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SUNDAY AM UPDATE: WHAT A DISASTER!
‘Speed Racer’ $20M Weekend Half What Warner Bros Hoped
Rival Studios Accuse WB Of Inflating #s
SATURDAY NOON UPDATE: I’m just receiving reports that Speed Racer also isn’t doing well overseas where it opened day and date Friday in 30+ territories. Says a marketing and distribution source for another studio: “It is a disaster in the worst way. It was No. 6 in the UK and No. 9 in Germany and the numbers are horrific. Only Latin America showed signs of life – but it was barely a pulse.” I haven’t seen any official international figures from Warner Bros yet. But the film was supposed to do better overseas where anime is a bigger draw than in the U.S.
As expected, Marvel’s Iron Man is the blockbuster No. 1 for the second week in a row. According to distributor Paramount, it took in a str0ng $15 million Friday from 4,111 theaters (-62% from its opening) for what should be a $50 million weekend. Its new cume is a monster $141.4M. (I loved how star Robert Downey Jr. told Jay Leno this week that it’s much better to have a blockbuster than an Oscar.) But the big story this weekend is what a big bomb Warner Bros’ has released. It’s now official: Speed Racer is the first domestic box office disaster of the summer. It placed only No. 3 Friday, well behind Fox’s romantic comedy What Happens In Vegas, which opened with $7.1 million from 3,215 venues for what should be a $20 million weekend. (Photos of Robert Downey Jr at the Iron Man premieres in the UK and Australia…)
Despite a wide release into 3,606 theaters, the anime actioner starring Emile Hirsh opened Friday with only $6.1 million (and some studios said it was merely $5.7M). Even if today’s kiddie matinees generate some of the usual high-octane and the movie moves up a notch to second place, it still won’t move Speed Racer out of the slow lane or approach Warner Bros’ own expectations of a mid-$30s million debut (and that was down from a hoped-for $40 mil a few days before…). 
The alarming fact is this film will struggle to even make $20 million for the weekend. At an estimated cost of at least $160 million (talk about a writedown!), this family fare is yet another case of a studio letting talent run amok: the Wachowski siblings delivered a long, loud, and lousy movie. (The Industry scuttlebutt is that Warner Bros Pictures Group prez Jeff Robinov, a one-time agent, gave way too much power to his former clients. Of course, the success of their Matrix franchise justified a certain degree of autonomy.) The film’s biggest handicap is its 2 hour, 15 minute, running time, bucking the current trend of kid movies clocking in at a mercifully short 90 to 100 minutes. And then there are the bad reviews: only 27% positive among the cream of the crop of Rotten Tomatoes film critics. In addition, the pic should have been “aged up”: it plays too young and limits its audience by appealing mostly to little boys. According to the “Parents and Kids” premium tracking, Speed Racer was first choice among parents and boys aged 7 through 11. Unfortunately, the Warner Bros film will get creamed by the competition from the Disney/Walden blockbuster Narnia 2 opening next weekend.
As for Fox’s What Happens in Vegas and its tired “been-there, done-that” plot, stars Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz didn’t deliver much box office firepower playing newlyweds. But the first-time-paired duo haven’t been hot at the cineplex individually for a long while. Again, this is a case of movie stars, not box office stars. Some marketing mavens are hanging this on Ashton. “Guys just do not like him. He’s a pretty boy toy and not someone guys feel they connect to,” said an insider. ”The upside is that the film cost only $35 million.” Fox’s well-oiled marketing machinery can make something out of nothing, and did that again here.
The rest of the Top 10 are holdovers.
FRIDAY PM: Here are very early numbers for Friday’s domestic box office gross…
Marvel’s Iron Man still the easy No. 1 blockbuster. -61% for $15M tonight. Looks platinum for Paramount distributed pic: $50+M weekend and cume $177M.
Fox’s What Happens in Vegas #2 tonight with $6.8M for $19M-$20M wkd.
Warner Bros’ Speed Racer only $6.6M tonight. Probably gets the kids matinee bump tomorrow and still ends up an oil-leaking #2 for the weekend at awful $23M-$24M.
Sony’s Made of Honor #4 with $2.5M tonight for $8M weekend and cume of $26.6M.
Overall, this weekend’s box office should be up at least 20% over last year’s.
More analysis later…
See my Wkd Prediction: Problem-Plagued ‘Speed Racer’ Distant No. 2 To ‘Iron Man’
For more estimates listed by title, see box office results here...Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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No surprise here, but the Lego sets look good.
I never understood the appeal of the show. To quote Ebert:
To us, this show was just filler between after-school reruns of “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Munsters.” We watched it because it was on, and it was in color.
I watched it, on Saturday mornings rather than after school, because it was on between shows I liked: maybe Looney Tunes (which remains wonderful) and Super Friends (which would probably make me cringe today). As a kid, I wondered why they even showed it; as an adult I suspect it’s because licensing fees were cheap and competition was soft in the three-network era.
I can’t understand why anyone would make a feature out of a series that never interested me in its original form. It seems I’m not the only one.
The DVD for ‘Speed Racer’ will be epic though, this might simply be a release to promo the later retail opportunities…
When a huge film tanks it’s bad for the industry in general, not just the company that’s left holding the blivit. The larger problem with making movies based on old TV shows is that, if the old TV shows were worthy of being movies, they would have been movies in the first place. (Actually, they used to splice three half-hours together and get just that). But since today’s executives were raised on TV instead of books, naturally they regard “Speed Racer” and its ilk as literature. All icing and no cake. As for the “Matrix” trilogy being hits, the first one was successful on a number of influential levels, but numbers two and three did numbers based on their momentum from the first. They were incoherent messes. If Time/Warner’s corporate vision is to make “Speed Racer” while killing Picturehouse, New Line, Warner Independent, and other botique subcompanies that actually make good movies, let’s light a candle for them now.
I actually liked the series, but it seems like the anime is just too much for my generation. It might appeal to younger kids, but that won’t recapture those of us who watched the show with Kimba the White Lion on Channel 52 in Los Angeles.
It’s just too much. I don’t know if it’s a cartoon or a movie. I’d love a chance to relive my childhood with a Speed Racer film, especially now that I understand what it means if Trixie is hot, but the format will keep me out of the theater.
I really wanted to like this movie but then I saw the previews I cringed. They ruined Speed Racer. There are a lot of thirty and forty somethings that are Speed Racer fans. Had they given it a more realistic feel instead of camp, it would have done well. Somebody didn’t do thier research and ignored the middle-age audience. Had they done that, it would be a different a movie.
Why do you people think that a movie like this will “play better overseas”? I heard a clip from it on the radio this afternoon. If the rest of the film is like the dialogue (let alone the Brit actor playing the villain’s accent, and German pronounciation) Then (to put it no stronger) I’ll be giving it a miss.
As for Speed Racer, this is the fifth bomb for Joel Silver. The Reaping, The Invasion, The Brave One, Fred Claus and now Speed Racer. It seems that he might have drained enough money from Warner Bros. to have kept open WIP and Picturehouse for years. I would bet Robinov would think twice before green lighting anything from Silver Pictures. That is, of course, unless they want to lose another few hundred million on Wonder Woman, the movie Joel claims he will make.
I can’t wait to see this. Probably going to be Sunday.
Speed Racer is a very good movie. Nikki, you haven’t even seen it so why did you go to all that effort to say what you thought was wrong with it? The Wachowskis made a crazy, daring, and original movie and some people just don’t get it. Everyone I know that saw it yesterday was surprised by how much they loved it.
Can’t say that i’m too sad. It’s time for these brothers to actually make a movie and not a computer game.
Emile Hursh just killed all that he worked so hard for with Into the Wild. He is now a loser. Boo hoo.
Cheri, sweetheart making one flop doesn’t make you a loser, Depp was box office poison for over a decade. No self respecting actor cares about this trash anyway, it’s about the work. Only people who are not artists themselves and rather just business men care about box office. Emile once said he idolized Daniel Day Lewis, if he is like DDL than he really doesn’t care how the movie performs at the box office.
Just saw the movie with my 5 yr old son. It was great. Exactly what I wanted to see. No complex plot lines, cool special effects, awesome casting and all the charaters were there.
I really took me back to the 70′s when I use to watch it as a kid.
I’m sure that creating a movie based on something that was at the height of its limited popularity 40 years ago has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Speed Racer is not some timeless masterpiece. The cost of the original option to the full film rights was only $1 for Christ’s sake.
Why not roll out live action versions of The Jetsons, Yogi the Bear, Pepe Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Tom & Jerry, etc.?
Why not dust off the Smurfs and throw it up on 4,000 screens? At least it’s more recent.
Oh, I forgot. The Smurfs are on their way.
Scooby-Doo grossed $153 million with a distributor take of around 55%. I don’t wish to debate whether Scooby-Doo is better or worse in its original or adapted forms than Speed Racer. Facts that aren’t debatable are that Scooby-Doo first started airing around the same time as Speed Racer in the late 60′s and that it’s a hell of a lot better known than Speed Racer.
So why would $185 million be spent on Speed Racer when a much more well known property did $153 million five or six years ago?
Stupidity.
That’ll show those lazy, greedy, unoriginal bastards that the world doesn’t want a shitty remake. Give us something NEW! Couldn’t happen to more deserving assholes.
My question is this, who in the hell thought it was a good idea to make a live action version of the Speed Racer cartoon? Its not like other comic book properties like Batman or Iron Man that can be given a great amount of depth. My reaction when I saw the trailer was why?
Funny that the SPY KIDS films got the exact same look for a budget of $30-40M. Too bad the Wachowskis aren’t as frugal as Robert Rodriguez. Warner Bros. could at least be crowing about a very modest hit right now.
What the hell did they spend the $140M on? John Goodman?
Having seen the movie, I can see why others may have a problem with it, and call attention to its faults, but looking past all this inane bashing, is a revolutionary movie. It really blurs the lines between a cartoon/movie/video game. It does have problems (the running time and odd pacing/tone). Taken on its own terms though, and it blows the mind. The audacity and imagination used is staggering. It really does push the cinematic envelope way beyond what is being done. Maybe in a few years other directors will look past the tried and true and attempt something more. Until then we will have to make do with the morsels of magic that the Wachowskis send out into the world. You just have to look past the politics of why this movie was even made (it does the Speed Racer name proud actually, better than any recent cartoon revisions), and enjoy the anarchy and joy that it brings to the cinema.
Speed Racer is over two hours – no way I’m taking a kid to a movie that long. 80-90 minutes, guys. That’s IT.
I think this is further proof that the W brothers are the most self-indulgent film makers going.
Comment by Chris Crosby — May 10, 2008 @ 2:40 pm:
“Funny that the SPY KIDS films got the exact same look for a budget of $30-40M. Too bad the Wachowskis aren’t as frugal as Robert Rodriguez. Warner Bros. could at least be crowing about a very modest hit right now.
What the hell did they spend the $140M on? John Goodman?”
To be fair to the Wachowski’s (and everyone else, too), you usually cannot compare Robert Rodriguez movies to anyone else’s in terms of cost. The reason is that Rodriguez is incredibly talented – and a penny pincher production-wise.
His talent allows him to compose, perform, and edit a film’s score (yes, the ENTIRE score). It allows him to write, direct, shoot, and edit every frame. It allows him to create the visual effects for a film.
Rodriguez can reduce a film’s cost substantially – and does. He has the mindset to look for cost-savings and the ability to basically do pro bono work on his own film in almost any capacity when he doesn’t want to pay someone else to do it.
Just on Spy Kids, he was the director, the writer, the composer of the original music, the film editor, a sound re-recording mixer, a visual effects supervisor, and a camera operator.
There are probably few IMDb pages more crowded with job titles than Rodriguez’s.
A better (but still not perfect) comparison may be “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” that I think is the model for failure for “Speed Racer.” Most of it was shot chroma too.
“Sky Captain’s” prdouction cost was less than $50 million and grossed close to $40 million. $40 million may be in the neighborhood of “Speed Racer’s” gross.
Even on “Sky Captain,” the director and writer were the same person and his brother and sister did the production design, art, and costumes. Who knows who else he had pitching in.
Too much was spent on “Speed Racer,” but there should be caution in the comparisons to other films’ costs.
It’s just way too long, too “young” and it was released at the wrong time. It’s as simple as that. If they had of aged it up ever-so-slightly, lopped at least half an hour off (the only reason it cost so much is the crazy length, effectively increasing the cost by a third) and released it on a different date this would have been huge. It’s a shame because they really seem to have been trying to do something unique. I still think it will do big business on DVD. These points seem so obvious, how is it I could figure it out and all the talent behind the movie couldn’t?
Robert Rodriguez may be heavily involved in visual effects, but he doesn’t create them on his own. He has dozens of people in the visual effects department on his films.
The many hats Rodriguez wears may save his productions money, but I don’t think that’s solely responsible for keeping the costs of his films to a reasonable level. Scoring, editing, and visual effects supervision generally don’t cost a film an additional $100 million. I think it’s common sense spending limits that are to thank, something the makers of SPEED RACER were in desperate need of.
A family movie about unrealistic car racing shot almost entirely on a green screen shouldn’t cost $140 million, period. Rodriguez could’ve made four or five green screen movies for that cost.
Just saw Speed Racer with my kids and it is GREAT !!!!!
The critics who pan this movie don’t know good fun when they see it.
This movie is more fun than a barrel of Chim Chims.
Can’t wait for the BluRay disk.
Yo Steve, Ebert didn’t review Speed Racer. Jim Emerson did. I’m willing to bet my life that Ebert would’ve liked it, maybe not love due to the running time.
From the look of the early, groaner trailer, the take was simply all wrong. The neighborhood kids, my brothers and I all loved SPEED around 1970. There were epic elements that could have made a strong, rollicking action film…if it were not turned into some weird, pink half live action cartoon. A long lost brother who races anonymously, a team of well-financed bad-guy racers, I recall a truck made completely of gold (but hidden by paint), crazy off road races…a haunted engine that was so powerful it was buried since it killed anyone who drove it…good, mythical stuff. It needed a RONIN treatment, not this thing.