SUMMER SLUMP? Will Smith’s ‘MIB3′ Slows To $70M Memorial Weekend; Fifth Major Movie To Disappoint; Global Cume $203.2M; ‘Avengers’ Still Setting Box Office Records

COMMENTS (245)

• $11 million may not sound like a lot, but the fact that a direct-to-video special like CHERNOBYL DIARIES could open in theaters in the midst of summer blockbuster season and even do that much is quite an achievement.

  Comment by michael — Friday May 25, 2012 @ 11:50pm PDT  Reply to this post

  • Huh?

    It’s a horror film. 11m opening is terrible. It’s an awful movie too.

    Another awful horror film, The Devil Inside, opened to 33m DURING THE FIRST WEEKEND OF JANUARY.

    Chernobyl Diaries has no excuse. It’s horror, WB spend some bucks to promote it, and now WOM is toxic.

    Peli’s golden touch is now turning silver.

    Comment by Ryan S — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 8:41am PDT  Reply to this post

    • “THE FIRST WEEKEND OF JANUARY”…exactly, when the Xmas movies were starting to run out of gas, not directly opposite the debut of a huge movie aimed at the same youth demographic and another huge movie on its way to being one of the top two or three grossers of all time.

      DEVIL INSIDE had a possession/religious theme that appeals to a wider audience, whereas the event CHERNOBYL DIARIES is based on happened before most of its target audience was born. And CHERNOBYL, cast with unknowns, is opening better than THE RAVEN with John Cusack, who still has a following, and SILENT HOUSE with highly promoted It Girl Elizabeth Olsen.

      Considering its low production cost (and even adding in marketing), with foreign and video still to come, CHERNOBYL DIARIES will do just fine.

      Comment by michael — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 2:07pm PDT  Reply to this post

      • “DEVIL INSIDE had a possession/religious theme that appeals to a wider audience, whereas the event CHERNOBYL DIARIES is based on happened before most of its target audience was born.”

        Chernobyl wasn’t out there as a history, it was pushed as Paranormal Activity 4, blasting Peli’s name everywhere. Come on. Nobody was interested. Competition is meaningless when there’s audience interest. There was none.

        I’m starting to think you had something to do with the creation of Chernobyl.

        As for the youth argument, tell that to the film’s R-rating. I’m sure the producers of MIB3 would be surprised to hear their film is being lumped in with a toss-off horror movie. It was counterprogramming for young adults, not kids.

        If Cusack has a following, please let the producers of Hot Tub Time Machine, Igor, War Inc, Grace is Gone, and Martian Child know of this development. Can’t pin 2012 to his lapel.

        Chernobyl tanked. It’s over.

        Comment by Ryan S — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 6:08pm PDT  Reply to this post

        • “young adults” = a large part of the target audience for MEN IN BLACK 3, who were kids when the first two movies came out.

          Peli’s name on more intriguing subject matter would have resulted in bigger grosses. As has been proven time and again, it’s the combination of names AND material that result in audience appeal.

          Anyway, it looks like word of mouth is tanking CHERNOBYL faster than expected. Ah, the perils of commenting based on the Friday estimates…

          Comment by michael — Sunday May 27, 2012 @ 12:36am PDT  

        • Maybe I’m wrong, but I think a big problem with Chernobyl is the cinematography: The previews make it look like both a “found footage” film and a straightforward 3rd person perspective film. Just my opinion.

          Comment by DK — Monday May 28, 2012 @ 11:39am PDT  

• In trying to young down the audience you recast a 75 year old actor with a 50 year old one ?

  Comment by Quantum quadrants — Friday May 25, 2012 @ 11:57pm PDT  Reply to this post

• What’s fascinating is that Avengers will be #1 again next weekend. It will be #2 against Prometheus but will then be #1 again for two or three more weekends after that until Spider-Man opens. That’s amazing. Men in Black is crazy expensive it might make a small profit eventually. Avengers could do $700 M domestic and $2 Billion foreign by September.

  Comment by Anonymous — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 12:05am PDT  Reply to this post

  • It’s official Avengers should be at a minimum 650-700 range. I even posted about it last week. Using The Dark Knight as the FLOOR(it was pretty pathetic) post day 23 in it’s run compared to the Avengers. I can compare a July film and a May film, thanks to the bombs that were released after The Avengers. Films like Battleship and Dark Shadows will lose their screens after their two week windows before The Avengers, so it will maintain a high theater count.

    It’s very likely that The Avengers will crawl to 700 million like The Hunger Games will crawl to 400 million. But just like last week you have to leave room for an upside. Instead of using the simpleton half life decay method(which you can get away with most of the time) you sometimes have to think ahead and treat it like chess, look at the competition, the time of year, etc. So I will make a bold prediction, if The Avengers crosses the 700 million mark before the July 4th weekend, it will probably pass Avatar. I’ll say that it’s unlikely that The Avengers will break 700 million by July 4th, but that’s the only way I see it passing Avatar.

    Like my post last week I’ll state again. The floor for The Avengers is 650 million. I’d say it’s even money it eventually crosses 700 million.

    Comment by JD2 — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 3:59am PDT  Reply to this post

    • It would be great if “The Avengers” could hit 700 million domestically, it’s a fantastic film that deserves every dollar it makes. I just don’t think it will be able to sustain quite enough legs and staying power that will require it to get to 700 million, especially being in the heart of the summer movie season. I myself have it topping out at around 630 million domestically, i do belive that 650 million is a possibility. 700 million might just be a little out of reach in my opinion, i would love to be proven wrong though, haha. By all accounts it should be around 525 million by monday night, so 700 million is not impossible by any stretch of imagination, that’s for sure. I do believe how fast it reaches 600 million will deterimne how far beyond that ‘Avengers’ can go. If it can reach 600 million by sometime in mid June, it might push towards 650-700 million, but if it takes late June to early July to reach 600 million, it probally get’s no higher than 605-620 million. Just my take on it.

      Comment by orlando — Sunday May 27, 2012 @ 4:16am PDT  Reply to this post

• When budgets are so high a $75 mil opening weekend is considered a so so to poor performance…there’s a problem. The films that receive those crazy, large 100 mil plus weekends are usually Marvel superheros (and even then, Capt. America and Thor had opening weekends of $65 mil domestic), films from books that have a huge following (THG, Twilight), or just a stroke of luck with a director/actor that is huge at the time (Alice in Wonderland, the Pirates films)….They really need to cut the budgets down unless they are %95 sure they have a surefire hit, and even then that is always a gamble. Why couldn’t MIB3 be made on a $170 mil budget instead of 300 freaking million? You see someone like Del Toro, who can create rich visuals on a 30 mil budget that looks like a 100 mil budget…and you wonder why others can’t do the same.

  Comment by N — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 12:12am PDT  Reply to this post

• To bad about BATTLESHIP because I thought it was a fun movie to watch.

  Comment by Jerry — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 12:38am PDT  Reply to this post

• So they’re projecting 65-75 million over the four day weekend, that’s around what i was thinking coming into the weekend. If so that’s a pretty solid Memorial Day weekend for ‘MIB 3″, i thought that some of the projections that had it taking in 90-100 million we’re a little over ambitious and stretching a bit. A 65-75 million 4 day take should put this film in postion to be a fairly sizable box office hit, and reviews has been fairly positive, so it should be alright. That huge budget is a concern for the company, so they definantly need “MIB 3″ to be strong overseas, i’m sure if it can take in 550-600 million globally, it should be a profitable film.

  Comment by orlando — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 1:06am PDT  Reply to this post

• MIB3 was exceptional.

  Comment by lalilulelo — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 1:39am PDT  Reply to this post

  • Exceptional….I won’t go that far. But I am amused at all the downers that have not seen it. I think it better than the original. Did not see the 2nd version.

    Oh, and yeah, I get it….lots and lots don’t make sense.

    But, it is just kind of pure fun “highlighted” by the computer graphics. The dialogue is quite great. I liked it a lot while watching…then when I got on the algorewebs understood that it took a bunch of top dr’s to stitch it together. This, I know, usually results in a mess….IMHO it didn’t this time.

    It’s just great fun. And the ending, while odd and disjointed, did bring a tear to me eye.

    That’s what movies are there for. I think sometimes we overthink the “fun” movies.

    I’d give it an 89%. With a lovely sticker to show the team that it nearly knocked it out of the park. (Yeah, I know how much it cost….Everything is relative.)

    Josh Broliin, was too old. Who cares….He was great. I look forward to his next film.

    Going to get a piece of pie. I’d suggest some of you do the same.

    Comment by Slitzy — Sunday May 27, 2012 @ 4:20pm PDT  Reply to this post

    • Ha, the now-classic Deadline “pure fun” bit! So whose PR firm are you with?

      Comment by jer — Monday May 28, 2012 @ 6:43pm PDT  Reply to this post

• If you walked out after 7 minutes you should probably save your opinion about how “unfunny” it was, and you certainly can’t comment on how the villain was “unworthy”. You walked in hating it and just used that lame excuse to get S11.00 back that you couldn’t afford in the first place and wanted to spend it elsewhere.

  Comment by tony — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 1:53am PDT  Reply to this post

  • Right on the money, Tony! Isn’t it amazing that someone is actually stupid enough to think they can offer an educated summation of a movie that they walked out on 7 minutes in, and demanded their money back. If you walked out 7 minutes into a film, your mindset was one of extreme dislike from the time you purchased the ticket, because seven minutes into the film they were probably still rolling the credits for the producers, casting directors, etc. at the bottom corner of the screen.

    Comment by Marc5 — Sunday May 27, 2012 @ 9:48am PDT  Reply to this post

• Good! Well, maybe Hollywood and Sony will stop making these terrible “Men In Black” movies as all have been trash, and if this helps put Will Smith out of business too, great.

  Comment by Uber Critic — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 3:56am PDT  Reply to this post

  • The hate is strong in this one…

    Comment by darth — Sunday May 27, 2012 @ 5:20pm PDT  Reply to this post

    • More like the ability to see through hype.

      Comment by donthypemebro — Sunday May 27, 2012 @ 11:52pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Beating “The Avengers” now seems like a hollow victory, a $75 million weekend is great but “The Avengers” wasn’t going to be #1 forever.

  Comment by Alex — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 4:29am PDT  Reply to this post

• It’s clear the Will Smith reporter slapping incident had a negative effect on MIB3′s opening. Inevitable that an actor’s likeability would take a *hit* with the public after he made a gross display of thinking he was entitled to slap around the little guy. My guess is Sony will make him go into retroactive damage control mode Tuesday with an apology declaration, but it’ll be too little too late to salvage MIB3, which needed to be a grand slam at the box office just to break even.

  Comment by Theo — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 5:10am PDT  Reply to this post

  • You’re crazy that Ukrainian reporter deserved to get slapped. If anything the incident helped Will it made him look great. The reporter tried to kiss him on the lips it’s his shtick it’s what he’s known for. The Sony publicist was visibly upset but she should have been informed about this idiot and kept Will away from him it was her job to know who was on the rope line even if they were in Russia. She should have known to whisper to Will to keep your distance from this guy he’s crazy.

    Comment by Anonymous — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 2:17pm PDT  Reply to this post

  • I must agree with Theo here. Perhaps Smith did not understand that among Eastern European men to hug and kiss is not unlike a handshake and quite common. The reporter did not try to kiss Smith on the lips and yet even if he had, again, this is not uncommon in this part of the world. There was nothing intimate implied by it and certainly someone who is from a community that supports all diversity programs ought to understand that there are diverse customs outside of the U.S. To slap the man was to insult not only him but his host country.

    Comment by Ulli — Sunday May 27, 2012 @ 11:47am PDT  Reply to this post

    • Then Will Smith just pimp slapped the shiznit out of Ukraine.

      Comment by Parents Just Don't Understand — Sunday May 27, 2012 @ 4:01pm PDT  Reply to this post

    • Bull. Everyone deserves personal space, and the reporter crossed the line of common courtesy.

      Comment by Alan — Monday May 28, 2012 @ 2:35am PDT  Reply to this post

• LOLOLOLOL @ “beating” a movie in its 4th week. Some accomplishment.

  Comment by Nunya Biznus — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 6:12am PDT  Reply to this post

• It shouldn’t even cost $200 million, considering how badly the last film did.

  Comment by D.Z. — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 6:59am PDT  Reply to this post

• Saw MIB3 and while it was amazing it was a pretty fun way to spend a couple of hours. Will smith was nice to see after a long absence, Josh Brolin brought some fresh air to proceedings and jemaine Clement was a surprisingly effective villain. It’s just a shame the ending was such a half hearted shrug though I chalk that up to the whole shooting controversy last year.

  Comment by Mrsmith — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 7:00am PDT  Reply to this post

• The fifth summer movie to have underperformed at the box office? Hard to believe given the “great” choices we have to chose from this year.

  Comment by sf781 — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 7:29am PDT  Reply to this post

  • “Cowgirls ‘n Angels” is selling out in 50 theaters in the midwest. It has a 91% audience rating on RT which is pretty darn high. Summer Tentpoles aren’t the only options out there…

    Comment by tigertimbo — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 1:45pm PDT  Reply to this post

  • Hollywood has forgotten how to compete and is run by fear-driven executives who drive up cost throwing money at artistry. And because they’ve never had to compete in life, they’ve created a “one movie opens per week” summer.

    Tentpoles now compete against their own lack of quality.

    Comment by ANON — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 9:41pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Remember the wailing and knashing of teeth in 2010 as Memorial Day boxoffice figures came in?

  Soon after, big b.o. figures were recorded. All smiles.

  What goes ’round comes ’round????

  Comment by brianhawks1 — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 8:43am PDT  Reply to this post

• Saw MIB 3 last night – By no means a perfect film, but also one of the most easily, genuinely enjoyable films I’ve seen in a while. It’s too bad the budget was so high, because it doesn’t feel like an aggressive, huge reboot like you’d expect (Liked Avengers, but you can’t help feeling like you’re being forced to have fun while you watch it)… Solid performances, some really funny moments, and clever alien design. Hope the numbers jump up a bit just for everyone involved…These are the tops of solid efforts that should be rewarded in Hollywood.

  Comment by Kate M — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 10:09am PDT  Reply to this post

• I saw it on IMAX today and liked it. It wasn’t always funny and obviously was a popcorn movie, but the effects were great – not overused, and the 3D quality was mind-blowing( I felt like i was jumping from the building) -a very enjoyable movie if you don’t expect too much. ( I was never a huge fan of both fist and second part, but that one is good)

  Comment by kirpop — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 11:12am PDT  Reply to this post

• I think the expectations were set at 90 mil JUST so people could relish when it didn’t hit obviously overblown expectations. I just saw this and really enjoyed it but seriously, 90 million? For Men in Black? Especially after the second one?

  Comment by Jay — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 3:00pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Am I the only one who just assumes the time travel plot was a device used to let tommy lee Jones work like 10 days….and collect a nice check for a movie he has no interest in making.

  Comment by Lance — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 3:49pm PDT  Reply to this post

  • Tommy is getting old this was his swan song. Now they can do a 4th MIB and Jones won’t be in it at all Brolin will take over the part. They should have made this 3rd one 5 years ago they waited too long for it.

    Comment by Anonymous — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 7:06pm PDT  Reply to this post

• No one is commenting on Michael Stuhlbarg performance in MIB3. The film itself is a non cerebral good time, but the two things that stick in my mind as i think about the movie are Stuhlbarg and Brolin’s performances. Refreashing, fun, and certainly memorable.

  Comment by Richard313 — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 5:42pm PDT  Reply to this post

  • I am glad you mentioned him, Richard313. There are many actors who can deliver strong performances when given good material. However – after ‘MIB3′ and ‘Hugo’ – Stuhlbarg has become the go-to-guy for bringing warmth, credibility and dimension to a plot device. Although he kills it on ‘Boardwalk Empire’, the actor deserves roles more worthy of his talent, like David Strathairn, William Fichtner and Jeffrey Wright.

    Comment by Alan — Sunday May 27, 2012 @ 4:27am PDT  Reply to this post

• No Frank The Pug ,He made the first two look god!

  Comment by Kevin — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 6:50pm PDT  Reply to this post

• They need to go back to acting and drop some of that CIG stuff… It can rob a movie of it’s soul!

  Comment by mark of the wild west — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 10:33pm PDT  Reply to this post

• I loved Chernobyl Diaries, I really did.

  It was much better than I expected.

  It was very suspenseful, in a “Hitchcock” kind of way, where it keeps you on the edge of your seat and keeps you interested in the story.

  It was visually interesting, the story was interesting, and it definitely gives you a few good scares!

  I can honestly recommend it as a suspenseful, entertaining movie that gets your heart pumping in that good way where when something happens, you’re surprised and jump!

  Comment by Candace — Saturday May 26, 2012 @ 11:18pm PDT  Reply to this post

• I was surprised by how serious this movie was for a comedy, but I liked it more than the last two. I can’t imagine it will make much more than 150 million though, because it’s not fun or exciting enough to want to watch more than once in theaters. But I’ll catch it again on DVD.

  Comment by Anton — Sunday May 27, 2012 @ 12:03am PDT  Reply to this post