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'War' is hell on box office opposition
2005-07-02
American movie "War of the Worlds (2005)" poster |
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LOS ANGELES - When it comes to the Fourth of July weekend box office, nothing sets off fireworks like a good ol' alien attack.When 20th Century Fox's "Independence Day" planted a flag on the weekend of the Fourth in 1996, it discovered that extraterrestrials blowing up the White House was a surefire holiday attraction. In 1997 and 2002, Sony Pictures followed up with comic close encounters as "Men in Black" and then "Men in Black II" dominated their respective dates. This holiday weekend, Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" is already on the march, bowing Wednesday in 3,908 theaters to $21.7 million -- Paramount's biggest opening day ever. The movie is, of course, the weekend's preordained winner: Once Paramount aimed the combined firepower of Spielberg and Tom Cruise on the movie's June 29 opening date, Fox, which had been planning to launch its sci-fi extravaganza "Fantastic Four" Friday, decided to move its movie out of the line of fire, shifting that movie's opening to July 8. "War" is going to be big, but the question is: how big? Any Monday morning box office quarterbacks who insist that "War" has to break all records lest it be dubbed a disappointment are setting the bar impossibly high because the record for the Fourth of July weekend is held by last year's "Spider-Man 2." The Sony film grossed $40.4 million on its opening Wednesday, $115.8 million during the four-day holiday weekend and $180 million in its first six days. "War," which is skewing to a somewhat older audience, is not expected to hit those stratospheric numbers. For one thing, it doesn't carry the pent-up demand that surrounds a successful sequel. And with the Fourth on Monday, the day-to-day comparisons will play out differently, with the Spielberg sci-fi horror film looking to enjoy a comparatively strong Sunday but then hitting the usual holiday wall Monday, when Americans turn their attention to barbecues, fireworks and a quick dash back to work. Still, industry handicappers expect the PG-13 adaptation of the classic H.G. Wells novel to pull in $65 million-$75 million during the Friday-Sunday portion of the holiday as it attacks a potential six-day gross that could reasonably top out in the $115 million-$135 million range. Those numbers should establish personal opening-weekend bests for Cruise and Spielberg. Cruise's top opener is "Mission: Impossible 2," which enjoyed a four-day opening weekend of $70.8 million during the 2000 Memorial Day weekend. Spielberg's standard bearer is 1997's "The Lost World: Jurassic Park," which bowed to a four-day gross of more than $90 million. And "War" will handily surmount the first Spielberg-Cruise collaboration, 2002's "Minority Report," which registered an opening weekend of $35.7 million. Still, no matter how well "War" wages -- even if it were to somehow topple "Spider-Man 2" -- the weekend's overall box office, hampered by a weakness in the holdover films, is not going to better the grosses from last year's July Fourth weekend. And that means another round of "slumping box office" headlines are inevitable as the business faces the 19th weekend that fails to measure up to the corresponding weekend a year earlier. Meanwhile, with "War" raging all around, Fox is flying under the radar with its counterprograming of the Martin Lawrence comedy "Rebound," directed by Steve Carr ("Daddy Day Care"). Lawrence plays a college basketball coach demoted to overseeing a middle school team in the PG-rated movie. Gruff-guy-and-kids comedies have earned fairly reliable returns of late: The Ice Cube starrer "Are We There Yet?" opened to $18.6 million in January; "The Pacifier," starring Vin Diesel, arrived to $30.6 million in March; and the Will Ferrell-led "Kicking & Screaming" took in $20.2 million when it opened in May. But Lawrence's comedies haven't measured up to those numbers, and the family-oriented "Rebound" probably will bounce around the $10 million mark for the four days. Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
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