Will Smith’s Superpowers Still Work
Will Smith did Hancock a solid.
Smith has star-powered the poorly reviewed superhero hybrid to a $66 million opening weekend, and a No. 1 finish, according to Exhibitor Relations estimates today.
WALL-E, last weekend’s champ, stayed strong, grossing another $33.4 million, but finished a distant second.
Hancock goes down as Smith’s seventh straight movie to open No. 1. If you count Shark Tale, the 2004 animated comedy, as a Smith movie, his streak stands at eight straight.
Overall, Hancock has grossed $107.3 million since “previewing” on Tuesday night and “opening” on Wednesday.
Looking strictly at the movie’s first five days, Wednesday-Sunday, Hancock took in $100.4 million, per Box Office Mojo stats, far behind the pace of this summer’s two leading movies, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($152 million) and Iron Man ($112.1 million).
Among Smith movies, Hancock becomes his top Fourth of July opener, a testament to the star’s drawing power, yes, but also inflation.
Run the movie math (divide the opening weekend gross by the average ticket price), and the numbers show Independence Day, Smith’s signature Fourth of July hit, sold nearly two million more tickets in its opening weekend in 1996 than Hancock did this weekend.
It’s actually better not to run the movie math. Not if you want to enjoy the holiday weekend to the fullest.
Other box office notes:
- Where WALL-E remained hot and pushed its two-weekend total to $128.1 million, Angelina Jolie’s Wanted (third place, $20.6 million; $90.8 million overall) cooled off considerably, with business down 60 percent.
- In its third weekend, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, the critically praised Abigail Breslin family film, opened wide and dieda doll-sized $3.6 million (eighth place) off nearly 1,850 screens.
- Speaking of the dearly departed, Mike Myers’ The Love Guru ($1.7 million) dropped out of the Top 10 after just two weekends.
- Looking on the bright side of a big giant bomb, The Love Guru, at $29.3 million overall, is the highest-grossing Justin Timberlake movie of all time. As long as you don’t count Shrek the Third as a Justin Timberlake movie. Which you really shouldn’t.
- The 1990s-nostalgia trip The Wackness, starring Drake & Josh’s Josh Peck, was the star in limited release, grossing $145,064 at six theaters. Its per-screen average of $24,177 was the tops for any movie of the weekend.
- Despite three movies taking in more than $20 million, the Hancock-led Fourth of July was 4 percent smaller than last year’s Transformers-led Fourth of July. The setback set 2008’s overall business once again behind 2007’s.
Here’s a recap of the top-grossing weekend films based on Friday-Sunday estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations:
- Hancock, $66 million
- WALL-E, $33.4 million
- Wanted, $20.6 million
- Get Smart, $11.1 million
- Kung Fu Panda, $7.5 million
- The Incredible Hulk, $5 million
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, $3.9 million
- Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, $3.6 million
- Sex and the City, $2.3 million
- You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, $2 million
Hancock is a Ssssmash (or is it?): So What Did You Think?
Since Tuesday, Hancock has grossed over $40 million domestically and is on track to stack $100 million plus by wke’s end. While early word from critics and geeks is decidedly mixed, that’s a lot of moolah for Will Smith, director Peter Berg (his first major hit), and Sony. Or is it? How puzzling that Nikke Finke says there are serious doubts circling inside the studio regarding Hancock’s franchise potential—she even compares the film’s buzz to Wild Wild West. Jab, Hook, Jab. With a reported budget of $150 million, Jeff Wells cries Feh if the film grosses $90 mill or less by Sunday. Diddy swooned and probably received a nice paycheck.
My take: the stampede of flip-flops after the holiday will remain steady, less steady than I Am Legend, which received similar “third act was wack” laments, but so what? Will Smith’s “coasting” will outperform the equally pricey The Incredible Hulk. And judging from early viewer comments below, “light fun” beats out-and-out hate.
Discuss: So, what did you think? In a summer of superlative superhero outings, where does Will Smith’s gravity-defying, comic-less street gruff fall? What did you make of the twisteroo that’s drawing steely comparisons to the guy who made The Happening? Would the film have been cooler if it was freed up by an R-rating as originally envisioned and marked by the MPAA—click here to read Vincent Ngo’s leaked screenplay forTonight, He Comes. Was the 92-minute running time too short? Was the editing botched? Is a sequel warranted? What of the performances of Smith and Charlize Theron? Does the Hancock storyline/concept cancel out “Demon in a Bottle” for Iron Man 2 as some have prematurely suggested in the preceding weeks? Worth seeing in a theater?
Will Smith Save The Last Action Hancock?
The reviews aren’t great. The genre’s iffy. Will Smith’s the star.
As far as box-office business goes, everything should be fine.
Big things were expected, per usual, of Smith, and his less-than-usual latest, Hancock, opening Wednesday.
“I think it’s going to be another Will Smith gigantic opening weekend,” says box-office expert Paul Dergarabedian of Media by Numbers.
Dergarabedian predicted Hancock could make $75-$80 million from Friday-Sunday, and expected the film to clear $100 million, easy, over its first five days, from Wednesday-Sunday. An opening of that size would lift Hancock, the tale of an unconventional superhero, right into the airpspace of Iron Man.
Box Office Guru’s Gitesh Pandya sees a slightly more modest opening weekendmaybe $65 million from Friday-Sunday. But he also sees an overall huge five-day grossmaybe as much as $110 million.
Like Dergarabedian, Pandya’s betting on Smith, and not necessarily the movie, a superhero, action, comedy, drama hybrid that recently was compared tooh, cruelest of putdowns!The Last Action Hero by Variety.
“It’s going to be a very big Will Smith opener because of star power and the action,” Pandya wrote in an email.
As for the second weekend…
Suggested Pandya: “It should play out more like Men in Black II or Wild Wild West.”
MiB II and Wild Wild West are two of the lesser-loved entries on Smith’s Internet Movie Database page. But they’re also two of the 11 films that Smith has helped push past the $100 million markMiB II grossed $190.4 million in 2002, per Box Office Mojo; Wild Wild West, mechanical spiders and all, came away with $113.8 million in 1999.
“Will Smith can open any movie,” Dergarabedian says.
Smith’s reputation says he’s especially good at opening movies over the Fourth of July, which just so happens to be Friday.
Hancock will be Smith’s fifth Independence Day-timed release. Of his others, each, with the exception of Wild Wild West, grossed at least $190 millionthe heftiest, Independence Day, appropriately, weighed in at $306.2 million.
This Fourth of July, however, could be Smith’s trickiest yet.
For one thing, the holiday falls on a Friday. Dergarabedian wonders if firework shows and other activities will keep audiences away from theaters on one of Hollywood’s favorite date nights. (The original Men in Black, which costarred Smith and which also ran into a Friday Fourth of July back in 1997, made out okayit ended up grossing $250.7 million.)
For another thing, Hancock is Smith’s worst-reviewed Fourth of July movie on record at Rotten Tomatoes since, well, Wild Wild West. At one point today, the movie’s Tomatometer reading stood at a chilly 32 percent, with 23 positive reviews outflanked by 50 “rotten” ones.
The Chicago Tribune called Hancock a “D-list project.” The Los Angeles Times found it “bizarre and unsatisfying.” The word “mishmash” was broken out by more than one critic. Roger Ebert (”a lot of fun”) and the New Yorker (”by far the most enjoyable big movie of the summer”) helped represent the minority opinion.
In the end, none of it may matter. At least not for the next several days.
Says Dergarabedian: “A Will Smith movie on the Fourth of July is about as sure a bet as you can get…I think it’s bulletproof this weekend.”
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of $300 Million
The $300 million club has a new member.
The final box-office numbers from the weekend show Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull moved into that exclusive, nine-figure territory yesterday.
The movie is the second 2008 release to crack $300 million after Iron Man, which beat Indiana Jones to the neighborhood by about a week.
Iron Man, which currently sits at $309 million, remains the year’s No. 1 movie.
The ever-resourceful Dr. Jones, however, holds the overall advantage.
An even bigger hit internationally, the adventure franchise’s fourth installment has topped $400 million overseas, bringing its worldwide total to $713 million, Paramount said today. Iron Man, by comparison, has done the majority of its big business stateside. Overseas grosses bring its worldwide haul to “only” about $560 million.
Among George Lucas movies, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is its producer’s biggest non-Star Wars hit as a producer, per Box Office Mojo stats. Among Steven Spielberg movies, Crystal Skull is his third-biggest hit, behind E.T. and Jurassic Park, as a director.
Among Indiana Jones movies, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the top grosserso long as you don’t adjust for inflation.
Raiders of the Lost Ark, the series starter bumped down to No. 2 by Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, arguably had the more impressive run of the two installments, grossing a gaudy $209.6 million domestically back in 1981.
Still, a win is a win. And Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the first new Indiana Jones movie in 19 years, overcame minor qualms that the film would suffer from young moviegoers unable to relate to the veteran franchise and its veteran star, Harrison Ford, who, at 65, is seven years older than Sean Connery was when that actor played Indiana’s father in The Last Crusade.
And the movie isn’t done yet. Last weekend, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull made more than double the money of the finally tiring Iron Man. A couple more showings like that, and Indiana Jones may be the $300 million club’s No. 1 member.