The Whole Delivery

I have to firmly admit, I was very shocked to see the numbers coming in for the box office this week. It was a banner weekend for Syl Stallone and his group of old action heroes, as they are #1 in the weekend numbers this week . Even when The Expendables came on tracking, it looked big. And the timing couldn't have been better what with Lionsgate getting beaten up by Carl Icahn on a daily basis, and Sylvester Stallone needing a fresh hit in his dotage. Kudos to Sly for coming up with such an irresistible concept directing and starring with today's and yesteryear's action heroes like Jason Statham, Jet Li, Randy Couture, Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, and even Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger (for nanoseconds in cameos). "Are The Expendables wearing Dependables?" one rival studio exec snarked in an email to me. The star power was just too hard to resist. But clearly the biggest shock of the week is how bad the numbers were for ...

Good movie, good buildup hype, equals great numbers : North American box office numbers show that Universal Pictures is enjoying something it hasn't had in a very long time: a big fat hit film. That's because weeks of great parent-kid family tracking for Despicable Me 3D translated into what even rival studios told me was "amazing" attendance of Friday's $21.7 million and Saturday's $21.3M for a $60.1M weekend opening despite having two other 3D family films in the marketplace. Still, Despicable Me found 3,476 theaters, of which 1,551 locations were in 3D, and managed to double Universal's expectations of opening domestic grosses. Exit polling data showed the film received an "A" Cinemascore and the audience was 55% kids 12 years and under and parents. Still big numbers for Twilight , as it comes in #2 with a little over $33 million and its cume worldwide is $456 million. Staggering number. Predator comes in at No. 3 with decent numbers, whi...

The backup plan for most this weekend was not to watch "The Backup Plan" A big lost for her, and also thankfully, a "loser" movie : It was a very lackluster weekend for North American grosses and probably will be until the summer movies get going. Tops again, but with the lowest #1 gross so far this year, was the charming but slow-starting How To Train Your Dragon 3D from DreamWorks Animation distributed by Paramount. And it's the 5th weekend in release... How embarrassing for The Back-Up Plan with its horrible concept. It debuted No. 1 Friday but fell to No. 2 Saturday. J-Lo's pic is the 2nd straight loser from newcomer CBS Films which kept delaying the release for obvious reasons: because everyone knew Jennifer Lopez can't open a movie anymore, except Les Moonves. (Sheesh, J-Lo can't even keep a record label...) Before this, J-Lo's most recent rom com, May 2005's Monster-In-Law, opened with $23.1M. Yet a CBS exec emails me that The Bac...