want to crawl out of my head and jump in front of a train.

^^^The Gay Mafia, or if you prefer, The Liberal Media, trying to confuse our kids.

"Why does the lead character, a male cow(ie bull) have an udder?"

You never heard of cow trannies?

"You never heard of cow trannies?"

(Puts down the glass of milk)

I guess crazy Nikke was right and Kevin Smith was wrong. Even with a much lower P&A budget than the usual flick, Clerks 2 is a pretty big disappointment. The dropoff was huge. It's going to top out at a much lower number than even Kevin predicted.

And the thing is, it's his best film in a while. I guess most people just don't care about the View Askew universe.

I guess crazy Nikke was right and Kevin Smith was wrong. Even with a much lower P&A budget than the usual flick, Clerks 2 is a pretty big disappointment. The dropoff was huge. It's going to top out at a much lower number than even Kevin predicted.

And the thing is, it's his best film in a while. I guess most people just don't care about the View Askew universe.

Pirates always goes up tremendously on Saturday...it has legs to run through the end of summer and beyond if theaters keep it on the screens. I went to an almost sold out show Friday night, lots of people were seeing it for the first time and enjoying it, so the WOM has been great.

Nikki was wrong. In spite of the drop, Clerks II will be a major moneymaker. Tens of millions.

Kevin was a little disnigenuous, in that Weinstein put out about $10 million in P&A. Not anything near the average, but a lot more than nothing. Still... the film will do almost $25 million domestic, which will return almost $14 million, which will put the movie nearly into the black in theatrical alone.

It's not that the cows have udders, it's that the cows have male voices.

I love that the zombie sheep movie is screening in Toronto. ZOMBIE SHEEP, PEOPLE!

"From Paramount and Nickelodeon, the companies so stupid they think cows are male..."

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