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
WALL-E Easter Eggs
Pixar is known to fill their films with fun easter eggs and WALL-E is no different. Here are some of the things you probably missed:
The Pizza Planet Truck: The truck has appeared in every Pixar movie since Toy Story (although its pretty hard to find in The Incredibles as its pretty much a blur in a car sequence). “The Pizza Planet actually has a very obvious shot, it’s just probably so quick people aren’t paying attention to it.” The truck can be found in the first 20-minutes of the film as EVE scans the truck as part of her “directive”. It’s really big, almost the full frame on screen.
Hammy: The character John Ratzenberger voiced in Toy Story appeats in WALL-E’s truck. See the photo below, Hammy can be found right to the left of EVE’s head.
A113: What started as an inside joke of CalArts alumni (a reference to the classroom number that was used by Animation students) has been present in not only every Pixar film, but Disney movies, Iron Giant, The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, Powerpuffgirls and Tinytoon Adventures. “A-113 is obvious in this film,” Stanton told. “It’s the most obvious we’ve ever made it.” In Wall-E, A-113 is actually part of Auto Pilot’s “directive” outlined by BuyNLarge CEO Shelby Forthright’s (Fred Willard) video recording. “Directive A-113” is also one of the tracks composed by Thomas Newman for the WALL-E soundtrack.
2001: Auto Pilot is an obvious homage to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
John Ratzenberger: Pixar considers the actor to be a “good luck charm”, and Pixar actually has a rule stating that Ratzenberger must be in all of the studio’s films. “John Ratzenberger is probably pretty obvious,” Stanton told. And he is. John Ratzenberger voices one of the few human characters in the film, not so coincidentally named “John”.
Apple: Pixar’s history with Apple is a long one. Steve Jobs, who co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak, bought The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division in 1986, and served as CEO until Pixar was acquired by Disney in 2006. Apple has been featured in previous Pixar productions like on the hood of one of the race cars in Cars. There are several references to Apple in WALL-E, the most obvious is when WALL-E watches Hello Dolly on an older video iPod. Also, when WALL-E is done charging he makes the Mac startup chime.
Eve was actually designed by Apple’s behind-the-scenes design guru Johnny Ive, the guy responsible for the design of the iPod. Andrew Stanton told Fortune: “I wanted Eve to be high-end technology - no expense spared - and I wanted it to be seamless and for the technology to be sort of hidden and subcutaneous. The more I started describing it, the more I realized I was pretty much describing the Apple playbook for design.” Auto’s voice is the creation of MacTalk, Apple’s text-to-speach program. An old mac keyboard can also be found in WALL-E’s truck (photo below)
Button: A BuyNLarge advertising jingle can be found at the conclusion of the credits, right after the Walt Disney Pictures logo is displayed.
Orange Caution Cones: The Orange Cones from Toy Story can be found all over abandoned earth, and inside WALL-E’s truck. See photo below.
Skinner’s Scooter: The scooter Skinner used in Ratatouille can be found in the trashpile early in the film. See photo above.
BURN-E: The DVD release of WALL-E will include a short film would be “very connected to WALL-E.” Pixar has done this in past releases with Mike’s Car on Monster’s Inc, Jack Jack Attack on The Incredibles, Mater and The Ghostlight with Cars, and Your Friend The Rat on Ratatouille. The short film on WALL-E will be titled BURN-E. In the feature film there is a sequence where Eve and WALL-E fly around the Axiom Starliner, and enter through a door locking a poor welder bot on the outside of the ship. The bot bangs his fists against the door after he realizes that he has been locked out. You can watch a clip of the sequence here. Apparently the welder bot is actually named BURN-E, complete with a logo on the side of his head. If I were to guess, I would say the short film will follow BURN-E on his journey to break back into the Axiom.
Hidden Mickey: A subtle formation of a silhouette of the head of Mickey Mouse and his two ears can be found in many Disney films. In The Incredibles, when Mr. Incredible was launched off the airplane to the island, several trees on top of a hill form a hidden Mickey. In WALL-E, a hidden Mickey can be found in the background of a scene on earth (seen above on the upper left corner)
Crush the Turtle: Finding Nemo’s Crush the Turtle can be seen in the animated credit sequence.
Incredible Humans?: reader T-Mack writes: “During one of the introductions to the sedentary humans, there is a Sigurney Weaver voice-over detailing cool new fashions - where a quick shot of a billboard featuring three thin models in red jumpsuits appears. The models are uncannily done in a style similar to The Incredibles, with one of the models looking very much like Mr. Incredible.”
Rex: reader Alex saw the Rex the dinosaur toy from Toy Story can be seen in WALL-E’s truck. reader RageTreb confirms “He’s pretty obvious– seen on one of the first shelves seen in WALL-E’s truck at the beginning of the movie. He’s behind few other items, but it’s a close-up so he’s hard to miss.”
Bird from Bug’s Life: Alex from FirstShowing says the bird from A Bug’s Life appears in the animated ending credit sequence.
And these are only the easter eggs that we have found so far. Find any WALL-E easter eggs? Post them in the comments!
Up Teaser Trailer Not Attached to WALL-E; New WALL-E Poster and Video
The Pixar Projection website has confirmed what I have been told by my own internal sources, WALL-E will be the first Pixar film to not offer a look at the Emeryville-based animation company’s next film Up. Instead the trailer for Disney’s Bolt will be attached. We also found out exact running times. The Pixar short film Presto runs 5 minutes and 14 seconds and the final runtime for WALL-E is 1 hour 37 minutes and 43 seconds.
Our friends at Upcoming Pixar pointed us towards this “Love is in the Air” music video which Disney released. Check it out above. Filmz has also been provided with the Russian theatrical poster below which also plays up the love story aspect of the film.
Did WALL-E Make Appearances in Toy Story, The Incredibles and Cars?
A new video has turned up online claiming that if you look closely, you can find WALL-E in the background of certain scenes in Toy Story, The Incredibles and Cars. And I wouldn’t put it past the guys at Emmeryville. If you watched the teaser trailer for WALL-E than you know that the cute little robot was just one of the creations to come out of a now infamous lunch that was also responsible for Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc and a Bugs Life. So it’s not like WALL-E was created yesterday. Pixar is known to throw a ton of self-rerential easter eggs in their movies. Jim Hill even compiled a great visual guide cataloging many of them. But did WALL-E really make an appearance in an earlier Pixar film? Watch the video below.
Before you go e-mailing all your friends, you should know that the video above is a well crafted fake by the guys at Facko. You will notice that WALL-E doesn’t appear in this screenshot below from The Incredibles.
Although there is a bundle of trash that looks kinda like WALL-E if you squint (see the brightness corrected zoomed screenshot below).
We’re pretty sure that’s not our favorite little robot. Besides, it is clear that the Facko guys digitally altered the Incredibles image.
The only Pixar film you will probably find WALL-E in is the short film Your Friend The Rat, which was included on the DVD release of Ratatouille.
WALL-E appears during a 2D animated segment during a musical fantasy sequence inwhich humans & rats are happily seated inside of this futuristic spacecraft.