Steve Carell Signs For Three More Years of The Office!
Today the angels looking down on Scranton, Pennsylvania are crooning “Beers in Heaven.” Steve Carell has signed on to star as Dunder Mifflin’s quasi-top dog, Michael Scott, on NBC’s The Office for three more years. An understandably elated, Ricky Gervais, broke the news on his blog…
“Steve Carell (now one of the most bankable film stars in the world) has just signed up for another three years with us. He is the hardest working man in Hollywood and the harder he works the better it is for me. I mean… well done Steve you are wonderful. …Steve had to do months of that in Evan Almighty and I heard he didn’t complain once. He is a very nice man and deserves all his success.”
Gervais went on to mention 2009’s The Office spin-off starring Aziz Ansari but kept mum. He also (half-?) jokingly threw his name into the ring for the role of Hannibal in The A-Team remake. John Singleton, give him a call, no joke. That would be choice.
Back to Carell: the news is a welcome surprise given Carell’s consistent box office draw in hit comedies (The 40 Year Old Virgin, Little Miss Sunshine), sleeper dramas (Dan in Real Life) and passable summer fare (Get Smart). That this rare flexibility has worked out so well on both sides was no doubt a contributing factor in the deal. Why not celebrate by picking up some cupcakes on sale at the grocery store during your lunch break to cheer up your office’s fluorescent-lit hangout room? “That’s what she said!” is going nowhere.
Get Smart a Hit; Love Guru a Nude Bomb
The Incredible Hulk wasn’t exactly Hulk, which was good. The Love Guru was vaguely Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, which wasn’t.
And Get Smart, which was absolutely not The Nude Bomb, was No. 1.
The weekend box office did not lack for storylines or dollars, with the Steve Carell spy comedy leading the way with $39.2 million, according to Exhibitor Relations estimates today.
Get Smart’s three-day take was nearly three times what the first big-screen crack at the sitcom classic grossed during its entire run. Not that taking out the bomb that was the 1980s The Nude Bomb, which starred original Agent 86 Don Adams, was either the plan or an accomplishment.
More to the point, Get Smart goes down as the biggest opener of Carell’s still fledgling leading-man career, and helps mitigate the disappointment of his last live-action comedy, Evan Almighty.
Elsewhere, The Incredible Hulk, last weekend’s No. 1, fell to third with $21.6 million. But it retained bragging rights over Ang Lee’s Hulk by falling “only” 61 percent in its second weekend, rather than the 70 percent plunge suffered by the 2003 film.
As for The Love Guru: It settled for fourth place and $14 million, two stats unbecoming a film that was promoted far and wideand uncomfortably on the season finale of American Idol.
For star Mike Myers, the debut wasn’t far off from the modest $9 million that his first Austin Powers grossed in its opening weekend. Eleven years ago. Before the spoof franchise took off on home video. Before Myers took off as a comedy brand name.
On the upside of a disappointing weekend, The Love Guru did outgross Get Smart, Again! Which was actually a TV movie. And therefore didn’t gross anything.
In any case, it should definitely surpass The Nude Bomb any day now. Which really wasn’t the plan. And honestly won’t be an accomplishment.
Drilling down through the standings:
- Fact No. 1: In The Incredible Hulk’s first weekend, 82 percent of the audience was comprised of people who’d seen Ang Lee’s Hulk. Fact No. 2: After two weekends, the two films have nearly identical cumulative grosses, with Lee’s holding the slight edge, $100.6 million to $96.5 million. Possible conclusion: There are only so many Hulk fans to go around. For all the drubbing that Lee’s Hulk took over its box office performance, The Incredible Hulk is doing almost exactly the same, except it’s doing it slightly smaller.
- Kung Fu Panda has strong, stubby legs. In its third weekend, the CGI comedy was only down 35 percent from the previous weekend. It held on to second place with $21.7 million, bringing its overall take to $155.6 million.
- In its second weekend, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening (fifth place, $10 million; $50.3 million overall) suffered a Hulk-like fall, with ticket sales down 67 percent.
- Iron Man (ninth place, $4 million), indeed. The comic book movie passed the $300 million mark overall. It currently stands at $304.8 million.
- Tween girls do not live by Camp Rock alone. Those with access to Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, the new Abigail Breslin movie based on the popular doll line, helped it to a huge little opening weekend. Debuting at five theaters, the film grossed $222,697 for a per-screen average of $44,539. (Get Smart, by comparison, made $10,012 off each of its screens.)
- Prince Caspian ought to write Speed Racer a thank-you note for serving as the pre-Love Guru poster man for summer disappointments. Were it not for Speed Racer’s spectacular crash at the box office, more attention might be paid to the washout that has been the Chronicles of Narnia sequel. In its sixth weekend, the $200 million movie grossed $1.7 million, fell out of the Top 10 and stood at $135.5 million overall.
- In its sixth weekend, per Box Office Mojo stats, the first Narnia movie, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, finished fourth, grossed $10.1 million and stood at $261.3 million overall.
Here’s a recap of the top-grossing weekend films, based on Friday-Sunday estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations:
- Get Smart, $39.2 million
- Kung Fu Panda, $21.7 million
- The Incredible Hulk, $21.6 million
- The Love Guru, $14 million
- The Happening, $10 million
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, $8.4 million
- You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, $7.2 million
- Sex and the City, $6.5 million
- Iron Man, $4 million
- The Strangers, $1.9 million
Anne Hathaway and Steve Carell “Get Smart” in LA
Anne Hathaway and Steve Carell “Get Smart” in LA
This Friday, one of the summer’s funniest movies is set to hit theaters. And last night, Anne Hathaway and Steve Carell were hamming it up at the big Hollywood premiere of “Get Smart.”
The “Devil Wears Prada” hottie was looking fit and fine in a strapless graphite-colored fuzzy dress along with a pair of teardrop earrings and black peep-toe super-high heels.
Meanwhile, the “Evan Almighty” funnyman looked more like his Michael Scott (from the Office) alter ego than a movie star, opting for a grey suit with a light blue button-up shirt underneath.
Also in the house were “Heroes” star Masi Oka and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who is rumored to share an intimate moment with Steve Carell in the movie. Guess we’ll just have to go see it and find out what that’s all about!
The Break-Up Actor, Wife Have a Son
The Break-Up actor John Michael Higgins and his wife, actress Margaret Welsh, welcomed a baby boy Tuesday.
Walter Lloyd Higgins was born at 8 a.m. at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He weighed in at 8 lbs., 2 oz. “Parents and baby are doing well,” their rep, Jeff Raymond, said in a statement.
Higgins, 43, played Jennifer Aniston’s ambiguously gay brother Richard in the summer’s hit comedy. He’s also a staple in Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries: He played Michael McKean’s fussy dog-grooming partner in 2000’s Best in Show and Jane Lynch’s clueless husband 2003’s A Mighty Wind.
In the fall, he’ll appear in Guest’s For Your Consideration, and he recently completed filming Evan Almighty with Steve Carell.
Welsh’s credits include appearances on TV’s Boston Legal, Grey’s Anatomy and The Practice.