Showing Out

A movie flop is a private shame that movie studios hope people will erase from their memories, but Forbes just ain’t let that happening. The business mag just posted their “Hollywood’s Biggest Flops of the Past Five Years” list, with the Sean Penn-starring 2006 flick All the King’s Men nabbing the top spot after having only made $9 million on a $55 million budget. 2008’s The Express, starring Dennis Quaid, came in at number two, with only $10 mil made back on their $40 mil budget. The Ewan McGregor- and Naomi-Watts starring Stay came in at number three, with only $8 mil earned back on its $50 mil budget, while ‘07’s Grindhouse (it made $25 million on a budget of $67 million) and ‘09’s Imagine That ($55 million and earned only $23 million at the box office) came in at four and five. Interested in seeing the other flops on the list? Refresh your memory with Forbes’ lovely slideshow. The internet makes life better, doesn’t it?

This past weekend marked the official end of summer for the box office, and in the face of a recession, it massively exceeded expectations. According to Variety, the box office made $4.35 billion since May 1st, making this summer have a 5% lead in revenue over 2008 earnings. And while ‘09 had an extra weekend at the box office over ‘08, it still would have smashed it without those couple extra days, having already bested ‘07 (the previous record holder) as of August 30th. Who’s to thank for pushing the box office over the limit this summer? Films like The Hangover, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Up, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs managed to rake in enormous lump sums, with Warner Bros. earning the most revenue over second and third placers Paramount and Fox. With numbers like these, it almost makes us think we’re in the wrong business… Just sayin’.

Earlier this week, we reported that this summer broke the record for most tickets sold at the box office during any summer period. Now, it seems as though a front-runner has emerged, with Warner Bros. releasing the most money-making films over the past three months. Since May 1st, Warner Bros. has managed to rake in $957 million in domestic grosses, which, though they didn’t top last year’s $1 billion gross thanks to The Dark Knight, is still pretty damn good. In second place sits Paramount with $874 million, while Disney came in third with $604 mil added to the bank. And the best part for Hollywood? The summer isn’t even over, with this Labor Day weekend counting towards the overall domestic gross, which, as of last week, stood at $4.17 billion in ticket sales. Wasn’t there supposed to be a recession or something?

Summer isn’t even over, and these past few months have already gone down in history. According to a summary report from Variety, this summer marked the highest gross for the box office with $4.17 billion, besting the 2007 record with $4.16 billion (take a milli here, give a milli there). And that’s not even the best part: with the forthcoming Labor Day weekend, the box office is expected to nab another $100 mil, bumping overall gross for summer ‘09 up to $4.26 bil. The film industry got a boost from major blockbuster films like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Up, with a smattering of other films contributing to the money pile. This means that the box office will have risen at least 3% in grosses since 2007, a mean feat for the allegedly “ailing” Hollywood. What recession?

It’s Monday again. No need to drown your sorrows in muddy coffee - because it’s time to perk up with the box office recap! (Sorry, corny, we know). Based on Box Office Mojo’s estimates (the official numbers won’t be in until this afternoon), Bruno managed to claw its way to the top of the domestic box office, raking in an approximate $30.43 million, which the New York Times declares a “failure” by industry standards. We’re not so sure about that, as we’ve got a pretty good feeling this one’s a grower, not a shower. But a sure sign that they need to make some dough at a quicker pace is Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs’s revenue this weekend, with $28.5 million in ticket sales that places it right behind Cohen’s comedy. Keep in mind, the animated flick has been out for a few weeks now, so yes. Ouch.

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In a twist of events, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has given the smack down to Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs at the box office this past weekend. Originally reported that Ice Age just eclipsed Transformers 2, the official numbers (released by Nielsen EDI yesterday) allege that Transformers made a whopping $42.3 million while Ice Age made a cool $41.7 million. The initial reports that Ice Age had nabbed the box office throne came from studio estimates, with FOX overstating their approximate earnings by a mere $800,000 (at that point, it’s just pennies to them, right?). Clearly, this means that the public is slightly more interested in seeing robots made out of car parts fight one another than dinosaurs mingling with squirrels and mammoths. Priorities, people.

It was a close race at the box office over the July 4th weekend, with the top two highest-grossing films raking in equal amounts. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and summer’s first blockbuster Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen both raked in approximately $42,500,000, with the former eclipsing the latter based on per screen showings. This is pretty amazing, considering that those are huge numbers to gross on the weekend of a national holiday. We’ll take this as a sign that not many Americans had much to do during the day on Saturday - other than snuggle up with a big bucket of popcorn in a refrigerated movie theater.

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There seems to be about 100 new remakes of horror classics a year, and this year is no exception. On the horizon, there are tentative release dates set for H2: Halloween 2 (the sequel to Rob Zombie’s ’07 remake), Sorority Row and Night of the Demons, just a few of the films that are guaranteed to make a slaying at the box office (obviously, some more than others). But with all these remakes on the horizon, ShowingOut decided to take a look back on all the horror remakes that raked in the most money in theaters (according to this list at Boxofficemojo.com) to see if all those ticket buyers got their money’s worth.

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