Survival story has Wrath of the Titans for breakfast, with a side order of Mirror Mirror and 21 Jump Street
On Sunday The Hunger Games became the fastest non-sequel in North American box-office history to cross $250m, according to estimates from Lionsgate. This is the kind of infantile trophy distributors like to bandy about in Hollywood, but fair play to the studio: everybody else does it and they deserve their success. It's extremely hard to launch a franchise well and they've done it here, no question. The survival story has mustered $364m worldwide factoring in the solid $114m tally outside North America. Katniss and co are in it for the long haul.
Speaking of franchises, Universal last week signed up the rights to a kinky trilogy from west London housewife and former TV executive EL James. The first in the "mummy porn" series is called Fifty Shades of Grey and sees a 21-year-old university student become the submissive half of a bondage relationship with a wealthy older man. From the excerpts I've read it's drivel to say the least. Notwithstanding the lack of quality, when James and her agent came to Los Angeles recently to tout the film rights it sparked a feeding frenzy among studios. Universal Pictures and sister division Focus Features won the day. We don't know the amount they offered, but Sony reportedly tendered $5m and there were believed to be higher bids on the table.
Returning to weekend box office, the storming start to 2012 continued as The Hunger Games held on to No 1 in the second weekend despite a 60% fall in revenues, which is not outside the statistical norm of the past couple of years. Warner Brothers' Wrath of the Titans failed to emulate the $61.2m launch of its predecessor Clash of the Titans exactly two years ago and launched unremarkably in second place. While it doesn't appear destined to make waves in the US, the $78m international debut was impressive.
Julia Roberts doesn't make many movies these days so it was a shame she chose Mirror Mirror for her latest foray. It only managed to limp into third place on $19m. This was one of two Snow White projects that went into development and production at around the same time and the smart money is on Universal's summer release, Snow White and the Huntsman, which looks dark and deadly.
Harvey Weinstein has been up to his usual games, whipping up a pre-release publicity storm over his protracted ratings battle with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) for his latest documentary, Bully. The movie opened this weekend and did well for an unclassified pic in limited release, grossing $115,000 from five theatres for a $23,000 per-site average. A per-site average of more than $10,000 is deemed to be solid, so all those articles on the classification clash worked. Harvey wanted a lower rating so the widest possible audience could watch the story about bullying in schools, while the bureaucrats at the MPAA argued for a more restrictive R owing to bad language.
North American top 10, 30 March - 1 April 2012
1 The Hunger Games, $61.1m. Total: $251m
2 Wrath of the Titans, $34.2m
3 Mirror Mirror, $19m
4 21 Jump Street, $15m. Total: $93.1m
5 Dr Seuss' The Lorax, $8m. Total: $189.6m
6 John Carter, $2m. Total: $66.2m
7 Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, $1.3m. Total: $3.2m
8 Act of Valor, $1m. Total: $67.8m
9 A Thousand Words, $915,000. Total: $16.5m
10 Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, $835,000. Total: $98.5m
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2012/apr/02/hunger-games-us-box-office
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