Ah, the post-weekend box office drop. Will the new movies stay around or will they be gone by next week? Well, ‘Kung Fu Panda’ is still going strong, that’s for sure.

1. Kung Fu Panda
Saturday and Sunday: $23,576,429 million
Monday and Tuesday: $8,309,544 million
Drop: 64.75%

Continue reading The post-weekend box office drop, ‘Kung Fu Panda’ numbers still strong

We should’ve seen this one coming. ‘Bollywood coming to Hollywood‘ + ‘Spielberg wants to reinvent DreamWorks‘  = this post? Apparently DreamWorks’ Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg are in talks with the Indian Reliance Group to invest in their studio.

The big three have been discontent with the Paramount deal for a long time and have been talking to several competing parties. Now it seems like Spielberg and co. will get $500-$600 million from Reliance to become independent yet again.

DreamWorks’ parting from Paramount is pretty much confirmed by now and both don’t seem to mind (at all). But will they really end up in Indian arms? And start the injection of Indian movie capital into Hollywood while the US studios are keeping the money in their pockets?

Not much has changed since our last update a couple of hours ago. The final box office results are in line with what we expected. It was a soft start for ‘The Incredible Hulk.’ People still had the bad aftertaste from the first Hulk movie and the $150 million blockbuster didn’t manage to top $55 million. Now $54.5 million isn’t a bad start and it beats Marvel’s (low) expectations. But with a $100 million ‘Iron Man’ opening weekend last month, this number shouldn’t satisfy them. Especially since ‘Iron Man’ was cheaper and a lesser-known character. Marvel simply didn’t succeed in explaining why people should see the green faced Bruce Banner another time. Ang Lee’s ‘The Hulk’ grossed $62 million in its opening weekend.

Meanwhile, ‘The Happening’ gives a mixed picture. While some expected the thriller to end up in the low teens, $30.5 million is a decent number. Considering the $60 million budget, Fox might have wanted a little more. But they made a smart choice by releasing the B-movie worldwide from day one. Not including marketing and distribution, the $32 million overseas gross surprisingly makes M. Night Shyamalan’s work profitable from the first weekend. In this aspect, you could say Fox’ marketing for ‘The Happening’ was better than Universal’s for ‘The Incredible Hulk.’ While it still has to launch in about 25% of its markets, ‘The Incredible Hulk’ made just $31 million overseas.

Continue reading Final box office weekend estimates, ‘The Incredible Hulk’ tops with decent performance, ‘Kung Fu Panda’ second before ‘The Happening’