The Incredible Hulk vs. Hulk
Forget considerable Carrie Bradshaw and hefty Po. The biggest obstacle standing between the Hulk and an incredible opening weekend may be itself.
The Incredible Hulk, the all-new franchise rebootopening at midnight tonightcomes only five years after Ang Lee’s Hulk proved a smashing disappointment, critically and commercially.
“I am concerned the first movie’s reaction could hurt the box office on this second go-round,” Tim Frady of the fansite HulkAngry.com wrote in an email. “I hope people give it a chance.”
Conventional wisdom says ticketbuyers will.
“We’re starting to hear things that are good,” says Exhibitor Relations box-office analyst Chad Hartigan.
Good could translate into a $60 million-something opening weekend, and a No. 1 finish atop holdovers such as Kung Fu Panda and Sex and the City.
The Incredible Hulk is also expected to best the weekend’s other major new release, M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller, The Happening.
Or else.
“I think it would be troublesome for the studio if [Incredible Hulk] was beaten by The Happening,” Hartigan says.
Also troubling would be a scenario where The Incredible Hulk fails to come close to the opening weekend posted by Hulk.
Maligned or no, Lee’s Hulk managed a $62 million debut. (It fell of a cliff in the second weekend, grossing just $70 million more through the rest of the summer.) Adjusting for 2008’s sky-high ticket prices, Box Office Mojo’s Brandon Gray estimates the movie probably hauled in the equivalent of $71 million in its first three days.
Gray, for one, doesn’t expect The Incredible Hulk to top Hulk in 2008or 2003dollars.
“I’m not convinced they have overcome the stigma yet,” Gray says. “It’s not clear if the picture is a restart of the franchise or a sequel. It’s not clear what it is exactly.”
Starring Edward Norton as Dr. Bruce Banner, the scientist who morphs into a CGI monster when the angry occasion arises, The Incredible Hulk shares not much more than a cameo by TV Hulk Lou Ferrigno with its predecessor.
Norton, who also cowrote the script, succeeds Eric Bana. Liv Tyler replaces Jennifer Connelly as Hulk ladylove Betty Ross. William Hurt supplants Sam Elliott as Hulk foe Gen. “Thunderbolt” Ross. Nobody stands in for Nick Nolte, as the father-son storyline of the first film has been jettisoned. And in the director’s chair, Louis Leterrier (Transporter 2) takes over for Lee.
While The Incredible Hulk understandably wants to put distance between itself and Hulk, it understandably isn’t above being associated with Iron Man, the summer’s $290 million-grossing superhero hit.
The Incredible Hulk’s latest TV spots virtually star Robert Downey Jr., whose brief appearance as Iron Man alter ego Tony Stark once was supposed to be a surprise.
“I think the success of Iron Man will assist The Incredible Hulk,” says Joel Cohen, executive vice president and general manager of MovieTickets.com.
According to a recent MovieTickets.com poll, The Incredible Hulk was tied with Will Smith’s Hancock as the next movie men expected to see this summer, although both Get Smart and WALL-E ranked higher.
If Iron Man gives any kind of boost to his Marvel Comics brethren, then that’s all the better according to Frady, who has seen the new Hulk movieand liked.
“It paid homage to the TV series and the comic book as well,” Frady wrote. “The most important factor is that it kept up a nice pace that summer movie fans have come to expect in a movie.”
Even a Hulk movie.
Jack Black Out of Man-Witch
Apparently, Jack Black would rather conjure up a sandwich than a Man-Witch at this point.
The Kung-Fu Panda star has dropped out of Warner Bros.’ supernatural comedy that he agreed to topline last year, the studio confirmed.
Man-Witch centers on a man who learns he’s a witch and goes off to teach the craft at a Hogwarts-like all-female witch school.
The film, which is scheduled to begin lensing next January, would’ve marked the first pairing of Black with Todd Phillips, the writer-director best known for the hits Road Trip and Old School as well as cowriting Borat.
No reason was given for the decision by the funnyman’s reps or Warners, but insiders told the Hollywood Reporter that it was Black’s camp who initiated the exit, possibly because of doubts about whether Phillips would make Man-Witch his next project over Hangover, another comedy he’s been developing about a Las Vegas bachelor party gone awry.
Producers and the studio have launched a search to replace the actor and are expected to move forward with the shoot as scheduled.
As for Black, he’s on a career roll. The thesp just topped the box office as the voice of the titular character in Kung-Fu Panda, which debuted with a whopping $60 million last weekend. And in August, he’ll return to the big screen in the Ben Stiller-helmed action farce Tropic Thunder, costarring Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Matthew McConaughey and Tobey Maguire.
Giant Panda, Potent Zohan
Diversity pays.
A box office flush with movies about a martial-arts-fighting Ailuropoda melanoleuca and a hairdressing ex-Mossad agent was flush with cash, as the animated Kung Fu Panda and Adam Sandler’s You Don’t Mess With the Zohan combined to take in $100 million in their opening weekends.
Kung Fu Panda finished on top, with $60 million, per studio estimates today from Exhibitor Relations Co. You Don’t Mess With the Zohan took second, with $40 million.
Elsewhere, last weekend’s phenom Sex and the City broke a heel, with ticket sales falling 63 percent, but still managed to bring in another $21.3 million.
If the estimates hold, Kung Fu Panda should nudge Cars for eighth place on the list of all-time animation openers, per the stats at Box Office Mojo.
If the movie counts as a Jack Black movieBlack provided the panda vocalsthen it goes down as the comic’s No. 1 opener of all-time, and as a marked improvement over last winter’s Be Kind, Rewind.
Zohan definitely counts as a Sandler movie. As such, it’s debut stands as the star’s fifth biggest, just below Click and just ahead of 50 First Dates.
Since 1998’s The Waterboy, every classic Sandler comedy, meaning not Spanglish, has debuted in the mid-$30 millions to mid-$40 millions. Finding its sweet spot, Zohan represented an upgrade over I Know Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, which opened on the low end of the Sandler scale last summer.
Drilling down in the box-office standings:
- Diversity extended to the grosses, as the $60 million-grossing Kung Fu Panda and the $775,000-”grossing” Made of Honor could both rightly call themselves Top 10 films.
- Speed Racer didn’t fall out of the Top 10. It plummeted, earning just $370,000 in its fifth weekend, per Box Office Mojo. Overall, the reportedly $120 million summer bomb has grossed $42 million.
- Not to make Mr. Racer feel
badworse, but Tina Fey’s Baby Mama (ninth place, $779,090), which reportedly cost $30 million to make, has grossed $57.9 million overall. - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (third place, $22.8 million; $253 million overall) is now within about $35 million of passing the finally tiring Iron Man (sixth place, $7.5 million; $288.9 million overall) as the year’s top-grossing movie.
- Second weekend fall off or no, Sex and the City is about a day, if not hours away, from cracking $100 million overall.
- Forgetting Sarah Marshall ($475,150) ends its Top 10 run after seven weekends, and a solid $61.5 million take.
- The new Heather Graham comedy Miss Conception averaged $500 on each of its three screens, per Box Office Mojo, and presumably began its journey to a Blockbuster shelf near you.
- John C. Reilly and Seann William Scott added up to $28,859 at six theaters for the new comedy The Promotion.
- The Genghis Khan epic Mongol put up the best, theater-for-theater numbers of the weekend, grossing $133,136 from five screens.
Here’s a recap of the top-grossing weekend films based on Friday-Sunday estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations:
- Kung Fu Panda, $60 million
- You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, $40 million
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, $22.8 million
- Sex and the City, $21.3 million
- The Strangers, $9.3 million
- Iron Man, $7.5 million
- The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, $5.5 million
- What Happens in Vegas, $3.4 million
- Baby Mama, $779,090
- Made of Honor, $775,000
Lucy Liu and Jack Black Premiere Kung Fu Panda
Lucy Liu and Jack Black Premiere Kung Fu Panda
When it comes to movie premieres, it doesn’t get more fun than the Hollywood debut of Kung Fu Panda featuring stars Jack Black and Lucy Liu.
It all went down in Hollywood, California as the “Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny” funnyman and his “Charlie’s Angels” babe co-star charmed the crowd and posed for pictures outside the theatre.
Miss Liu looked stunning in a multi-tiered ruffly halter-style pink dress with a pair of gladiator heels, while Jack kept it simple in a panda t-shirt, track pants and a pair of Puma sneakers.
Speaking of Mr. Black, Jack and his wife Tanya have just become parents again, as they welcomed their second child (a boy named Jack) into the world. They have an almost-two-year-old named Samuel as well.