Sumofale Week 10

Posted on July 12, 2015July 12, 2015 by rhysnice

Hi there! Sorry I missed last week but I was having too much fun watching fireworks through the viewfinder of someone else’s phone. Don’t worry though, the pictures came out really well. Not dark at all. Almost better than just watching them in person.

I also had a tough time writing a post because things have quickly become a bit dull. Jurassic World ($554 million) and Inside Out ($224 million) continue to dominate weekends making just about the same amount. Last weekend they each made around $50 million, this weekend they each made $29 million.

Jurassic World has finally reached week 4, meaning we no longer have to worry about it. We can retire it with over $550 million. That’s a massive amount of money, meaning we do have to worry about it. We’re going to have to worry about Jurassic World for the rest of the summer. It’s giant, made-up-dinosaur sized shadow will hang over the rest of the season.

All the openers over the past two weekends have been underwhelming. Ted 2 ($62 million total) opened to just $33 million. Terminator Genisys ($42MM) opened to $27 million. Magic Mike XXL ($27MM) to just $12 million. Max ($29MM) wasn’t expected to open to much, but still only made $12 million, as well.

I’m surprised Terminator wasn’t widely successful. I mean this movie followed the same formula as Jurassic World, right? They rebooted a beloved franchise that didn’t need rebooting. They did it with a plot that looks dumb and unnecessary. They brought in a star that everyone loves with khaleesi. And then to top it off they added dinosaurs with Arnold. (That sound you hear, is me high-fiving myself. Never underestimate the dad joke, my friends.)

The one thing I didn’t get about watching the trailer for Terminator Genisys is all the terminators in this movie. Arnold is obviously a terminator in this movie. And then there’s also the puddle of metal morphy guy terminator. But then apparently John Connor is also some kind of weird new terminator. And then on top of all that, Arnold is another terminator too! That makes 4! Why are there even people in this movie? Maybe it should’ve just been an army of Arnolds on one side and an army of the metal skeleton terminators on the other. Call it Terminator War. The more I think about it, I think that would’ve made a lot more money last weekend.

Remember a couple weeks ago when I pronounced that women are officially a thing? Well, it turns out they may not be enough of a thing. The audience for Magic Mike XXL was 96% women! That’s just silly. I wouldn’t have been surprised by 75%, or even 80%, but 96% of the audience being women is ridiculous. That’s like one dude per theater. (It did make for a funny hashtag though.)

You know how they could’ve brought some more people in this weekend? Channing Tatum, you may be good with the Pony dance, but I know how to bring it to another level:

Like you wouldn’t watch Channing Tatum and Joe Manganiello dressed up as a two-man horse. Look, ladies love the two-man horse.

As do the fellas!

20141031_212754

Magic Mike: Pony coming summer 2017!

Scoreboard

Tanya – $667 million (1 playing, 2 done, 4 left)
Danielle – $423 million (3 done, 4 left)
Rhys – $361 million (1 playing, 2 done, 3 left)
Danny – $325 million (1 playing, 4 done, 2 left)
Liz – $250 million (1 playing, 4 done, 2 left)
Sean – $102 million (1 playing, 1 done, 6 left)
Andy – $90 million (2 done, 2 playing, 3 left)
Jenny – $19 million (2 playing, 5 left)

What up third place!!

Coming Attractions

This weekend’s slate is pretty bad in terms of reviews. Let’s go in order of least bad to very, very bad.

Minions (Jenny)

Somehow they’ve stretched a plot around cute but very dumb, yellow things that don’t really speak English, but this movie is basically, THE MINIONS ARE FUNNY!! LOOK AT THEM FOR 2 HOURS! And people will. This movie is going to win the weekend. It could be totally stupid (and apparently it is! It got 54% on Rotten Tomatoes.) and parents are going to bring their kids to see this movie in droves. Have you seen how many kids wear Minions shirts and backpacks? Have you seen how many people play that Minions runner game? No no no, not Subway Surfers. Oh, and not Temple Run either. Minions Rush! Yeah, that’s the one. Update: I just saw a kid eating an ice cream bar in the shape of a minion.

So yeah, people want to see the minions run around and smash into things and laugh at each other and blow stuff up accidentally. The 3 Stooges, basically. It’ll always be funny. I don’t think it makes $100 million since Inside Out, which scored very well with critics, didn’t even break $100 million. Also, Despicable Me 2 opened to $83 million, over July 4th weekend. Even though its not very good, the popularity alone will make more than $50.

Self/Less (Jenny)

Poor, poor Ryan Reynolds. The guy has so much comedic charisma, but is in some shitty, shitty movies. I’m going to continue to hold my Ryan Reynolds stock until the Deadpool movie comes out, but if that fails, he’s gotta find himself a show on Showtime or something.

Oh and this movie looks bad. 21% on the Tomatometer. Turd Sandwich.

The Gallows (Rhys)

Did you see how scared everyone in the theater was?!? Oh man, this movie is gonna be great. Huge hit! Scariest movie of all time! Or a piece of shit that only managed 17% on Rotten Tomatoes that seems to be not scary at all. Yeah, probably that.

The good thing is, terrible movies mean fun to read reviews:

No effort? Even the character names are lazy? This is actually true. An actor named Reese plays a character named Reese, Pfiefer Brown plays Pfiefer Ross, and Ryan Shoos plays… Ryan Shoos. So, yes. Very, very lazy.

Indeed.

This sounds like the worst combination ever. Oh wait.

Not one thing? Did you know that co-writer/director Travis Cluff was a contestant in season 2 of Wipeout (“Super Shorts”) and won?

I had to look up inanity. But context clues told me it meant “bad.”

Prediction

Minions – $56 million
Inside Out – $21 million
Jurassic World – $20 million
Terminator Genisys – $14 million
Magic Mike XXL – $12 million
The Gallows – $9 million
Self/Less – $8 million
Ted 2 – $6 million

Sumofale Week 8

Posted on June 26, 2015June 26, 2015 by rhysnice

Man, I really wish I could take credit for that picture, but I can’t. Check out Kahn & Kittens for pictures of cats photoshopped into things*. For the Internet is dark and full of cats. That said, I’m pretty sure I’d rather see Purassic World.

*Liz, you will love this site. Half of the things that cats are photoshopped onto are, wait for it…. Benedict Cumberbatch

So Jurassic World made another $100 million this weekend, bringing its 2 week total to a zillion. Its weekend take of $106.6 million is the largest second week gross of all time. Jurassic World now has set records for opening weekend gross, where it also set a record for per theater average with $48k per theater, and second weekend gross, as well as biggest Saturday ($69M), Sunday ($57M), non-holiday Monday ($25M) and non-opening Tuesday ($24M). If it only falls 35% this upcoming weekend (which is a tall order even for this movie), it’ll also have the biggest third weekend of all time. It’s also become the fastest movie to $400 million (along with $100 million, $200 million and any other mark up to that point) and looks like it’s going to crush The Avengers previous record of 23 days for $500 million. It took The Avengers 14 days to reach $400 million, whereas it’s taken Jurassic World just 10. AND its become the fastest movie to join the 3 comma club internationally in just 13 days. Jurassic World now has 27 records, better than any other movie by far; #2 Avatar has 9. Many of those are arbitrary (like largest 2-day gross, 3-day gross, 4-day gross, etc, etc, etc), but it’s still very impressive.

The success of Jurassic World helped Universal Studios become the fastest studio to make $1 baby-B. Thanks to Fifty Shades of Grey, Furious 7, Pitch Perfect 2 and now Jurassic World, Universal topped a billion bucks in just 165 days.

But Jurassic World isn’t the only movie setting records this weekend. That’s right! Inside Out set the record for biggest Non-#1 opening ever with $90 million. I like “Biggest #2 ever” better, but that’s because poop is hilarious. This makes Inside Out Pixar’s second biggest opening behind Toy Story 3.

The almost $200 million combined effort of this week’s top two movies helped make this weekend’s $247 million gross a 69% improvement over this weekend last year. In fact, this was the best 3rd weekend in June ever.

Rounding out the top 5, Spy made $11 million, bringing its total to $75 million. San Andreas brought in $8 million in its fourth and final weekend. It’s final total was $132 million. Dope opened in 5th to the tune of $6 million.

Insidious: Chapter 3 grabbed $4 million this weekend. Its 3 week total is now $45 million. It’s now bound to make $50 million by the time its retired next week.

Entourage continues to sink like a stone, making only $1.9 million. The boys have only made $29 million through 3 weeks.

Love & Mercy expanded into another 218 theaters (791 total) and brought in $1.7 million. It’s now made $7.2 million.

If Entourage is sinking like a stone, Aloha is sinking like a rock the size of Hawaii. This weekend it only managed $401k. This is its fourth and final weekend and it only managed $20 million total.

Scoreboard

Tanya – $483 million (1 playing, 1 done, 5 left)
Danielle – $422 million (2 playing, 1 done, 4 left)
Danny – $294 million (2 playing, 2 done, 3 left)
Liz – $214 million (4 done, 3 left)
Rhys – $211 million (3 playing, 1 done, 3 left)
Andy – $88 million (2 done, 2 playing, 3 left)
Sean – $47 million (1 playing, 6 left)
Jenny – $9 million (2 playing, 5 left)

So we’ve got us a two car race. Tanya has the biggest movie of all time, with two weeks left and five more movies to go, including Ted 2, Vacation and the Woody Alen movie. However, even though Avengers: Age of Ultron is done for Danielle, but she’s still got Fantastic Four, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E, which looks like it could be awful or secretly good. Danny’s big movies (San Andreas, Mad Max and Entourage) are all pretty much done, which he rode all the way to third place. It feels like he made a good run at it, but with only 3 small-ish movies left, I don’t see him winning. Don’t take offense Danny, because I don’t see myself winning either. Stupid Jurassic World ruined my Inside Out pick. I have so much irrational hate for that movie. In like ten years that movie is going to come up in a conversation and feel myself getting all worked up and not know why.

In the bottom part of the standings, it’s still early, but thanks to Tomorrowland‘s epic fail, Andy is now playing for not-last place. It’ll all come down to how well Mission Impossible does for him. Always fun to root for Tom Cruise. Jenny looks like she’s down and out, but she’s still got Minions and Trainwreck left to come out. And finally, Sean’s team is pretty interesting. He has Ant-Man, Terminator whyisitnotspelledGenisis and the ~~Tom~~ John Green movie all yet to come out. All three of those movies have huge boom-or-bust potential. All of them could be terrible. Or all of them could be huge hits. Or all of them could be terrible and still be huge hits.

Coming Attractions

Ted 2 (Tanya)

Tanya owns this one too? Dammit!

So I couldn’t help but laugh at parts of the trailer (unsurprisingly, the red band trailer more so than the one above). There were some pretty lame jokes in there too. And then there are some of jokes that are… what’s the word I’m looking for… racist? Yeah, racist. The plot? That looks AWFUL. But really, you only need one reason to see this movie:

That’s right. TFB, baby. Those balls are definitely not deflated. Just give him the Oscar right now. By the way, thanks to a huge Supreme Court decision, me and Tommy are now free to get married in any state we want.

Reviews are not very good for this movie. It only managed a 45% on Rotten Tomatoes. If you were thinking, “Well, critics hate on gross-out movies like this,” I’d agree with you, but the original Ted earned a 67%. So this doesn’t bode well. That said, the original made $54 million in its opening weekend and $218 overall. So even if this movie is 70% of the original Ted, that’s still a $40 million opening.

The problem is, I don’t see Jurassic World and Inside Out budging much. Each of those movies made $13 million on Tuesday and $9 million on Wednesday, whereas the third place movie, Spy, made only $1 million. I just can’t see Ted 2 winning the weekend, and since Jurassic World and Inside Out are so close at this point, it feels like they end up in the top two spots in some order, with Ted 2 opening in 3rd place. But that doesn’t make sense, does it?

Max (Danny)

I don’t have much to say about this movie. Like, when the fucking dog lays down next to the marine guy’s casket, I had to check out. And then the dog has PTSD? Nope, I’m out. I know what you’re trying to do Max, and it’s manipulative and not cool!

So this movie is apparently bad, earning a 42% on Rotten Tomatoes. How do you make a bad movie about a dog that was also a marine? Even if you make it the corniest bullshit in the world, you’d still think it’d get like 65%. I do think the plot line where the marine guy’s evil frenemy comes back and apparently he’s smuggling nuclear warheads into their podunk town is probably where the wheels fall off. But the dog can sniff it out! He hates that dude! Then they rip off E.T. Yeah, I’d guess where the movie takes a huge turn towards really dumb. And I bet the dog takes a bullet for the kid or some shit.

Prediction

Jurassic World – $51 million
Inside Out – $48 million
Ted 2 – $37 million
Spy – $8.7 million
Max – $8.1 million
San Andreas – $4.8 million
Dope – $4.2 million

Have a good weekend everyone!

Sumofale Week 7

Posted on June 19, 2015June 19, 2015 by rhysnice

Wow. You know, when you’re wrong about something, sometimes you just have to suck it up, and admit that you’re wrong. Or, you can ignore the fact that you were wrong, stick to your guns, dig in, and throw out even more hate. Guess which way I want to go!

Dinosaur+Skipping

I am shocked, SHOCKED by how well Jurassic World did this weekend. The only people I knew who wanted to see this movie were Andy and Tanya. That’s not saying much since Tanya owns it and Andy has notoriously bad taste in movies. Yeah Andy, you throw everyone off your scent by liking all those old-time classics, but I know that your favorite movie is Heavyweights, you think Ocean’s Twelve 12 is the best one of the three, and loved Jurassic Park III. Your movie opinions are invalid.

I’m sure you’ve heard by now that Jurassic World had the most successful opening weekend ever. It set the record for opening weekend gross both domesticly and worldwide with $208 and $524 million, respectively. Let’s just take a second. This movie made a HALF BILLION DOLLARS this weekend.

But I promised you shade throwing, and I’ve been in the bullpen warming up, so here goes: How did a movie with only warm to lukewarmly reviews do so well? Well for one, it cheated. 48% of movie-goers saw the movie in 3D, that’s like 3 or 4 extra bucks per ticket right there. The movie also set “high water mark” for IMAX and PLF (Premium Large Format screens. Did you know this was a thing?). So, basically, every ticket for this movie was 30-50% more expensive than it should’ve been. This whole competition is a farce!

Jurassic World also had zero competition with no other major opening this weekend. The result was it pulled in over 70% of the total box office money this weekend. SIGH!

Coming in second this weekend, not that it matters, was Spy, with a very much not-record-setting $15 million. It’s actually a pretty decent 46% drop and brings its 2 week total up to $56 million. $100 million feels a little too difficult to reach at this point, however.

In third place in the box office, in its third week (nice little symmetry there), San Andreas grabbed another $10 million, bringing its total to $119 million. Chris Pratt > The Rock. It’s official.

Insidious: Chapter 3 (👻) fell an incredible 68% (😧), pulling in only $7 million (🙅💸) in its second (✌) week. This brings its total to $37 million (💩).

Entourage brought in $4 million in its second weekend, which makes its total up to $25 million. With Jurassic World ready for week 2, I doubt this makes $40 million.

Love & Mercy brought in $1.6 million which is not too shabby considering its only 573 theaters. It’s now brought in more than $4 million in just two weeks. Good vibrations man.

Me, Earl and the Dying Girl opened to a strong $13k per theater average. Not as good as the $48k per theater average Jurassic World had, but still pretty strong. The only problem is you have to multiply $13k by just 15 theaters. That’s $196k, for all you multiplication heads out there.

In the piece of crap division:

The “I think that might be human shit on the street” bronze medal: Tomorrowland took in $3 million in its 4th and final week. It’ll be retired this weekend with a “meh” $83 million.
The “turd in the punch bowl” silver medal: Poltergeist made an awful $689k in its 4th weekend. It, too, will be retired this weekend, totaling only $46 million.
But the “upper-decker” gold medal goes to: Aloha which also didn’t even manage $1 million this weekend, but this is only its third weekend. Aloha has only made $19 million so far, and there’s no chance it even gets to $25 million. Congratulations, you truly are the biggest piece of shit of them all.

Scoreboard

Danielle – $422 million (2 playing, 1 done, 4 left)
Tanya – $324 million (2 playing, 5 left)
Danny – $281 (3 playing, 1 done, 3 left)
Liz – $213 million (2 playing, 2 done, 3 left)
Andy – $87 million (1 playing, 2 done, 4 left)
Rhys – $68 million (1 playing, 1 done, 4 left)
Sean – $40 million (1 playing, 6 left)
Jenny – $271k (1 playing, 6 left)

Tanya has gone from 5th to 2nd in one fell swoop and is less than $100 million behind Danielle. That’ll definitely change by the end of next weekend too. Well, I guess it’s nice to lose to someone else besides Danielle for a change.

Coming Attractions

Inside Out (Rhys)

Man this looks so good I couldn’t even wait until after I’d written my usual 2 paragraphs of almost funny crap to see its Rotten Tomato score. And it was confirmed, this movie is fantastic with a score of 99%! I knew it! You know how I could tell? I got a little dusty while watching the trailer. Tear don’t lie, man.

Predictions are that Inside Out could do well this weekend, but will still lose to Jurassic World. Even if Jurassic World falls 59% (which is what Avengers: Age of Ultron fell) it’ll still make $85 million. If there were nothing else playing, Inside Out would definitely make $100 million, but there are just not enough dinobucks to go around. Because of course everyone goes to see the dumb but decent movie about dinosaurs and not the heartfelt, intelligent, and completely original cartoon. However, they’re still saying could be one of the largest grossing openings of a movie which opens in second place. Did that make sense? The one of the best number 2 ever.

Everyone go see Inside Out! No need to see Jurassic World, you’re not missing anything. See the funny animated movie. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. It’s Pixar, so you’ll cry again. Then you’ll laugh while you’re crying. (It’s true! Amy Poehler said so.) Bring your kids! One at a time! Bring your fat friend who has to buy two tickets! Come on!!

Dope (Jenny)

This movie looks good enough, I guess. And it is, getting 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s got the guy with the hair from Workaholics, and I love that dude. And Zoe Kravitz… is Lenny Kravitz daughter. Oh and hey look, its A$AP Rocky. I don’t know anyone else in this movie.

It’s funny, I saw the crazy patterns and high-top fades and thought this was a movie that takes place in the 80s. I was getting ready for a soundtrack right in my wheelhouse. Some Eric B & Rakim. Some Run-DMC. A little Lady’s Love Cool James. But nope. That’s how kids dress nowadays. I’m confused. Didn’t we all look at ourselves with the bright colors and crazy patterns and go, what the fuck were we wearing? And we’re bringing it back? I blame Kanye. Oh, hang on a second. I need to go yell at some kids to get off my lawn.

I don’t think I’m aloud to see this movie. Well not in public. There’s a lot of N-word jokes in here. I don’t think I can go to the Magic Johnson AMC on 125th and Frederick Douglass Blvd and laugh at N-word jokes, no matter how well written and racially neutral they are. I don’t think I can. Speaking of white people, I looked to see how my man, Willy the Waffle felt about this movie and it turns out he didn’t review it. I’m guessing he’s more nervous than I am. I mean that guy was on C-SPAN! Or there wasn’t enough money in the CW 50 budget to let him review more than one movie per week.

Prediction:

Jurassic World – $85 million
Inside Out – $76 million

Additional prediction: I will see these results and cry. Then I will see Inside Out and cry again.

Have a great weekend.

Sumofale Week 6

Posted on June 12, 2015June 12, 2015 by rhysnice

Hey guys, Spy won the weekend! High fives all around.

Spy won the weekend with $30 million. It was apparently touch and go for a while as Insidious: Chapter 3 was slightly ahead on Friday night $10.4 to $10.3 million. Spy, however, was able to pull ahead with $11 million on Saturday and $7 million on Sunday to Insidious‘s $7 and $4 million, respectively.

Insidious: Chapter 3 ended the weekend in third place with $22.6 million. That strong Friday start was not enough to beat both Spy and San Andreas, which managed to pull in another $25 million this weekend. This brings The Rock’s total past $100 million. Entourage managed to only open in 4th place with a lowly $10 million. The boys aren’t back. The boys are crap.

The big news of the weekend was not that Spy won the weekend, because we all knew it would. The main story is that this weekend is a prime example of how poorly this summer is doing. This weekend was down 4% from last weekend, which was down from 10% from the weekend before, which was down 16% from the weekend before that. And that weekend was Memorial Day weekend, a 3-day weekend. I’m bad at adding fractions or multiplying them or whatever, but that’s a bad stretch. This weekend’s gross is also almost 19% worse than last years total (the number one movie that weekend, by the way, was The Fault in Our Stars). In fact, every weekend this summer, with the exception of Pitch Perfect 2 and Avengers: Age of Ultron‘s opening weekends, has been significantly worse than last year’s corresponding weekend.*

*This weekend down 18%; last weekend down 17%; May 22-25 down 16%; May 13-15 up 3% (Pitch Perfect); May 8-10 down 4%

This summer is on pace to be one of the worst ever. It’s only 6 weeks into the season, but so far movies this summer are only averaging $15.6 million. To put that in perspective, from 2004 to 2014 the average was $22 million per movie. This could all change in the coming weeks with the opening of Jurassic World and others. More on that later.

Other notes:

Mad Max and Pitch Perfect both were retired this weekend, making $7 million each. Both managed to break the $100 million mark, Mad Max with $130 and Pitch Perfect with $160 million.
Tomorrowland also brought in $7 million this weekend. This brings its 3 week total to $76 milion. This means Tomorrowland has a chance at $100 million but it doesn’t look good.
Aloha means neither hello or goodbye. It means plain awful. The movie fell 66% to make a putrid $3 million in only its second weekend.
Love & Mercy did well this weekend, grabbing $2.1 million in only 480 theaters. That’s a $4400 per theater average which was better than Entourage’s $3300 made in each of its 3100 theaters.

Coming Attractions

Jurassic World (Tanya)

Ugggggggghhh. I hate this movie. I fundamentally hate this movie. My insides hurt when I watch this trailer. My heart breaks. My soul…. gets sold to Milhouse. The plot of this movie looks so fucking dumb. Genetically modified super-dinosaur?!? Come the fuck on. The irony here is fantastic. The makers of this movie thought “You know what, the T-Rex was too boring, what if we put Godzilla in the park.” They then wrote a movie where the owners of the park say “You know what, the T-Rex is too boring, what if we create a whole new dinosaur and put it in the park.” Also, say for a second I’m in on making a dinosaur bigger than a T-Rex with huge non-vestigial claws that it can use to pick people up and tear them in half, why the fuck would you then give it the dolphin brain so it can out think all the humans in the park and apparently communicate with other dinosaurs outside of its breed? Since you’re just making this dinosaur up from scratch, wouldn’t you just make the super murder machine dumb as fuck? Then you can just hold up a mirror, it’ll get confused by its reflection and then you shoot it.

Also, I’m sorry, dinosaur wrangler? Shyeah. Right. If you jumped in a pit with 3 velociraptors and just looked them in the eye and was all “Talk to the hand,” one would stop and cock his head to the side, bite your hand off, while the others sliced your stomach open and ate your entrails. Look, if I was in the dog park and I dropped a piece of pizza, but then held my hand out and told them all to stay, there’s like a 5% chance I could get them all to stop. And those are dogs that live in apartments with humans, not prehistoric killing machines.

And of course there’s two kids alone running from the dinosaurs. Of course there is! You couldn’t make this movie without that bullshit trope. There was probably some studio exec giving notes like “have you tried having kids running away from the dinosaurs? That will really heighten the stakes. My daddy got me this job.”

But what I hate most about this movie, is that a fairly large part of me wants to see this movie. I mean, it’s fucking dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are cool. I’ve loved dinosaurs since I was like, I don’t know, really young. Its also got Chris Pratt. I love that dude. He’s super funny and looks like he’d be a genuine fun person to hang out with. Although, I think he’s probably under used in this movie and not allowed to smile. Also, Jake Johnson is in this movie (no not Mr. Bubbly Toes, Nick from New Girl) and he’s great too, though if he doesn’t say “Hold on to your butts” I’m going to be severely disappointed. But the thing that put me over the edge is D’Onofrio. Have you seen him in Daredevil? That dude is straight 100 emojis. I would watch him read the phone book.

All of my hate is apparently for naught, because this movie is going to be an unstoppable force, much like the dumb-ass dinosaur they just invented. First off, the reviews for Jurassic World are pretty good. It has a rating of 71% fresh. Every review I seem to read is basically, “Even though this movie is really fucking dumb, I enjoyed myself.” Secondly, estimates are north of $100 million, even as high as $125 million. As much as it pains me to say it, that sounds about right. I, personally, don’t think it’ll quite reach that high, because I hate this movie. But also, as I mentioned earlier, this is one of the worst summers ever. Most of the big guns so far this summer have come in below estimates, even Avengers. Oh and if you’re the type of person who would say, “Oh yeah, well Jurassic World is set to outpace every summer blockbuster from last year!” I’d say, Congratulations! You’re beating the worst summer box office numbers since 1997.

Also, there’s some competition tonight as the U.S. Women’s National Team takes on…. I don’t know. Somebody? Fuck it, no one watches women’s soccer.

Me, Earl & the Dying Girl (Jenny)

Oh man! Mrs. Coach and Nick Offerman?! And was that Joey Fatone? Count me in. Well, except for the cancer part. Is this a thing now? Teenage cancer movies? I’m not signing up for a movie that I know will end in tragedy. That’s why I don’t see movies about dogs. There’s a 90% chance that dog dies in the end.

This movie is great, getting 84% on Rotten Tomatoes. It also cleaned up and Sundance receiving the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award. All that said its not gonna make any money. It’s only showing in 15 theaters. It’ll probably have a high per theater average but I can’t see it making a million this weekend.

Prediction

Fine, Jurassic World – $124 million
Spy – $18 million
San Andreas – $14 million
Insidious: Chapter 3 – $9 million

Have good weekend everyone!

http://youtu.be/vGCIGEUB32M

Sumofale Week 5

Posted on June 5, 2015June 5, 2015 by rhysnice

Finally, The Rock, has come back, to 1st place at the box office. San Andreas opened to the tune $54 million this weekend. The action flick averaged $14k per theater across 3700 venues. This was way better than the $40 million prediction that I made last weekend (according to Box Office Mojo, that was also what the industry was predicting for this movie. I’m a Smart-EE.) The movie dominated the worldwide box office, where it was #1 in 55 of the 60 markets it opened in this weekend. 44% of people going to the movie saw it in 3D, which I’m sure padded it’s stats, but San Andreas still was a huge hit this weekend.

This was the best opening for a movie with The Rock in the primary staring roll. The Fast and Furious movies have made a gazillion dollars, but that stars like 19 other people. Before this one, The Rock’s best openings were G.I. Joe: Retaliation at $40 million (and note, he didn’t star in the first one) and Hercules* at $29 million.

*Did I block out the fact that John Hurt was in this movie? So The Rock, John Hurt and Al Swearengen were all in this movie? And it sucked? How is that possible? Oh, I know why.

Coming in second this weekend was Pitch Perfect 2. The $100 million sing-a-long was actually added in another 100 theaters. The result was that it pulled in $14.8 million, bringing its 3 week total to $147 million. It looks like Pitch Perfect 2 could reach $175 million by the time it’s retired next weekend.

Tomorrowland fell a terrible 58% from last weekend to come in third this weekend, with a week 2 gross of only $14.3 million. So far, it’s made just $63 million. It looks like it will probably reach $100 million by the time its retired, but it’s really going to struggle.

In fourth place this weekend, thanks to $13 from yours truly, was Mad Max: Fury Road. This movie was… Fucking. Awesome. Go see this movie. Everyone needs to see this movie. It was incredible. It’s a shame this movie has only made $116 million. It’s mad good (no pun intended) That’s my official review: Mad. Good. (no pun intended)

Worldwide Fury Road is doing well, however, making $280, which is actually better than Pitch Perfect’s $228 million. I guess that makes sense, since all of the songs in that movie are American pop songs in English and Mad Max has like 14 lines of dialogue.

Coming not in 5th, but 6th this week was Aloha making just $9 million. This isn’t THE worst movie in Sumofale history. Its still better than R.I.P.D, After Earth, and Grown-Ups 2. However, this could be the lowest opening of any major movie in Sumofale history (those movies made $11, $27, and $41 million, respectively). This movie needs The Rock, because it’s a disaster. Boom! Stuck the landing.

Far From The Madding Crowd pulled in another $1.5 million this weekend. It continues to grow, being added to another 37 theaters, which brings its total up to 902 theaters. That total seems a little too large for me. I’m ready to declare this movie a nationwide release. 1000 theaters is a lot. This movie is playing at AMC 25 in Times Square. If that doesn’t say nationwide release, I don’t know what doesn’t. That place is not exactly an art house.

In “Holy Shit, These Movies Suck” news:

Poltergeist continues to be shitty. Falling 64% from last weekend, Poltergeist pulled in only $8 million in its second weekend. So far, the movie hasn’t even made $40 million.

Hot Pursuit made only $1.4 million in its fourth and final weekend. It will be retired making only $32 million.

Maggie is dead. That’s not a zombie joke, it’s actually dead. It’s no longer in theaters. Actually, it hasn’t been in theaters for 3 weeks. Whoops! It only managed $187k in 2 weeks.

Looks like The D-Train won’t be running anymore. This disappointment also only made it through 2 weeks, as well. This one failed only slightly less than Maggie with $669k.

Scoreboard

Danielle – $420 Million
Liz – $197 Million
Danny – $191 Million
Andy – $69 Million
Tanya – $41 Million
Rhys – $0.6 Million
Jenny – $0
Sean – $0

Coming Attractions

Spy (Rhys)

#1 movie of the weekend. This movie is going to do great:

Melissa McCarthy is hilarious. But not only that, she brings in dollars. Even Tammy brought in $80 million, and that movie was terrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrible.
If it were just McCarthy, maybe this movie would be hit or miss (like Tammy or Identity Thief, which still made $134 million), but this is the third movie that Melissa McCarthy is teaming up with director Paul Feig. The previous two they did together were Bridesmaids and The Heat. Both of those movies were not only good, but they each made over $150 million.
It looks like they did it again. Spy got an RT score of 94%.
Generally speaking, this movie looks good. I found myself laughing at a few stupid things during the trailer. And even though the plot looks incredibly simple and predictable, it looks like it’ll be well done. Good choice Rhys. Thanks, Rhys.

Entourage (Danny)

I couldn’t really figure out how well this movie would do. My gut tells me not so good, considering only 10% of the U.S. has HBO and I only know one person who’s excited for this movie, and they will probably wait to watch it on HBO, ironically. But I thought I’d try to give this movie a better shot than “this movie will suck because if you think about it, every episode of this show doesn’t really have a plot.” The best comp I could think of for this movie is Sex and the City. That movie made $57 million in its opening weekend, but the only other movie it went up against that weekend was a horror movie starring Liv Tyler. Entourage has a little more competition and is a little less good, with an RT score of 32% compared to 49% of Sex and the City. I think both Spy and San Andreas beat this movie, in some order.

Insidious: Chapter 3 (Sean)

Way to go Mom! Jeeze! You ruin everything! Just let your kids go. Why do you have to be so overbearing? Can’t you just let me have my own life? Didn’t you know that by scarily appearing in my closet, you’d invite every other dead person into our house?

What a stupid plot. That feels like a room full of writers were like, “Okay, how do we get the house to become haunted? How bout if the girl talks to her ghost mom and that, for no reason at all, allows all ghosts into their house. And then they’re evil. Work for everyone? Good!” And why aren’t there more ghosts? If just by talking to ONE ghost it allows them ALL in, why isn’t the house just filled with ghosts? Like no one can even move around because there are ghosts everywhere? Do you know how many dead people there are? It’s a lot.

Also, a person in this movie says “It’s eating at her soul”. We’re not going to just let that one hang out there, right? That shit is dumb. So is this whole movie apparently! Surprised? Not me. Insidious: Chapter 3 only got 59% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is actually slightly better than I expected. Maybe it’ll do okay. Horror people go see horror movies regardless if they suck or not.

Love & Mercy (Rhys)

I mean it looks good. There’s not really much more to say. Besides the fact that it actually is good, getting a 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. And who doesn’t like the Beach Boys? Wait you know someone who doesn’t like the Beach Boys? Let’s get those commie bastards!

Prediction

Spy – $48 million
San Andreas – $31 million
Entrouage – $18 million
Pitch Perfect 2 – $12 million
Insidious: Chapter 3 – $11 million

Have a great weekend everyone!

Sumofale Week 4

Posted on May 20, 2015May 29, 2015 by rhysnice

Well hello there. Sorry I missed you last week, but it was Memorial Day weekend, and I wasn’t going to spend a beautiful weekend type-type-typing away at a computer. Plus, my MegaBus had dreadfully slow internet and it turns out I do a lot of “research” writing these things. I did manage to write 75% of a post but couldn’t bring myself to finish it, so I’m going to take the pieces of what I wrote on the bus to Providence and try to seamlessly blend them with information from this week and the upcoming movies. In other words, this post could be 2500 words. Yikes!

Last weekend saw a 16% drop from the previous weekend, with a total weekend gross of $154 million. To put it in perspective, last year’s Memorial Day weekend pulled in $232 million. The year before that pulled in $314 million! This was one of the lowest Memorial Day weekends in 15 years. The root of this lousy weekend at the box office turned out to be the lack of exciting openings. Let’s start with Tomorrowland:

The things this movie had going for it:

Brad Bird. Brad Bird directed The Incredibles, which is arguably the best Pixar movie ever made. Yeah, that’s right. I said it. I know your butt just clenched a little bit and you sat up straight in your chair. I know you’re furrowing your brow, and maybe shaking your head. I said arguably, which means I’m ready to argue about it! Brad Bird also wrote and directed Ratatouille, which is a brilliant title but also a French word and therefore a criminally ~~underrated~~ underseen movie, and The Iron Giant, which is also criminally underrated. Now those are all animated films, but he also directed Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, which even while I was watching it, I had no idea what was happening, but I was very entertained.
George Clooney. George Clooney does not make bad movies. Well, except Monuments Men. And The Men Who Stare at Goats. And Leatherheads, that movie looked pretty bad. And Ocean’s Twelve! Oh, and he was totally in Batman & Robin too. Okay, George Clooney, occasionally makes bad movies. But, he’s also made a LOT of good movies.

Things this movie had going against it:

Did you watch that trailer? I have no fucking clue what this movie is about. Sure, sure. I can tell you that a little girl finds a pin that transports her to Tomorrowland but only for a brief amount of time, and then she finds George Clooney and that he is some kind of scientisty guy who helps her fight robots and then transports her to Tomorrowland in a bathtub… but that’s like the first 20 minutes of movie! Oh and jetpacks. There’s jetpacks. But that’s it! Look, I like not having the plot spoiled before I walk into a movie. Buuuuuut, it alarm bells start going off when a trailer doesn’t give at least SOME of the plot away.
This movie was not very good. It only managed 49% on Rotten Tomatoes. Willie Waffle only gave it 1.5 waffles out of 4, saying it “turned out to be the dumbed down version of everything I hoped it might be.” You can really feel the disappointment.

In the end Tomorrowland won the weekend, but only managed to pull in $40 million. That was only enough to make it the 22nd biggest Memorial Day opener of all time.

The other newcomer this weekend was Poltergeist, which belongs to Tanya, because of course it does:

I’m gonna keep it short because this movie looked terrible from the trailer; ended up being terrible, with an RT score of 32%; and performed terribly in the box office, opening in 4th place and only bringing in $27 million for the long weekend.

Rounding up the rest of the weekend:

Pitch Perfect 2 continued it’s great run, coming in second this weekend, pulling in $37 million. Apparently a lot of people love to sing and dance. Well, no. A lot of people love to watch other people sing and dance. And many of those people probably weren’t actually singing and/or dancing themselves, but pretending to do so, while other people sang and danced for them. Whatever. This movie is pretty huge. It’s already pulled in $130 million, thanks in part to a gigantic weekend last weekend.

Pitch Perfect 2 won last weekend, pulling in $70 million. That total was spread across 3400 theaters for an average of $20k per theater. It became the highest opening for a musical beating out High School Musical 3 ($42 million). This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone. Did you know that song where Anna Kendrick sings and plays with cups (called Cups) video has 200 MILLION views on YouTube? Yeah. Makes a bit more sense now.

Director Elizabeth Banks had the highest weekend ever for a first time director and also scored the second highest opening weekend for a female director, losing to Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Fifty Shades of Grey ($85 million). She should probably stick to this directing thing and see where it can take her. (I’m just kidding, she’s in The Hunger Games, she’ll be fine) A lot of the success of this movie was the fact that it had a cast of predominately women, which resulted in an audience that was 75% female. Women, apparently a thing.

Speaking of women, coming in third place this weekend was the surprisingly(?) feminist* Mad Max Fury Road. The movie maxed out (heh) at $38 million, but that was only down 47% from last weekend’s $44 million. It seems like this is going to be this summer’s Edge of Tomorrow. A movie that didn’t do too well in the summer box office besides being loved by critics. People panned Edge of Tomorrow for having a bad name. So much so, that it was renamed Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow, which is stupid. Look, Edge of Tomorrow isn’t any better or worse of a title than like 83% of the movies out there. The only title better and more fitting than Edge of Tomorrow is “Space Groundhog Day”. Also, that movie is one of the best plane movies I’ve ever seen. The plot made zero sense, but I was 100% invested the entire time. The Tom Cruise-Emily Blunt stuff was a little weird because he’s, you know, 20 years older than she is, but thankfully they don’t try to make too much of a thing out of it.

*We don’t need to get into the “argument” of this movie being feminist and it being a “Vagina Monologues wolf in a bang-bang-explosion-action movie sheep’s clothing”. Look if you’re arguing for Men’s rights you are an idiot, are obviously very, very selfish, probably caring around a lot of unnecessary anger. So you can eat a dick.

Rounding out the top 5 this weekend was Avengers Part Deux. The super sequel, or supequel… nope, that didn’t work… The super sequel pulled in $28 million last weekend and $38 million the week before that. The movie has also pulled in over $200 million in China, which has pushed it to more than $1.2 baby B worldwide. Through Memorial Day Avengers: Age of Ultron has made $411 million. The only good news is, that this marks 4 weeks and Avengers has been retired for Danielle’s team. So we’re now all only $400 million behind.

Quick Hits:

Hot Pursuit continues to go from suck to blow. It made $3 million this weekend and has yet to reach $30 million in 3 weeks.
Far From the Madding Crowd has been bumped up to 800 theaters and pulled in $2 million this weekend. This movie’s now made $5 million.
I’ll See You in My Dreams has expanded into 23 more theaters, bringing it’s total to 26! It made only $291k this weekend, but that’s still a fine $11k per theater.
Still no word on Hunting Elephants.
Oh, Slow West opened last weekend:

This looks pretty awesome. I mean, even if there was no plot and the movie was just Fassbender walking around in long underwear and shooting people with a revolver, I’d be in. But the actual “plot stuff” looks good too. And I like the creepy guy from Bloodline, though he got what he deserved messing with Coach Taylor. And the aesthetics are great.

Well, guess what. For as good as this movie looks, and believe me it looks good, it turned out to actually be good, getting a score of 87% fresh. Too bad the movie only played in 50 theaters and made $67k.

Standings

Danielle – $411 million
Liz – $161 million
Danny – $101 million
Andy – $48 million
Tanya – $29 million
Rhys – $669k
Jenny – $0
Sean – $0

Okay, take a breather. We’re about to jump in on what’s coming out this weekend. Here:

Coming Attractions

San Andres (Danny)

Sure, I could spend my time talking about the greatness of The Rock. I could tell you about when I was a huge wrestling fan in high school. About when I did a book report on The Rock’s autobiography (as told by Joe Laydon) for my 11th grade American Literature class and got away with it because The Rock was an American who happened to write a book. Or about when I went to Smackdown at the Providence Civic Center and almost got beat up by a bunch of people who thought we actually were the heels we dressed up as. (Pro tip: this is probably not a good idea to do on your own, but is definitely a bad idea to do with 10 other people) Or when I gave my friend permanent knee damage when I gave him a Pedigree during a ski trip. No. I could do that, but that’s not what I’m going to do. Instead, we’re going to talk about the pure absurdity of this movie. If you didn’t want to read that article because you’ve been reading for the last 35 minutes, here’s the gist:

“The earth will literally crack open?” Nope! That 9.1 magnitude earthquake that rattles L.A., followed by that 9.5 that rocks San Francisco? Almost impossible because the San Andreas fault isn’t deep enough. That said, the earthquake in 1906 that basically leveled San Francisco (mostly due to fire, but still, more than half the city was destroyed) was a 7.8 on the richter scale. And the article goes on to say “Researchers calculated a magnitude-7.8 would cause 1,800 deaths and 50,000 injuries.” Oh Hollywood, it’s never good enough, is it? Always gotta make it THE BIGGEST. THE WORST OF ALL TIME. Can’t it ever be like, “This is realistic and could actually happen, and if it did you’d totally die”? Now that’s scary.
“They will feel it on the East Coast?” Nope! There is no size of earthquake that would generate seismic waves large enough that humans would actually be aware of the shaking 5000 miles away. I mean they could technically be right. The waves will eventually reach the east coast, but they’ll be too small to feel. You’re actually unaware of any earthquake under around a 3 or 4 on the richter scale. There could be an earthquake happening right now! RUN!
Scientist predicting the biggest earthquake on record? Nope! There is no real way to predict an earthquake. “Every warning sign scrutinized — animal behavior, weather patterns, electromagnetic signals, atmospheric observations, levels of radon gas in soil or groundwater — has failed.” Scientists are hopefully because the latest technology gives you a heads up a few seconds before the massive shaking starts. We’re all fucked.
An Earthquake creating a Tsunami so big that it’s twice the height of the Golden Gate bridge? Nope! And nope! The San Andreas fault is a strike-slip fault which moves side to side. Tsunamis are caused when one tectonic plate moves down and displaces a large amount of water. The San Andreas fault ain’t displacin’ no water. Also, tsunamis don’t get bigger than 100 feet and the Golden Gate bridge is more than twice that height in the center. The Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 (the one that Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts managed to escape while all those colored peopled died, Thank God!) was only 30 feet high (only?!) and killed 150,000 people. Again, real life is scary enough! Also, there’s no way you’re driving a fucking boat up a 100 foot wave like that. No. Way. Too. Dumb.

Sorry if I nerded out there and ruined your ability to just suspend belief and enjoy this movie. Here, I’ll make it up to you:

I don’t want to see this movie. I love The Rock, but I don’t need to see a movie where everyone dies. Even if The Rock and his family make it, which they will (Spoiler!), everyone dies in this movie. If this shit happened for real, like, 4 million people would die. That’s insane. I don’t need to see that, thanks. I do hope a lot of other people see this movie so The Rock keeps making movies. That man is too talented to let it go to waste.

It turns out the movie isn’t very good, earning a 51% on Rotten Tomatoes. But I don’t think that’s surprising anyone, they drive a boat STRAIGHT UP a gigantic fucking wall of water! If you’re going to see this movie, you’re going regardless if it’s good or not. It’s like people who went to go see Hercules. It didn’t matter if the movie was terrible (and it was, just stop. It was.), you went to see it because you knew what you were getting. People are not going to see this because it’s good, they’re going to see The Rock drop the People’s Elbow on an earthquake.

Aloha (Liz)

Be honest. How many times have you seen this movie advertised? I haven’t seen a commercial or billboard or anything about this movie. I’ve only seen this trailer twice. Once, just now, and once after the draft when I was trying to decide whether I should make fun of Liz for taking it or not.

If you thought this movie looked GAWDDAWFUL, congratulations! It sucks. This movie only managed a 14% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Unfortunately, the movie is such a mess, that none of the reviews are terribly fun to look at. Well except for this ominous looking motherfucker:

I will do anything that guy tells me to do. Don’t go to the movie? YESSIR. That dude will definitely kill you if you don’t listen to his reviews.

Prediction:

San Andreas – $40 million… AND MILLIONS!!!
Mad Max: Fury Road – $25 million
Pitch Perfect 2 – $23 million
Aloha – $18 million
Tomorrowland – $13 million

Ugh, I’m tired. I’m sure you are too. I’m done. I can’t even proof this thing.

Have a good weekend!

Sumofale Week 2

Posted on May 15, 2015May 15, 2015 by rhysnice

We don’t need to discuss Avengers: Age of Ultron too much this week, do we? It once again won the box office, as expected. It did drop 59% from last week, which if took at face value, would seem bad. Generally the average movie falls about 50% from opening weekend to the following; good movies, a bit less, bad movie,s a bit more. Really bad movies, a lot more. But when a movie makes the second most money EVER, than all that gets thrown out the window. Of course, it was going to fall off by a lot. It still made $77 million this weekend and averaged $18k per theater. Just in case you didn’t think that’s a lot of money, that $77 million would have won the weekend every single other weekend this year except for three, the weekends that Furious 7, 50 Shades of Grey, and American Sniper opened, and 50 Shades and Sniper didn’t beat it by much. It’s also the second highest gross for a movie ever, by the way, second only to the original Avengers.

So far Age of Ultron has made $313 million for Danielle’s team. It’s also made $875 million worldwide, which is pretty impressive considering it, for some reason, hasn’t opened in China or Japan. It will do so this week, which means it will probably break the $1 billion mark this weekend. Worldwide grosses don’t matter here, but it’s still interesting.

But enough about Avengers. The real story of the weekend was, how bad was Hot Pursuit? SOOOOOOOOOO bad. $13 million opening, bad. A C+ CinemaScore*, bad. Worse than the last time Reese Witherspoon made a comedy, which had a 26% RT score and only made $54 million, bad. John Oliver had the perfect burn for this movie that I wish I had thought of, bad. It will be lucky if it makes $35 million, bad. Or, just REALLY bad.

*CinemaScore is an arbitrary rating, where they get random people coming out of a movie to grade it. It’s probably a very small sample size and doesn’t feel very accurate. And yet, it seems to be the way that the movie industry rates how well movies will do in the following weeks. Which makes perfect sense, since this is an industry that still bases its decisions on Nielsen ratings.

I’d like to point out that when Danielle had the original Avengers 3 years ago, in that movie’s second weekend, it went up against Liz’s crappy movie as well. And Dark Shadows starring Johnny Depp, did pretty shitty that weekend too.

Small movie round up:

Far From the Madding Crowd expanded into 99 theaters (from 10) and made $777k this weekend. That pushes its total over $1.25 million.
The D Train derailed (get it?), making only $447k. It averaged only $444 per theater, which is pretty bad. The good, small movies don’t gross a ton, but per theater average will tell you if they’re ultimately going to be successful. This evidently, will not.
5 Flights Up made $306k and averaged $2,741 per theater. Maybe they’ll end up making some money on that old Brooklyn 2 bedroom with charm and roof access.
I do not have a pun for Maggie, but it did not do very well. It only made $131k this weekend. It had a better per theater average than D Train, with $1,660, so it may do slightly better in the long run. But honestly, this one might not have much life (there it is!).
Hunting Elephants… um, didn’t come out yet? Already came out? Is not going to come out? I have no idea. I can’t find anything on this movie. If I were like 8 inches taller and 100 pounds lighter, I’d just drop this movie and pick a different one.

Standings

Danielle: A zillion dollars
Everyone else: Nowhere near enough

Here’s the actual scoreboard, but it basically says the same thing:

Danielle: $325 million
Liz: $16 million
Rhys: $447k
Danny: $282k
Andy: $131k
Jenny: $0
Sean: 0$
Tanya: $0

But each new weekend brings a new crop of movies, and with that, hope. This weekend’s slate is the first one of the summer that brings us multiple nationwide releases and looks like its going to be pretty competitive. The most interesting part is that all these movies are good! 3 of the 4 movies coming out this weekend scored 90% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes, one of which scored 99%! The 4th movie got a solid 70%. Exciting right? I bet you’d like to know which one got the 99%. Or maybe you want to know what the lower scoring movie was. Well I guess you’ll have to just keep reading to find out.

Coming Attractions (May 15)

Pitch Perfect 2 (Liz)

I may or may not be very excited for this movie. I may or may not have watched the first one on a plane and really enjoyed it. Like too much enjoyment for a plane, enjoyed it. I may or may not have cried while watching it on a plane. I may or may not have a thing for a cappella mash-ups. I may or may not have really confused feelings about said “thing” because my gut reaction to the phrase (word?) “a cappella” is “Fuuuuuck that!” and then envision myself slapping a notebook full of music out of a dork’s hands. But I may or may not have really liked Pitch Perfect. And I may or may not have really enjoyed at least one season of Glee. What the hell may or may not be wrong with me?

So I will totally be seeing this movie. It’s just a matter of when. Maybe it’ll be on a plane again, as I inappropriately cry tears of joy. Maybe it’ll be at my apartment watching it on HBO by myself, you know, taking a little “me time.” Then, I would tell everyone that I watched The Raid 2 instead. (That’s a bad example, because I might actually watch The Raid 2 instead.)

This movie is interesting because the first movie was successful, but not in a way you’d think. Pitch Perfect opened in only 335 theaters in the end of September. The following weekend, after great reviews and making an amazing $15k per theater*, it expanded to 2700 theaters and made $14 million . It stayed in theaters for 20 weeks and went on to make $65 million. The success of this movie is that it only cost $17 million to make.

*Not to mention all those people coming out of the theater, skipping and singing Party in the USA. They probably just took those CinemaScore report cards and threw them in the air and performed a wonderful dance number. The CinemaScore guys in their glasses and lab coats were probably all frowning and confused, but then got caught up in the excitement and joined in the dance routine for the third verse. Are you guys seeing the awesome music video that I’m picturing? If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go watch 4 hours of SportsCenter on loop.

Now, this makes for two sides to this Pitch Perfect 2 coin. One, it’s opening in the summer, they’ve upped the budget (only $29 million, so no huge red flags there), and they’re advertising during the NBA playoffs (apparently, I’m in the dead center of that venn diagram). The other side of the coin is that this is a classic case of “maybe we should just let a good movie be a good movie and not fuck with it.” It kinda seems like this is going to be the same jokes, the same romance, the same kind of singing and dancing (that I apparently love), just more of it. Which isn’t neccessarily a bad thing. It’s just, did there need to be a sequel to the first one? Absolutely not.

It looks like critics agree with me. It earned a RT score of 70%, which is by no means a bad score. It just means that reviews were on the positive side of mixed. There were plenty of good reviews, a couple bad ones, and a good amount of “I liked it, but…” reviews. Well, except this guy:

SOR-REE Mr. Willie Waffle of WaffleMovies.com! If I’m going to continue being a 14 year old girl for this part of the post, (and my love of a cappella movies has enabled that) I can’t even with this. Every aspect of it, makes me literally not able to. I want to can, but I can’t! From the uppity review, to his sassy picture, to his ridiculous name, to the fact that he uses his ridiculous name in his movie reviewing website, which looks like it was originally made with Anglefire and uses the word cineplex.* Don’t worry Willie the Waffle, I’m gonna be coming back to you for your opinion on all the latest talkies!

*It turns out he reviews movie for some DC area CW affiliate. So, he obviously thinks he’s way more important than he is. Just like that fucker Sandy Kenyon. Look at this giant bag of hot air. He literally looks like a penis with a wig on top.

Mad Max: Fury Road (Danny)

I bet you didn’t guess that this is the movie that is 99% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, did you? That’s right! This movie is just as good as Selma, The Godfather: Part II, Dr. Strangelove, and Finding Nemo. And it’s BETTER than Jaws, Up, Vertigo, The Hurt Locker and 8 1/2. Mad Max: Fury Road is the highest rated movies in Sumofale history, beating out Before Midnight (98%), Moonrise Kingdom (94%) and The Avengers (92%). The consensus seems to be, and I’m paraphrasing, Fucking Nuts, Amazing to Look at, and a Shit-ton of Fun. Even my man Willie the Waffle says:

He gave it two and a half waffles out of four. I wish I made that last sentence up.

2 anecdotes about this movie:

My boss, a 5-foot-nothing, Vietnamese lady, has been fired up for this movie for MONTHS. I’ve asked her several times this year, “How was your weekend? What did you do?” and she has answered “Oh well, I wanted to see that Mad Max movie, but it’s not out yet.” This has been happening since January! I’m very excited to see what her reaction. Stay tuned.

A couple weeks ago I was at a bachelor party and I overheard some kid (Kid. Sigh, he was like 27) say that this movie “looks like Waterworld”. Motherfucker, Waterworld looks like this movie! The post-apocalyptic, dystopian themes that are prevalent in Waterworld were esentially an ode to Mad Max. It’s basically Road Warrior in the water. Don’t make me feel old. Shit, I already do.

Slow West (Danielle)

Slow West is only opening in 1 theater in LA and 1 theater in NYC this weekend, so don’t expect big box office numbers. It is opening in another 30-40 theaters the following weekend though. I have no idea if this is good or bad for box office, but it’s also available On Demand starting this weekend. I’d wager on “bad for box office.” If there were a way to track how much money a movie makes On Demand, I would include it in that movie’s take, since that only seems fare. Luckily, there’s not.

Besides being a teeny, tiny movie, working against Slow West is the fact that it’s a western. Westerns do not typically do very well at the box office, with the top 5 being Dances With Wolves, True Grit, Django Unchained, Rango and Wild Wild West. Those were successful movies (yes, even Wild Wild West made $100 million), but they were nationwide releases in 3000+ theaters and only one of them, Rango, opened to more than $30 million, and that was an animated movie.

Slow West gets an RT score of 89% (I know, I know, I said 3 out of 4 movies got 90% or above, but it changed in the 3 hours in which I originally wrote that, and if I change it, it’ll disrupt the flow. Just round up, you goddamn pedant.) So, it’s pretty good and will be expanding, just don’t expect too much from it this weekend. But who knows, the aforementioned Dances With Wolves opened to $600k in only 14 theaters and that went on to make $184 million.

I’ll See You in My Dreams (Andy)

Who wouldn’t fall in love with Sam Elliott? That voice is like velvet. You know, sometimes you fall in love, sometimes love falls in you… Right? Something like that. Or not.

This movie is apparently fantastic, with an RT score of 95%. Every review says that Blythe Danner is incredible. If they made movie stocks (remember when this was trying to be an actual thing), I’d by up Blythe Danner Oscar stock.

My man Waffle-faced Willie did not review this movie. Probably had to spend too much time reviewing The Flash (which is super dope by the way) for DCW 50, updating his Geocities subscription and doing appearances on C-SPAN:

So I’ll take the reigns on this one, according to the plot synopsis, her dog dies in this movie. Fuck this movie. 1/2 a waffle.

Prediction:

Mad Max ($65 million)
Avengers: Age of Ultron ($48 million)
Pitch Perfect 2 ($28 million)

Other notables

Hot Pursuit ($8 million)
Slow West ($120k)
I’ll See You in My Dreams ($210k)

Have a great weekend everybody!

Coming Attractions: May 8

Posted on May 8, 2015 by rhysnice

Here’s what’s coming out this weekend:

Hot Pursuit (Liz)

Uggghhhh. That’s literally the sound I made about halfway through this trailer. Holy shit does this movie look bad. Not funny at all, just painful. Any time you can dress Reese Witherspoon up like Justin Beiber, you have to do it, right? I mean that’s just high comedy. This movie actually looks so bad that there’s really not much more to say about it. It’s just bad.

In case you needed more proof that this movie suuuuuuuuuuucks, it got an RT score of 6%, totally rotten. This one’s a giant turd.

Maggie (Andy)

I would totally take Arnold in the Zombie Apocalypse™. Even 67 year old Arnold. Other actors I’d want in my Zombie Survival Camp: Jason Statham, I mean, the guy seems like he could actually kick as much ass as he does in his movies. Jeremy Renner and Chris Evans, they’re in superhero shape, so they can probably run fast and hit zombies in the head a lot. But, also look how much fun they’re having:

They were actually funny in this interview, not just movie star funny. If it’s the zombie apocalypse, there’s gonna be A LOT of downtime. I want the guys who sit in the back of the class cracking jokes in my camp. Also,

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Chris Evans is totally coming back to save me if I get left behind. I’m tempted to say Chris Hemsworth as well because he’s gigantic, but he strikes me as a complete Aussie meathead. It would get pretty annoying, pretty quick.

Ironically, I would not want the guy who plays Rick in my Zombie Survival Camp. You may be able to kill the zombies with your bad acting on the show Rick, but that won’t work in real life. I also wouldn’t want Tom Cruise. One, he’s not fast. He’s really good at act-running where it looks like he’s running fast, but he’s not. Tiny legs. Two, he’d probably let all the zombies into the camp because he thought they were all thetans or some shit.

I dunno. I’m kinda in on this movie. I like old, gruff, stoic Arnold. Maybe he doesn’t talk all that much in this movie, which would be a plus. And zombies are cool. But while watching the trailer, I couldn’t help but think there’s a lot of “Walking Dead on the Farm snoozefest” happening for long swathes of this movie. And it turns out I might be right, because this movie only got 52% on the tomatometer. In fact, many of the reviews use phrases like, “moves more slowly than the ghouls,” “not much going on,” “a slog,” and “so slow there might be time for a catnap or two without missing anything important.” So, just like that, I’m out on this one. I could see it doing okay this weekend, opening in a few more theaters, and going away fairly soon.

D Train (Rhys)

Is a dude who’s in a sunscreen commercial really the coolest guy at your high school reunion? I mean I guess I’d be impressed. I don’t think he’d be all HEYSUPERCOOLGUY, though. It’s a commercial. I’m pretty sure I’d just give him the “Hmmm, that’s cool,” while I bobbed my head up and down slightly. Then I’d walk away. So I’d basically treat him like every single other person at my high school reunion. I definitely wouldn’t have sex with him though. That’s what happens, right? Jack Black has sex with Cyclops, right? It’s unclear… but also it’s not.

Reviews are from “so-so” to “bad,” with an RT score of 44% but I’ve actually seen ads for this movie around the interwebs (and maybe even the train?), so that’s a good sign. Jack Black looks like he’s doing Jack Black things, and people like that, so that could generate some dollars. Not a ton, but some.

5 Flights up (Danny)

Oh those hipsters! They ruin everything!!

Umm these people are selling a 2 bedroom in WIlliamsburg with a roofdeck? These motherfuckers would be rolling dough. That place is worth at least $1.5 million even if the roof was caving in. That shit has charm! Those hipsters would totally buy that place with their parents’ money and then grow jabuticaba on the roof.

From the trailer, it looks like they pulled off exactly what this movie is supposed to be. It looks perfectly watchable. Diane Keaton’s “Good one!” line aside, it looks entertaining, heartwarming, and chuckle inducing. I will probably see this movie at some point in my life. It will be on a plane or a couch, but I’d bet I’ll see it at some point. It gets an RT score of 67%, which makes me think this one’s going to be around for a while.

Hunting Elephants (Sean)

The main source of comedy of this movie is “Oh aren’t old people funny?!” That’s not gonna cut it. With an RT score of 33%, this one’s a stinker.

Weekend Prediction:

Avengers doubles up and wins again. Hot Pursuit goes down the toilet. D Train > Maggie > 5 Flights Up > Hunting Elephants, but all 4 combined don’t even total $2 million.

Enjoy the weekend!

Coming Attractions – May 1

Posted on May 1, 2015May 1, 2015 by rhysnice

Sumofale Week 1! Here’s what’s coming out this weekend. (There are actually some limited releases coming out this weekend as well, but I wrote… um… quite a bit on the Avengers, so maybe I’ll recap those things next week if they end up getting drafted on Sunday)

Avengers: Age of Ultron (Not Owned)

The question is not whether Disney’s Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron will make a billion dollars, it’s how fast will it make a billion dollars? Earlier this year, like 3 weeks ago, the Vin Diesel-The Rock car smashysmashfest, Furious 7, set the record for fastest (oh the puns!) movie to make $1 billion worldwide. Can Avengers 2 do it faster? Yeah, I’ll take the under. It’s already made $200 million worldwide (44 markets), and that doesn’t include China, Japan and the ol’ US of A.

Sidenote: All the Marvel movies and all the Fast & Furious movies make a metric shit-ton of money in China. Isn’t there some kind of debt relief program we can work out with this. Can’t we just be like, “Okay China, we’ll give you guys 2 Marvel movies and 1 Fast & Furious movie every year for the next 5 years and everyone in your country can go see these movies for free, but you have to forgive all of our debt”? Seems like a win-win to me.

Here’s the thing, this movie’s going to fucking dominate. DOMINATE. Industry muckity-mucks have conservative estimates at $200 million its opening weekend. The first one set a record for an opening weekend gross with $207 million. So their worst-case scenario is “not breaking a record, but coming pretty close.” (said with a grimace and a dismissive wave of your hand while wearing the fucking Monopoly guy outfit) Not-so-conservative estimates range from $210 million up to $230 million! That’s at least 10% more than the previous record!

And they’re probably right. On MovieTickets.com, the movie has out-preordered?… pre-outsold?… out-presold?… had almost 4 times the amount of people who bought advance tickets to the original Avengers buy tickets for Age of Ultron. And Fandango Chief Correspondent Dave Karger reports “‘Age of Ultron’ is a robust follow-up to one of the highest-grossing movies ever released, and it comes with sensational buzz for its new characters and returning favorites. The result is a rare 100 [out of 100] Fanticipation score and what could be the biggest opening weekend of all time.” Whatever the fuck “Fanticipation” means.

The real thing we need to be talking about is, how goddamn handsome is this cast? Look at these people:

Well, except for that ginger on the left. Just take a minute to admire all those cheekbones. Mmmmmmm.

Am I going to see this movie? Of course! There’s an 87.5% chance I’ll see it begrudgingly, and proceed to talk jealous shit about it all year. But, there’s that 12.5% chance that I’ll go see this movie in a D-Box theater sitting in one of those rumble seats like it was dryer at an empty, late-night laundromat. I’ll be running around knocking popcorn out of people’s hands doing Jesse Pinkman impressions.

I am getting a certain amount of comic book movie fatigue, but I think that’s mainly coming from, well, aside from the fact that I’ve seen 15 comic book movies in the last 4 years, that I just sat through that dogshit of a Batman v Superman trailer. Hey Zack Snyder, way to completely miss the tone of the MOST ICONIC SUPERHERO OF ALL TIME. Oh, but Superman’s boring, we need to make it dark and brooding to make it interesting. Nope! That’s just lazy filmmaking. Actually someone who is always just and good in a world full of shitty people is actually intriguing. Here, watch this. All they did was turn up the color for the same exact shots and suddenly I want to see that movie. Well, that, and they also don’t show all the mass murder when 75 percent of the city is leveled. Why did we give the keys to the two most popular superheroes ever to this terrible hack? Sorry for going off on a rant there, but sometimes it helps to get your feelings out, you know?

Comic book movie fatigue aside (Sounds like an SNL sketch waiting to happen), the first Avengers was perfectly entertaining. This one will be perfectly entertaining too, I’m sure. And it is, currently it has a RT score of 76%. I’m positive half of those negative reviews are snooty FILM critics who are like “I just don’t see the appeal”. There’s two more factors to this movie making a bajillion dollars: 1) This shit is like homework at this point. This is the big payoff for putting in all that work seeing the other 42 movies leading up to this one. Well, until the next one comes out. And 2) FOMO. Never underestimate the fear of missing out on the biggest movie of the summer. Seriously, even my mom will see this movie. In August, but still.

Hot Take: This movie will displace Avatar (Thankfully. Remember that movie? That movie sucked.) as the highest grossing movie of all time. It’ll make $3 billion worldwide, and $800 million domestic before everything is said and done.

Don’t take Prometheus 2 with your first pick.

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