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SUNDAY AM: Showing just how fiercely competitive the summer box office is right now, rival Hollywood movie studios are complaining to me they don’t believe Warner Bros’ domestic gross numbers released today. Those claim its disastrous Speed Racer came in 2nd behind Marvel’s Iron Man in the weekend’s Top 10 contest. All the other majors — Fox, Sony, Paramount, Universal, Disney, and MGM – have the anime actioner opening only 3rd. And rivals dispute WB’s reporting that Speed Racer made $20.2 million for Fri-Sat-Sun because its projected Sunday number isn’t seen as possible. “That’s a very aggressive Sunday estimate to try and claim 2nd,” one studio’s top marketing and distribution mogul complained to me this morning, echoing the disbelief of most of his colleagues. “Warners is hoping moms want to go to Speed Racer for Mothers Day.” (To give Warner Bros the benefit of the doubt, it’s true that family pics do well on Mothers Day.) But all the other studios have Fox’s romantic comedy What Happens In Vegas in 2nd place with $20 million, and Speed Racer only 3rd with $19.7 million. 
And the rival execs say that, since Speed Racer‘s gross was even softer than anyone thought, up only 18% on Saturday because of kiddie matinees compared to Friday, the Warner Bros film couldn’t possibly get to $20 million for the weekend barring a box office miracle on Sunday. “Their estimate is utterly laughable!,” a top exec at a rival major told me this AM. “That being said, from what I’ve heard, they are not trying to dress up the pig. They’re resigned to it being a disaster… just not enough to stop them from fabricating a number to jump Fox for the #2 position.” These kind of controversies don’t develop often in Hollywood, but when they do, they can be ugly. That’s because there is a certain code of honor among thieves, if you will — a tacit agreement that every Hollywood studio will try to report weekend box office numbers as accurately as possible, even though there’s a significant PR advantage to artifically moving a disappointing film up a slot in the Top 10 by inflating numbers. The irony is that these controversies get settled quickly, as soon as tomorrow when the actual theater by theater grosses for Sunday come in Monday and then determine the ”actual” figures as opposed to the Sunday “estimates”…
Nobody is disputing distributor Paramount’s figures that Marvel’s summer blockbuster Iron Man made a platinum $15 million on Friday from 4,111 venues, and $21.6 million on Saturday, giving it an estimated FSS total of $50.5 million, or more than double the domestic box office gross of its nearest weekend competitor, to stay No. 1 again. Its new cume is a monster $177.1M. But Warner Bros’ Speed Racer, whether its weekend total is $19.7 million or $20.2 million from 3,606 plays, made only half what the studio hoped, even with lowered expectations because of bad buzz and poor tracking. Not only is the anime actioner this summer’s first summer bomb, but it’s also doing dismally in key areas of its 30+ day and date opening foreign territories. The pic has gone bust in many international markets, with some disastrous openings in Europe in particular. Besides a too-long running time and a too-small audience of younger boys, the Wachowski siblings spent at least $160M making the pic, whereas Fox’s What Happens in Vegas cost only $35 million. Hollywood is convinced Warner Bros has a major writedown on its hands. Vegas took in $7.1 million Friday and $7.5 million Saturday from 3,215 runs for a $20 million weekend. For much more analysis, see my ‘Speed Racer’ Crashes & Burns To Become First Summer Bomb and Weekend Prediction.
The rest of the Top 10 were holdovers: #4 Sony’s Made Of Honor took in $7.6M for a new cume of $26.2M; #5 Universal’s Baby Mama, $5.7M weekend, $40.3M cume; #6 Universal’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall, $3.7M weekend, $50.7M cume; #7 Warner Bros’ Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, $3.1M weekend, $30.7M cume; #8 Lionsgate/The Weinstein Co’s The Forbidden Kingdom, $1.9M weekend, $48.2M cume; #9 Fox’s Nim’s Island, $1.3M weekend, $44.2M cume; #10 Sony Classics’ Redbelt, $1.1M weekend, $1.2M cume.
For more estimates listed by title, see box office results here...Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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The Wachowski bros are proving, time and again (excluding their only lucky blockbuster, the first Matrix), that they actually DON’T KNOW WHAT IT TAKES to make a great movie. These guys are like the Democrat Party of the silver screen — when faced with a challenge, they throw a lot of money at it, and when they fail miserably, they throw more money at it (preferably somebody else’s)… Guys, listen, I grew up watching Speed Racer as a kid, and there was a REASON it was only a 30 minute cartoon — in truth, only a 20 minute cartoon sans commercial breaks. It wasn’t THAT sensational of a toon, and it was mind-breakingly redundant. We kids just watched it to see the Mach V go airborne with its signature “oing oing oing” sound FX and to laugh at Chim Chim and Spritle. The rest of it was boring as HELL — no offense intended toward the late Tatsuo Yoshida. It’s just that the Japanese were and are easily entertained with goofball antics and ridiculous plots, while American audiences were and are anal retentive with short attention spans, and that goes triple for American kids. If the Wachowski bros really wanted to appeal to…well…ANYBODY with “Speed Racer,” they should have produced it as a series of 5 one-hour movies and focused on complete and easily resolved plotlines-per-episode. Ohhh, Speed!
I knew it would happen.
it bombed cause it sucked!
Fun movie, but not appropriate for small children that you dont want to expose to “the bird”. I was shocked and somewhat embarrased to have exposed my seven year old son to the one finger salute in a PG rated film.
The story and previews made the movie look horrible and mind dumbing. Is anyone surprised that this movie did horrible? At least I can start watching TV without every other commercial being Speed Racer.
Com’on, Speed Racer was a kids cartoon, an anime for cry’n out loud. What did you expect?
Big shocker there, WB! The movie looks boring and Iron Man looks awesome.
Also, other than a handful of cartoon fanboys, was this REALLY a live action update audiences were clamoring for?!?!? It’s not like the original show was that interesting to begin with.
Other than a little nostalgia, this one was dead on arrival. Also – the glossy CGI races, while I’m sure are a technical marvel, just look really, really boring.
I’m happy with the idea that Speed Racer could be a complete failure. Are they even trying anymore? I am tired of them replacing real things with computer generated everything…
It was a stupid idea for a movie. Like 90% of the rest of the trash coming out of Hollywood. I hope all of your movies fail!
I really have no interest whatsoever in seeing “Speed Racer,” but I’ll weigh in with a comment just based on the trailer I saw and reading some of the reviews: Why such a monumental waste of resources on a feature-length film? It seems to me the Wachowski brothers might have used this as an opportunity to pump some juice into the short film genre — and then it could have screened ahead of something like “The Dark Knight” or “Incredible Hulk.” It looks like it might have made a fun 10-minute feature. I would watch that. But who needs, or even wants, two plus-hours of this shit? Evidently, based on the weekend box office, not many.
Aside from the fact the trailers were enough to induce seizures, a redux based on 60′s style low-grade Japanimation is always a risky proposition.
“Charles Miller — May 11, 2008 @ 10:26 am” – These guys are like the Democrat Party of the silver screen — when faced with a challenge, they throw a lot of money at it, and when they fail miserably, they throw more money at it (preferably somebody else’s)
Hah! That’s the best comment on this blog Charles. In any event, with this economy and gas prices, one has to wonder how much that has to do with things. It will be interesting to see how Indy IV will do a couple weekends from now.
The movie was about what I expected. My kid liked it and, aside from the seizure-inducing graphics and the totally unnecessary profanity, it was worth the ticket price.
Someone blamed the economy on the movie’s poor showing. How bad could the economy be if Ironman can gross $100M its first weekend and Grand Theft Auto IV can gross $500M in its first week? The answer is probably more basic in a weekend where Ironman is still going strong and mothers don’t particulary care to be subjected to a kid movie on a day when they don’t have to.
I watched the cartoon as a kid. I was surprised someone would want to make it into a movie. That said, it was fairly true to the characters.
Here’s a clue for the studios, just make the previews and release them and then decide whether to make the movie. After seeing the preview for Speed Racer, I could tell this would flop bigtime, hell anyone could.
America is too sophistiscated to throw millions of dollars at a third rate piece of crap Japanese Cartoon. This movie should have NEVER been made and whatever group of execs decided this was a good idea need to have their heads examined. Subtitle it in Japanese..release it on DVD there and cut your loses and run because Anime to Real-Life will always = failure. Only American Cartoons can appeal to American audiences. Japanese anime has such a huge cultural gap you don’t know whether your suppose to laugh or cry at what you are seeing..and what the Japanese interpret as hilarious often comes off as just wierd and creepy to us. This carried over in Speed-Racer..unfortunately.
Speed Racer will be great. I think it can be a word-of-mouth movie and will have a huge DVD release. My 5 year old and I plan to see it next weekend, despite all of these haters!
It’s too bad the movie has been getting bad press, I’m a 30 year old female who saw Speed Racer on a whim and LOVED IT. Absolutely loved it, it was much better done than I expected. I hate to see WB get punished for producing a great movie with expensive production costs because it didn’t have enough violence or smut.
I went to see speed racer with my kids and they loved it…My youngest said it “was the best movie he has ever seen” Iron man on the other hand was a real stinker so i think in the end people will get over the bad and good hype to see what is really the good movies out there.
The problem with Hollywood is that they still think the audience is stupid. They are out of touch with the American audience. What they should have is make a movie that appeals to the 20-40 year olds. We are the ones who remember Speed Racer. I really wanted to like this movie but when I first saw the previews, well it looked dumb.
Pretty movie with lots of color … wasn’t a bad movie but it was LONG.
It’s the second of many casulties for this summer. The first one was Made Of Honor….a attempt to give a alternate to Iron Man. With these movies with overblown budgets that are due to come out……there are going to be a slight number of hits and a lot of casulties. It’s simple math. If you get a great opening weekend and lose your legs with heavy drops in the following weekends…..you are just as screwed possibly as being a $200,000,000 film that can’t have it’s big opening. Sit back and enjoy…..as long as you are not a suffering studio executive.
Emille Hirsch did the talk shows and he is a personality-deprived nobody scrawny-punk-nerd. Nobody is going to go see the film because of him.
Speed Racer is a 40 year old character that has no following with todays kids. They should have tried to bring it back as a cartoon before the flick to get someone interested.
The trailer looked bad. But, why not just play a video game?
And on top of that, Ironman had a great trailer, great leads and that made for a tough opening week.
hahahhahaha. They took a wonderfully simple, classic 1960′s anime and slicked it up and made it garbage.
I’m glad it failed. The W brothers are phonies and I hope we never hear from them again. V for Vendetta was one of the worst films ever made, not to mention that Matrices II & III were unwatchable. These guys are lousy filmmakers. They were trying to ruin a classic, dragging it down with pedestrian, unimaginative dreck.
I knew it was a stupid concept. I was just hoping that it wouldn’t be a stupid movie.
Even by the standards of very young children, Speed Racer has nothing to offer.
Did WB actually think that kids would be attracted to a movie like looked no different than a Saturday morning cereal commercial, was far less engaging (judging by the trailers), and would go on for far too long? What was the concept for this?
“It has bright colors and it moves!”
The TV comercials for this give us no idea of what the movie is about – beyond being one long commercial that you pay to see. Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks understand that, if you want to sell your kiddie movie, you have to engage the adults who are going to sit with those kids.
Even trailers for something as low budget as the Veggie Tales movies give you some idea of what the movie is about.
Crows, while having very small brains, are attracted to bright shiny objects and perhaps this is how the Warchowski Bros. sold this.
And of all weekends to open a candy-coated puff like this, let’s do it on Mother’s Day! Because, by golly, what Mother wouldn’t want to see a movie like this?