Weekend Box Office Report: May 9-11: Iron Man runs laps around Speed Racer

Weekend Top 10

Last weekend saw the birth of this summer’s first smash and
this weekend gives rise to the season’s first bomb.  Thanks in great part to Iron Man’s strong hold on the box office, Warner &
Village Roadshow’s costly big screen adaptation of the 60’s anime series, Speed
Racer, debuted below already low
expectations.  This seemed like a
movie that couldn’t miss at first, given this was the Wachowski brothers first
return as directors since The Matrix series, but interest began to dwindle from the moment trailers started
running.  Perhaps it was too
colorful; perhaps it was too corny.  No matter what the reason though, audiences passed on Speed
Racer long before it opened and the
studios seemed to give up promoting it before the starting gun even went
off.  Critics laughed at it and
audiences scoffed resulting in a stalled second place finish with a measly $20
million.

Speed Racer’s
performance could be even more embarrassing come tomorrow when final figures
are announced, as the estimates pretty much added up to a photo finish with the
Cameron Diaz/Ashton Kutcher laugher, What Happens in Vegas.  The
difference between the two amounts to all of $200K and if Warner overshot (or over
inflated) the Speed Racer returns, the Wachowski’s might ultimately find themselves in the third spot on
the podium. 

Meanwhile, Iron Man obliterated both titles.  It’s not
like either one was expected to best America’s new favorite superhero but Iron
Man was also not expected to do this
well.  Collecting over $177 million
in ten days puts the film in line to collect somewhere upwards of $260 million
overall and a potential $500 million worldwide.  Never underestimate good word of mouth, I guess.

Sneaking into the Top 10 in tenth place is David Mamet’s Redbelt.  Last
week, the film platformed on six screens and nailed down a promising $11K per
screen.  This week, it expanded to
nearly 1400 screens but saw its per screen plummet to under a grand.  I’d say this one is out for the count.

Figuring Mother’s Day would be a good time to capitalize on
a movie about a woman who is trying to become a mother and inadvertently
reconnects with her birth mother, THINKFilm bumped up Helen Hunt’s Then She
Found Me to over 150 screens.  The per screen was just over $3
thousand, putting the grand total at just over $900K.  I guess mothers were more interested in Robert Downey Jr,’s
newly buffed bod than Hunt’s bags under her eyes.

The week’s highest per screen average (below Iron Man that is) went to Tarsem’s The Fall, his follow up to the 2006 sleeper, The
Cell.  The critically acclaimed feature continues Tarsem’s visual
style but reaches to inspire instead of frighten this time out.  A solid per screen average of just
under $9K won’t turn any heads but it has a fighting chance.

NEXT WEEK: Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.  Nothing
else matters.  It would be stupid
to open anything else at the same time.  Iron Man will go
down.  No question.  On the smaller front, Son Of
Rambow expands from 35 to 80 or so
markets.