I keep using my amazing ‘knife in Speed Racer tire’ photoshop, because well, it’s appropriate. ‘Speed Racer’ is doing even worse than expected, going by the early box office numbers. It only made $5.85 million Friday and might not even top $20 million for the weekend! That’s an amazing low for a $100 million project, not to mention the $100 marketing budget — some even claim the movie’s budget was as high as $185 million.

Continue reading Early ‘Speed Racer’ box office numbers

Iron Man: $123,134,395 ($186 million budget)
Made of Honor: $18,675,171 ($40 million budget)
Baby Mama: $12,613,110 ($30 million budget, second week)

A little later because of our server outage, but here’s the weekly roundup for the first week of ‘Iron Man.’

As expected ‘Harold & Kumar 2′ didn’t make the top 3 in its second week, but ‘Baby Mama’ hold up nicely with another $12.6 million in its second week. That’s 42% of its budget and makes to total go well above the $30 million budget.

Continue reading This week’s box office roundup

Last week we already found out how the ‘Speed Racer’ tracking numbers indicated a miserable opening, but Warner Bros. doesn’t necessarily see it this way. They’re not only giving the funky movie a $6 million push in the UK, they’ve also planned a $100 million marketing campaign worldwide, in addition to $100 million in promotional deals with 53 partners like McDonalds.

In reaction to the low tracking, Warner’s marketing president Sue Kroll said, “We’ve been talking about this a lot internally. There is a disconnect between how people react to the film and what the tracking is indicating.” But there’s no question about the mediocre reception of the critics either.

Continue reading Warner naive about ‘Speed Racer’ tracking?