What looked like a fair fight between four strong contenders for number one this weekend ended up a lopsided bruising by the Beyoncé Knowles thriller Obsessed, which raked in an estimated $28.5 million and left the competition behind in a bloody heap. (Hold on, Box Office fans, the over-the-top brawling metaphors just get worse from here.) Despite a widespread critical drubbing (Metacritic smacked it with a 22 score), Obsessed clearly tapped into a female-driven audience bloodlusting for some schlocky, catfighting fun with its story of a woman (Knowles) battling to keep a mentally
unhinged secretary (Ali Larter) from stealing her husband (Idris Elba). Knowles’ full-court media press last week certainly didn’t hurt either: Nearly doubling many prognosticators’ estimates (including that of EW’s own Joshua Rich), Knowles pulled in her biggest three-day opening since 2002’s Austin Powers in Goldmember and can officially cross off “become a bona fide movie star” on her list of Things I Need To Do To Dominate The World.
Zac Efron managed to keep his matinee-idol face relatively unharmed, meanwhile, with 17 Again dropping a respectable 51 percent to come in second with $11.7 million, for a 10-day total of $39.9 million. Hot on Efron’s heels, however, was the weekend’s second donnybrook-ing flick. Fighting, starring Channing Tatum as, well, a fighter, made a higher-than-expected $11.4 million, and very well may end up passing 17 Again for the No. 2 slot when final numbers come out on Monday. (The number bodes well for Tatum, who headlines this August’s blockbuster hopeful G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.)
The Soloist, alas, suffered the worst beating, banking just $9.7 million for fourth place, an anemic number for the already enfeebled adult drama. Critical indifference — just a 61 on Metacritic — probably didn’t help the film’s cause, and the film may have never recovered from Paramount’s decision to move the film from its prestige picture slot last fall to the far dicier spring season.
The Disneynature doc Earth landed a fifth-place finish with $8.5 million, and its $4 million opening on Wednesday (a.k.a. Earth Day) lifted the film to a $14.2 million five-day total. Although those numbers are shy of what some thought the film could do, it remains the second-best opening weekend ever for a documentary, next to just Fahrenheit 9/11.
Finally, The Informers, based on the Bret Easton Ellis novel, opened in limited release to a puny $300,000, or just $622 a theater. The highly regarded Mike Tyson documentary Tyson, by contrast, debuted at $86,000 on just 11 screens for a vigorous $7,818 per-theater average, one of the best of the weekend. It seems fisticuffs of any stripe were your best bet for this weekend, which, according to figures from Box Office Mojo, was up a whopping 30 percent from last year, when the significantly less violent Baby Mama was tops.
More Box Office News:
17 Again handily wins the weekend
Hannah Montana: The Movie wins the weekend
Fast & Furious shatters records with $72.5 mil weekend
Monsters vs. Aliens opens at No. 1 with $58.2 mil
Knowing cruises to weekend victory
EW.com’s Box Office Chart
Comments (1-30) of 101 Add your comment
Once again, Joshua Rich’s predictions wildly overestimated movies with famous actors and underestimated movies without them.
1) Soloist. Rich wrote that Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. “are pretty big stars, which means that The Soloist could sneak into the top spot…” In fact, Soloist finished a very weak 4.
2) Fighting. Rich predicted this film with unknown Channing Tatum (who?) would finish 5th. It was a strong 2 or 3.
3) Obsessed. Without A-list actors (Beyonce’s biggest hit was the ensemble Dreamgirls), Rich wildly underestimated it at 15 million. It made about twice that – 90% more than Rich’s guess. An ENORMOUS miss. Think of it this way: If Rich was guessing a man’s weight, an equivalent miss would be to guess that a 190-lb man weighed 100 pounds.
4) Crank. In 2 weeks, it’s still hasn’t made what Rich predicted for its first week.
5) For the second week in a row, Rich went 1-for-5. Statistically, if you RANDOMLY picked the top five movies, you would likely do better.
This week, the trained monkey kept urinating on himself and trying to eat the bugs in his fur. This, however, makes him an intellectual match for Josh Rich, who spends his columns dry-humping the most famous name in each movie’s credits. The trained monkey’s predictions looked awful this week. First he picked 15 million for Obsessed (the same number as Rich – uh oh), and then ate the number. Then the monkey kept picking the exact same number – 12 million – out of the hat for every other movie in the top 5. Awful. The monkey had to lose, right? Um… no. Even though the monkey picked the same number as Rich for Obsessed, and kept picking the same exact number for every other movie in the top 5, the trained monkey still did better than Rich! Wow! A monkey picking the same number for every movie still beat Rich. The monkey has louse-filled fur, but he’s still not as lousy as Rich!
REPLACE JOSH RICH WITH THE COMMENTER DUSEN!
Yes, Joshua Rich got some predictions wrong. Who cares about it enough to make a list?
Beyonce’s biggest hit was Goldmember, by the way.
No surprise. I would be shocked if 80% of those buys weren’t from Men.
http://tvdonewright.com/2009/04/26/tv-tonight-sunday-april-26th-2009/
Films like “Obsessed” are critic proof and Im sure its target audience got there money’s worth. Nothing wrong with that.
http://blog.entertainmenttodayandbeyond.com/
chuck
To Ian: This article is a list. The article by Josh Rich was a list. So who cares if a commenter wants to make a list? IMO, the Not the Actor’s comments are a lot more interesting and enlightening than most of the people who actually write for EW professionally.
As for the long anticipated next weekend:
1. X-Men Orgins: Wolverine- $92 million
2. Ghosts of A Girlfriends Past- $17 million
3. Obsessed- $12.5 million
4. 17 Again- $6.5 million
5. Fighting- $4.5 million
It’s a shame The Soloist didn’t do very well. I thought it looked like a great movie. Oh well.
-Save Chuck
to many give Beyonce way to much credit for how this movie opened. I had no idea she was even in it(thought it was her sister) till this week. I think the bad singing tape and the catfight action hepled this movie not the stars of it.
Why is Joshua Rich still allowed to write his box office prediction column? He’s terrible at making predictions! I remember when boxofficemojo.com did predictions. They were usually pretty accurate. Rich sucks horribly!
Well now that she has proven she can open a movie on her own name I guess she is one step closer to securing the role of WonderWoman.
Over my dead body will fvcking Beyonce be Wonder Woman. The Amazonians weren’t black!
Oh “Not the Actor” and “Rich vs the Trained Monkey..” I love you guys.
You guys accurately and mercilessly show how terrible Josh Rich is each week. You say exactly what I want to say if I had the effort too.
Somehow I suspect that “Joe” is posting from the same IP address as “Not the Actor”.
You’re lame.
“angela” its always amazing how the rednecks find any means to throw race into a conversation. Maybe you should go back under that rock you slimed from.
Angela: your comments were ignorant. whether amazons were black, white, creole, green, etc…that was a dumb and ignorant thing to say. just because your dumb @ss isn’t intelligent enough to play the role you critisize her for being born black?? I hope she does acquire that movie and I hope you are “alive” to see it. Ignorant folks, I swear.
Angela Angela Angela, you really should think and re-think your comments before typing and posting. Watch yourself, your ignorance and intolerance is showing.
Really though do you want a black wonder women, or for that matter a stupid wonder women movie?
uhhh, amazonians may not be black, but they sure as hell ain’t white. the amazon is in south america. hollywood got it wrong the first time they cast wonder woman – maybe this time they’ll cast someone dark or olive-toned, since skin colour seems to be such a huge concern for some of you.
Beyonce is beautiful and talented, and will probably become a decent actor. But her insistence on playing Wonder Woman is misplaced. Does she want to play Wonder Woman for the fans who want a Wonder Woman movie, or is she doing it for herself? Personally, what I want is Wonder Woman who embodies and resembles the comic book character–not a singer Who Wants To Dominate The World. Plain and simple.
The more I read these entertainment articles posted on various web sites about tv and movies, the more I realize the supposed experts are just as clueless about what constitutes a successful film or tv program as the average joe. Granted this is an exceptional year and prognostication is a precarious slope to begin with, but comparing sites(I usually crosscheck at least five various sites before I express a thought and I always see the film or tv program I talk about with either my girlfriend, family, friends, etc. before I critique it), across the board, no one knew this weekend, box office wise, would be as phenomenal as it turned out to be. I don’t care if Josh R. nails all of his predictions or he misses them wildly, he’s one of the better writers on this website. And I enjoy the simple fun of communicating my thoughts on the box office with him whether I’m right or wrong. So, I hope Josh continues to do his predictions.
Angela wrote:
“Over my dead body will fvcking Beyonce be Wonder Woman. The Amazonians weren’t black!”
Actually, Angela, there are BLACK Amazons like Nubia, Wonder Woman’s “sister”. She images below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nu%27Bia
http://www.blacksuperhero.com/exhibithtml/detail.cfm?id=98
I think a compromise would be Beyonce playing Nubia, and someone else playing Wonder Woman. Then, everyone will be happy.
http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Nubia_(Earth-One)
As long as racism and hate exist –everyone will never be happy! Why hate people who happen to be talented, and beautiful..just learn to love yourself, then you know how to respect others for who they are. You don’t have to like every artist but why bash!
I just can’t believe people actually went to see this wannabe Fatal Attraction!
Jamie Foxx’s venomous rant against Miley Cyrus undoubtedly affected the box-office performance of The Soloist and it serves him right. Nobody wants to root for a guy like that.
Wonder woman? You’re kidding right? In Hollywood everyone is white.. even Jesus and his disciples (rolling eyes) … as if that even remotely makes any geographic sense.
I don’t think any reasonably intelligent adult gives a hoot whether or not Wonder woman is depicted as being black, white, green, prussian blue.. you get the picture. Only something uneducated/dull minded people would concern themselves with.
I have to come to Angela’s defense; I’ll give her the benefit of a doubt and assume her intent was to explain that Wonder Woman has for her entire 50+ comic book year history, been portrayed as a WHITE woman, so it would kind of make sense to have a Caucasian actress play the role. Kind of how it would make sense for Halle Berry, and NOT a white actress, to play Storm (a black comic book character) in the X-Men movies.
That is all.
Miley Cyrus,,OMG..you really think people care so much bout what who says about who,,Miley Cyrus…Miley cyrus is a 16 yr old sex maniac…Hense her 22yr old boyfriend.American you think cares bout what is said bout miley cyrus..lol,,Go back to the nick channel,,lil kid.
Who cares what race Wonder Woman is. Its a role that calls for a strong female lead. If Beyonce proves her worth to the producers and director then thats for them to decide. Cat Woman was originally a white woman and Halle Berry played her.
THEY ARE COMIC BOOK HEROES!!!
Jessica Alba also played a caucasian role.
The president of the US has traditionally been a white man. Hmm I wonder how Angela felt about Obama breaking down that racial barrier.
Angela–GREEN money rules the box office–nothing else. Beyonce is easy on the eyes and will draw in moviegoers–that is all Hollywood cares about. I do think she’d be a good Wonder Woman, though.
You must have a hard time dealing with a black woman being far more beautiful than you can even dream about being.
For the record–I am completely neutral regarding what race plays what part…all I care about is being entertained.