When we said the weekend box office numbers for ‘Speed Racer’ might have been a little too high, we didn’t expect even lower numbers to be released. But the Warner Bros. employees responsible for the hippie colored movie must be crying in the corner at this point. The ‘official’ weekend counter came no further than $18.6 million. A difference of $1.6 million with earlier estimates.

It makes for a total of just $31.1 million worldwide. With another family title next weekend (’Prince Caspian’), will it even be possible to gross over $100 million worldwide? Or is ‘Speed Racer’ getting ready to take a spot in the book of biggest box office failures ever, considering the total costs (budget, marketing, promotional deals) may even exceed $350 million.

I will refrain myself from using the word ‘crash’ in this post, but I think you know where I’m going with this. ‘Speed Racer’ didn’t manage to pick up speed. ‘Speed Racer’ wasn’t fast enough. ‘Speed Racer’ passed by ‘Iron Man.’

In short, ‘Speed Racer’ just didn’t meet Warner Bros’ expectations, only making $20.2 million this weekend. That’s only a couple of visitors more than what ‘What Happens in Vegas’ did, with $20 million. But the word is, Warner Bros. even upped this low number to get in second instead of third. That would of course have made the failure even more embarrassing, because ‘What Happens in Vegas’ only cost $35 million and ‘Speed Racer’ budget estimates range from $100 to $185 million.

Continue reading ‘Speed Racer’ box office weekend totals

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