China’s Wanda Group Agrees To Pay $2.6B For AMC … 
Weinstein Clarifies ‘Sapphires’ Remarks; Best … 
How Agencies Did At This Year’s Upfronts: New … 
BOMBS AWAY! ‘Battleship’ Sinks To $25.3M … 
‘Lawless’ Premieres As The Weinstein Company … 
David Guarascio And Moses Port To Run … 
‘Beasts Of The Southern Wild’ Co-Writer Lucy … 
Fox Searchlight Fetes ‘Beasts Of The Southern … 
D.V. DeVincentis Sinks Teeth Into ‘The Night … 
Universal Buys ‘The Disciple Program’ As Mark … 
‘Madagascar 3′ And A ‘Big Brother’ … 
UPDATE: Facebook’s Big IPO Trading Day Results In A … 
UPFRONTS 2012: The Year Of Underdogs, Comebacks & … 
YRF’s Uday Chopra To Finance Nicole Kidman-Starrer … 
Cannes Swirls With Talk Of Convergence Between Distributors … 
TNT & Lifetime Looking At Cancelled CBS Drama … 
Women Dominate Early Competition Films As Marion Cotillard … 
Doug Liman Reacts To ‘I Just Want My Pants … 
Disney Sets Jesse Wigutow To Script ‘Peter And The … 
Anthony Mackie In Step With ‘Runner Runner’ 
Should You Buy Facebook? A Few Things To Consider Before … 
SUNDAY AM: The movie that George Clooney directed, starred in and overhauled the script for, Leatherheads, stumbled badly at the box office this weekend, making only $12.5 million from 1,769 theaters and finishing only No. 3. (Interestingly, the pic’s studio, Universal, claimed it was No. 2, but every other Hollywood major had it as No. 3 behind Sony’s 21 and Fox/Walden’s Nim’s Island.) The screwball comedy about the early days of football was seen in Hollywood as a referendum on Clooney’s popularity at the box office. Because right now he is a big movie star but not a big box office star, and his hefty paydays in big studio projects like this definitely depend on the latter. (To be fair, few movie stars nowadays are reliably performing at the box office…)
Instead, Sony’s 21 casino caper fended off tough competition from three newcomers in the marketplace to score its second straight win as the #1 movie in North America. It earned a $15.1 million weekend, down only 37% from its opening last weekend, for a new cume of $46.5 million.
Family fare Nim’s Island, starring Abigail Breslin and Jodie Foster for Fox/Walden, junped into 2nd place with $13.3 million thanks to strong Saturday kiddie matinees and a wide theater count of 3,513.
Another studio newcomer in release, horror pic The Ruins from DreamWorks /Paramount earned $7.8 million this weekend from 2,812 venues for 5th place behind #4 Horton Hears A Hoo!, the Dr. Seuss pic from Fox, which took in $9.1 million for the weekend finishing with a giant cume of $131M.
But Hollywood was aghast that Clooney couldn’t open his movie. (As one studio mogul said to me, “He’s no Will Smith.”) The ability of superstars to generate domestic gross by putting North American moviegoers into theater seats is why studios hire them in the first place. Now Leatherheads is the latest of his non-ensemble big studio movies released wide to open $16 million domestic (Michael Clayton, Intolerable Cruelty, Solaris, Three Kings, Out Of Sight, The Peacemaker, One Fine Day…) and a few times not even half that. 
True, Clooney has received much critical acclaim for his smaller movies in limited release like Good Night and Good Luck and Syriana. But he doesn’t get hefty paydays for those. In this case, he has only himself to blame for the lackluster financial performance of this latest movie. In addition to directing and starring, Clooney also did a major overhaul of the script to transform Leatherheads into a screwball comedy. [But a Writers Guild arbitration over screen credits went 2-to-1 against Clooney, who's still furious about it. See my previous story here.] And yet that’s why the comedy seemed weak to top critics who gave it only 36% positive reviews. According to Rotten Tomatoes, ”despite a good premise and strong cast, this pro football romcom is half screwball and half fumble.”
After coming in at a cost of $60 million, the Universal pic was nurtured by a smart marketing campaign that combined football, romance, comedy and nostalgia. Clooney also won studio kudos for hyping the hell out of the movie, eking out every ounce of PR possible. The comedy had been tracking well with older men and older women, and strong with young males and teens. Universal had been hopeful for high teens and with luck even $20 million. But it was not to be.
The rest of the Top 10 were holdovers.
(FYI: Comments on this website are monitored. If you left a comment and it didn’t post immediately, it’s likely that NF is away from the computer. Please be patient.)
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
Loading ...
hey anonymous –
mla28 gave his two cents. What I laugh at is it only takes you two sentences to wig out on the president.
I thought this was about George Clooney or this snoozer “Leatherheads” that he starred in. Whatever you think of Clooney is meaningless (that is for everybody). However, your inability to stick to the subject matter (or more directly) aim for the president makes you a giant pussy.
I bet you couldn’t go on a Betty Crocker website blogging about cake recipes for two seconds wthout blaming the president for the price of vanilla extract spiraling out of control. Probably tell everyone it has to do with some fetilizer embargo on some developing nation that our “nazi in chief” has it in for.
Clooney is a bore and is chock full of himself. Just like 99% of Hollywood. And mla28 is right on with the ridiculous rants regarding Clooney. Hey, you like him. Fair enough. Then why don’t you stick to the subject matter at hand and leave the president “playa hating” to the politcal blogs?
and as far as me getting off topic – chicken or the egg – you douche
The problem is for these clooney types is that they lose 40% of their potential audience whenever they take a public side of a controversal political issue like gun control, abortion, global warming, affirmative action etc. or support a political figure (mostly Liberal left leaning types). MAinstream media props them up because their views support their agenda as well. Now they’re all going down the tubes, the media and the superficial so called stars. People who have mediocre abilities and and perform poorly at the box office need every soul they can possibly find to buy tickets to their projects. Their arrogance is such because they’re celebrities they think their views on public matters is more important than those who may think the opposite of them. Thusly they bite off their nose to spite their face and their stupidity and arrogance is starting to show big time….Enough to diminish their results by 40% less than it could’ve been….
It’s always a delight to see the work of a self-annointed priest from the propaganda office of Hollywood, the left-wing Vatican, fail miserably.
Well, statistics (albeit incomplete) speak for themselves:
WORLD-WIDE BOX OFFICE GROSS
Tom Cruise $6.2 billion
Will Smith $4.9 billion
Johnny Depp $4.7 billion
Brad Pitt $4.2 billion
Ben Stiller $3.6 billion
George Clooney $2.8 billion
source: the-numbers.com
So now we’re equating the general public’s taste with quality in movies?
Yes, his big numbers are for the Ocean’s series. First they’re not original but remakes. Second, they’re crap. American Idol gets big numbers. Transformers gets big numbers. Anybody seeing a pattern here? Please, let’s at least try to call a turd…. well, a turd.
The problem with Clooney is he is not very consistent. One bad movie, then one good movie and then back to one bad movie again. In my opinion the best movie Clooney has done so far is one in which he wasn’t even the star – “Good night and good luck”. Many of his other films that he has either acted in or directed pale by comparison. While Clooney certainly has the looks to be a movie star, that is not enough. You have to have something more to have a lifelong career in the movies. Many stars of today do not have that missing element whereas stars of yesteryear had it by the bushel.
Well I have read a lot of the comments and agree with most of them. The one thing that is missing that I think affects his box office numbers is his outspoken political remarks about the administration and other political causes that alienate parts of the movie going public. If you look back to the great stars of the past and some of the stars of today like Clint Eastwood, Will Smith , Harrison Ford, etc I think you get the picture, The one thing they have in common other than talent and box office draw is they keep there political beliefs to themselves and not on there sleeves.
It’s great to see so many here proving my theory about no talent actors spouting politics and hurting what little career they may have. Too bad the George Clooney’s of this world make as much as they do. It would be great to see him as a janitor in some Beverly Hills hotel and Michael Moore as a garbageman (oh wait… he already is)!
political freaks,hollywood haters, etc –
why do you keep visiting this site
it’s an industry site
if you loathe the industry, don’t come here of your own accord
there are ample places online where you can properly vent your hate and irrational “thoughts.”
the discourse here always spins way out of the productive, civil arena into cuckoo-ville when the Bushies descend with their one-note fixations.
Did it ever occur to anyone that MAYBE a lot of regular folks have had it with Clooneys knee jerk anti-American crap?
Day and night you see this creep ranting about Bush.
Did he say ONE WORD when Van Gogh”s great grandson had his HEAD CUT OFF for his artistic expression ????
NO,,,,,,,,,,not one word. I puke when I see commments concerning Clonney”s “courage” in making a movie about some crap that happened 55 years ago with Sen McCarthy…….how about showing some REAL cajones and make a movie about the barbarians who want to kill folks for drawing a CARTOON!……..drop dead
I think Hollywood people overestimate the impact of “stars” (or people who are known). As someone living in the heartland (Illinois), I can tell you that I choose movies based on the story more than the actors in it. True, if a well-known actor (like Clooney) is starring in a movie then it gets my attention, but if the story doesn’t sound good, then I’m certainly not going to waste my money or my time trekking out to the movie theater.
Who on earth wants to see a football story from the 30′s? I don’t care how much of the country you ride through on a train- it just doesn’t sound that interesting.
It was the same problem with Micheal Clayton. I still haven’t seen that movie because I don’t know what the hell it’s about. I may have liked it, I may not, but life’s too short to waste my time finding out, despite the great cast.
George Clooney deserves his “movie star” status. I’ve never read a press release or heard from his agent,
but my family looks forward to every Clooney film (and they don’t all get a wide release!!! trying to find a theatre showing THE GOOD GERMAN was not easy!), and we feel that he is one of the few actors today with the combination of depth and wide appeal that harkens back to the Edward G. Robinsons or James Cagneys of the past. ANY movie with Clooney in it is worth seeing because he resonates class and quality. One can see some little-known Cagney or Robinson movie on TCM and appreciate it as a quality piece of work that still holds interest today, even though it may have stiffed in its original release. Clooney’s non-Ocean films may not have the box-office power of teen gross-out epics, but it’s a solid body of work and Clooney needs no apologies. I never watch television or read gossip magazines, so I wouldn’t know how the media is pushing or not pushing Mr. Clooney. The work is what matters, and Clooney ALWAYS delivers the goods as an actor and has great appeal as a star. Thanks, Mr. Clooney—keep up the quality work.
If Clooney were a female actor, he would’ve been relegated back to tv long ago and branded “over the hill.”
He “charms” studio chiefs into greenlights but audiences aren’t showing up.
I’m a conservative and don’t give a rat’s arse about his politics.
I like Clooney’s potential. He should have been the next Cary Grant. If he had been handled right he would have been a good physical comedian and a good leading man, as Grant was.
I was excited when I first saw the previews, but then realized it was some stupid comedy that did not look the list bit funny. A good movie about the early origins of football would be a great flick. I will have to say I can’t stand Renee Z. either, nor is she in the least bit funny. The cast, script, and timing all set this up to be nothing other than a failure.
Hollywood Loves Clooney because he hates the United States. You know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. When Hollywood talks about loving this country it means it loves the opportunity to make money and the weather. But most people in Hollywood are ignorant of history or what this country even stands for. Clooney is college drop out. He is uneducated, like most entertainment people.
I’ve heard him speak plenty, unlike our President, he does a great job with public speaking. Also unlike our president, he is uneducated, hateful and ignorant about history. I, and many people I know, will never give a dime to anything he is connected to.
Brad Pitt is finished, too. He seems to realize that. He never quite made it to Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts status.
Jolie is simply not a movie star – she’s a tabloid star. She is dull on screen and does that same phony, affected embarrassing Russian-like accent for every role. Her serious non-campy roles tank. Her niche role is playing a female bad ass in a supporting role – this has served her, but grows thin with audiences.
Fear paralyzes studios from taking chances on fresh talent, instead of throwing too much money at undeserving and over-hyped celebs/tabloid fixtures.
Agencies have become bottom-line corporations, rarely interested in nurturing new talent.
Not surprised that Leatherheads won’t be number 1 this weekend. It’s a rainy Saturday on the east coast and a perfect day to take the kids to a matinee in the afternoon so Jodi it is! Clooney’s doing exactly the same thing he did w/Section 8. He’s deciding to star in all the films he’s producing. Clooney’s like Ben Affleck you can only take him in very, very small dosages and even then he needs other people around him. Otherwise, he’s just plain annoying. All these people calling Clooney a big international star put the crack pipe down. He WANTS to be big international star and he’ll make sure Stan keeps tell everyone he already is. Numbers don’t lie. (thanks stat man) He’s a very small fish in a very big ocean (pun intended)compared to those other big boys on that list.
The article says “So critical acclaim for his smaller movies in limited release like Good Night and Good Luck and Syriana may not be enough anymore.” Might not be enough? Might not be enough? Are you crazy? These two movies were Clooney’s proof that he is a whore for the left. Bingo…adios to over half the movie going public. George is handsome and fun to watch, but it’s still work for us to forget the stupid things the MAN says and focus on the CHARACTER…a lota work. Will Smith knows his job is to entertain and we flock to his movies and he gets paid nicely. These boneheads in Hollywood make the movies, but then forget that we decide where the money goes…sheesh…enough already.
Look if George Clooney is a good actor or not is not the point the point is just like many here have said, George (and many others) don’t understand that we want to see them act, or sing, or tell a joke, not go on and on about how they hate the war, or walmart, or big oil. nobody wants to see that when they just want have a good time and it’s costing them $10 or more to do it, don’t waste my money with your left wing dumbness. just make me laugh.
PS but like someone already said “1930′s football” whocares? do some reseach before you spend the studios money!
It’s nice to see another Clooney movie tank. Couldn’t happen to a finer jerk. When are the powers that be in Hollywood going to figure out a basic truth: When you’re politically “in-your-face” to half your audience, 50% or more of the audience is going to stay home, period. Not a very good business strategy. We vote with our dollars, everyday, with just cause.
I will never pay money to see films by Sean Penn, George Clooney, Tim Robbins, Danny Glover, and the like, and nor will anyone in my family. And it’s not because they’re radical liberal-socialists … there are many such radical liberal-socialists in Hollywood I’ll pay money to see … because they’re not in my face about it. They keep their dim-witted, puny views to themselves.
No, never, not one dollar of mine will ever be transferred from my wallet to theirs, so they can spit in my face, on my country, and monetarily support their mind-numbingly hostile organizations.
And, I’m not alone in this quasi-boycott of the hostile liberal-socialist left … in Hollywood, and elsewhere. Clooney is just one, lowly maggot; there are many others whose careers I’ve watched fall, or will fall, based soley on their “in-your-face” self-righteousness. Many of us out here love to watch these celebrities fall.
Clooney’s bad movie, Client #9, OJ jailed, Paris Freed, Whoopi and the View, all distractions. While mainstream media creates illusions, the gov’t steps on our throats by opening our mail, suspending habeas corpus, stealing private lands, banning books like “America Deceived” from Amazon, conducting warrantless wiretaps and starting wars for a foriegn gov’t.
Write in Dr. Ron Paul and end this madness.
Final link (until Google Books bends to pressure and drops the title):
America Deceived (book)
Also wanted to add that US box office numbers only make up 37% of to grand total. It’s not just about opening in America anymore. An actor has to be able to do both and more so overseas now. So, to try and put Clooney into that category is ridiculous. The only time he’s been able to open large overseas is when a guy named Brad is in the credits. Sorry, but true.
Hollywood is desperate for more stars, so they are trying to fabricate one out of Clooney. He’s just not the total package. He shows little if any real romantic ability, and has always had too cocky of a demeanor. Not attractive, not enough vulnerability.
I miss the young Burt Reynolds…He was more handsome than Clooney but the main difference — Burt was funny.
Clooney mugs for the Camera and ssys some unfunny remarks and the interviewer almost falls on the floor laughing at what I don’t know…Robins Willimas is the same, he babbles some unfunny sounds and the “entertainment reporter” laughs and laughs at nothing…..Hollywood needs more Burt Reynolds, John Waynes, Eduardo Verastegui, Guy Williams, James Caviezel, Elvis–Handsome men who don’t go around acting like they are better looking than everyone else and think they are funnier than everyone else…They just seemed like regular guys who just happen to be magnificently beautiful to look at.