Audiences Wanted WALL-E, Jolie
The robot fought Angelina Jolie to a draw.
WALL-E, the new Disney/Pixar film about a lonely little robot, grossed $62.5 million to top the weekend box office, according to Exhibitor Relations estimates today.
But pound for pound, Wanted was the bigger film.
Debuting at about 800 fewer theaters than WALL-E, Wanted, the Jolie action film, outgrossed the animated movie by nearly $500 per screen. It’s a statistical win that can be credited to its star’s pull with young men, yes, but also to its wealth of full-price admission tickets. (Wanted is rated R, while WALL-E is rated G for “good for a kid’s discount.”)
In the box office standings, Wanted finished second, with a $51.1 million take.
According to Box Office Mojo stats, WALL-E’s opening was the best for a Pixar film since 2004’s The Incredibles, and was a substantial upgrade over last summer’s critically acclaimed though rat-addled entry, Ratatouille, which debuted with $47 million.
Wanted becomes Jolie’s biggest opener ever, outdoing the first Lara Croft movie and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which costarred Brad Pitt.
The box office’s latest one-two punch, coming a few weeks after the Kung Fu Panda/You Don’t Mess with the Zohan combo, helped push Hollywood into the black. For the first time in a long while, ticket sales are up over where they were at this point last year. Overall attendance, however, is still down.
WALL-E and Jolie, after all, are only two people. Well, one robot and one pregnant-with-twins superstar.
Other notable box office doings:
- Last weekend’s No. 1 movie, Steve Carell’s Get Smart, fell to third, but hung tough (i.e., ticket sales were down less than 50 percent). Its $20 million gross pushed its overall take to $77.3 million.
- Last weekend’s disappointment, Mike Myers’ The Love Guru, fell from fourth to sixth, and saw its modest business plunge 61 percent. Its $5.4 million gross pushed, if that’s the word, its overall take to, um, $25.3 million.
- Kung Fu Panda (fourth place, $11.7 million) kept on keeping on, and neared the $180 million cumulative mark.
- Sex and the City (ninth place, $3.8 million) moved past the $140 million mark.
- A moment of silence, please, for Iron Man, which slipped out of the Top 10 after eight scorching weekends. The film still came up with another $2.3 million, and saw its league-leading overall gross hit $309.2 million.
- Also dropping out of the Top 10: the horror-thriller The Strangers ($611,000, per Box Office Mojo), which has $51.5 million in the bank after five solid weekends.
- Abigail Breslin’s Kit Kittredge: An American Girl cleaned up again in limited release. The film took in $106,000 at five theaters, Box Office Mojo said. It goes wide on Wednesday.
- Trumbo, the new documentary about blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, did well, grossing $28,500 at three theaters.
Here’s a recap of the top-grossing weekend films based on Friday-Sunday estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations:
- WALL-E, $62.5 million
- Wanted, $51.1 million
- Get Smart, $20 million
- Kung Fu Panda, $11.7 million
- The Incredible Hulk, $9.2 million
- The Love Guru, $5.4 million
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, $5 million
- The Happening, $3.9 million
- Sex and the City, $3.8 million
- You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, $3.2 million
Andrew Stanton Talks John Carter of Mars
Earlier this week I got to fulfill my geek dreams, and drive through the Pixar gate in Emeryville to interview WALL-E/Finding Nemo director Andrew Stanton on the Pixar campus. That interview will be posted in it’s entirety next week, but I wanted to share with you my discussion with Stanton over his upcoming adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars. I was able to confirm off the bat that he is working on a screenplay based on the first novel in series, titled A Princess of Mars.
The story of the book follows John Carter, an American Civil War veteran, who is mysteriously transported to Mars, where the gravitational difference has endowed him with the strength that he will need to survive on this hostile planet. John Carter battles ferocious Martian creatures, but gains the respect and friendship of a species called the Barsoomians. He is sent on a mission to rescue the beautiful Princess of Helium.
I asked Andrew if Pixar/Disney are planning to release the film, considering the violence and more-adult nature of the book would be a departure from what Pixar has produced in the past.
“Yeah… There has has been no discussion on exactly how it will be distributed , what moniker it will be under…. Everything is going to be derived based on what we have script-wise,” Stanton said. “So this whole year is just about the script. In 2009 we’ll be a lot more involved in ‘Okay, how are we going to present it’. Nobodies worried about that until there is a script.”
In previous interviews, Andrew has revealed that he is writing the project with the director of Pixar’s One Man Band short film, Mark Andrews, who also headed the story team on Ratatouille and The Incredibles. The director explained to ComingSoon, “I always like to say I’m a little bit country and he’s a little bit rock and roll and together we sort of cover the bases of what we feel that story should be.” We asked Andrew if he had any interest in directing a live action film. Andrew of course instantly knew were grilling for more John Carter of Mars details.
“I certainly have to keep [directing live action] an option because that’s one of the avenues on the table that exists,” Stanton told. “And I certainly enjoyed doing it, for the little that I did, on WALL-E. It’s a breath of fresh air to be able to shoot something and it be done. I know there is a lot of planning an aggravation, and there is a whole other kind of hell to it… but I definitely got the bug. It’s definitely one of the options.”
Stanton told our friends at FirstShowing that “it’s clearly got to be a hybrid of some sort.” Stanton’s WALL-E hits theaters on June 27th 2008.
Twins for Oscar Winner Holly Hunter
Oscar-winning actress Holly Hunter, 47, and her partner, actor Gordon MacDonald, are seeing double: The couple has welcomed twins.
“She had the babies,” the star’s publicist tells PEOPLE. “They are happy and healthy.”
No other details were immediately available. These are the first children for The Piano star and the British actor.
Hunter, who is one of seven children herself, voiced the role of the mother Helen Parr (also known as Elastigirl) in 2004’s animated movie smash The Incredibles.
Besides winning the Oscar in 1993 for The Piano, she also received Academy Award nominations for her roles in Broadcast News, The Firm and Thirteen.
Hunter has been married once – to cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (Munich, Saving Private Ryan). Wed in 1995, they divorced six years later.
The Georgia-born actress and MacDonald, who appeared in The Thin Red Line, met in November 2004 while costarring in the London West End production of playwright Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats, in which she played a woman abandoned by her lover of 14 years, played by MacDonald.
Up next for Hunter: She has signed on to appear with her former Broadcast News costar William Hurt in the film Downloading Nancy.
Geek Deals: 56% Off Pixar 2-Disc Special Edition DVD Sets
If you read on a regular basis, then you know that we’re huge Pixar fanatics. GreatWhiteSnark has alerted me to another great geek deal. Turns out that Amazon.com has the classic Pixar DVDs on sale for $13 each (a 56.6% discount from the normal retail price). You could essentially buy these six Pixar films for under $80 total!
- Toy Story (10th Anniversary Edition)
- A Bug’s Life (Two-Disc Collector’s Edition)
- Toy Story 2 (Two-Disc Special Edition)
- Monsters, Inc. (Two-Disc Collector’s Edition)
- Finding Nemo (Two-Disc Collector’s Edition)
- The Incredibles (Two-Disc Collector’s Edition)