Lesson number two: Audiences didn't seem very eager to welcome back Arnold Schwarzenegger whose new film The Last Stand opened abysmally at ninth place with $5.6 million. The first few months of 2013 will be interesting since three major action stars of yesteryear are opening high profile action films. Schwarzenegger's return was all but rebuked. Soon, Sylvester Stallone will release Bullet to the Head, and February 14th sees the return of John McClane as Bruce Willis stars in A Good Day to Die Hard. It's funny that these large scale, high octane action films have practically become throwbacks to an earlier era of cinema. Do Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and Willis have anything left in the chamber?
Willis does. I'm hardly going to bet against the fifth Die Hard or his upcoming presence in high profile sequels like GI Joe: Retaliation and RED 2. Stallone might have a hard time getting anyone to care about movies not named Rocky or Rambo or action star stuffed spectacles like The Expendables movies. I'm not sure what's going to happen to Schwarzenegger. The Last Stand seems to very clearly tell us that Schwarzenegger + Guns might no longer equal profit. Maybe they should put that Twins sequel on hold for a second...
It's also important to see just how well The Last Stand performs overseas where these older iconic action heroes still generate more interest.
Zero Dark Thirty continues to hold strong and basking in the afterglow of award season love. The espionage procedural brought in $16 million in its second week. Jessica Chastain's Golden Globe win bodes well for her Oscar chances. At this point it's about as mortal a lock as any category out there.
Silver Linings Playbook is also benefiting from the critical love. After expanding to 2500+ theaters the movie brought in $10 million and moved all the way up to third place. Harvey Weinstein has been rolling this one out slowly since just before Christmas and may be able to get this this one to the $75 million or more by the time the gold statuettes are handed out.
The new thriller Broken City starring Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe opened soft with $9 million in tickets sold which was good enough for fourth place. The marketing for this one was kind of nebulous and never really provided a solid hook. Fortunately having two big stars in the film was enough to prevent this film from an embarrassing Last Stand sized opening. Given the modest reported budget of $35 million, Broken City isn't a disaster, but given the amount of competition in the marketplace don't expect it to stick around very long.
Fifth place went to the crime thriller Gangster Squad which had a pretty steep drop of 60% week over week with $8.7 million in ticket sales.
Next week sees another trio of wide releases. Jason Statham stars in his annual crime/action outing, this time with Jennifer Lopez in tow for the unfortunately named Parker. After Jack Reacher and John Carter, I would think studios would have gotten the memo and stopped naming their movies after the lead character. Also, the star studded anthology comedy Movie 43 his theaters, and Jeremy Renner stars in the 3D action fantasy Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. Hard to pick a winner out of this bunch. Statham is usually good for a $12 - $15 million opening. Anthology movies are something of a head scratcher. With all that star power, I would expect a decent opening but the film has almost zero marketing presence, and at just 2000 screens I'm not expecting a lot. Hansel & Gretel feels like a good idea with lackluster execution. Then again, I said the same thing about every Underworld film and those were all able to make a few bucks. See you next week.
Here's your top films for North America...
1. Mama
Weekend Estimate: $26 million
2. Zero Dark Thirty
Weekend Estimate: $16 million; $58 million total
3. Silver Linings Playbook
Weekend Estimate: $10 million; $57 million total
4. Broken City
Weekend Estimate: $9 million
5. Gangster Squad
Weekend Estimate: $8.7 million; $34 million total
Anghus Houvouras