| Film | CHUD Pred | Weekend | Per | Total | |
| 1 | Transformers 3 |
$48 (+1m) | $47,025,000 (-52%) | $11,450 | $261,000,424 |
| 2 | Horrible Bosses |
$26 (-2.1m) | $28,110,000 | $9,247 | $28,110,000 |
| 3 | Zookeeper | $23.5 (+2.5m) | $21,000,000 | $6,031 | $21,000,000 |
| 4 | Cars 2 |
$14 (-1.2m) | $15,209,000 (-42%) | $3,812 | $148,828,515 |
| 5 | Bad Teacher | – | $9,000,000 (-38%) |
$3,038 | $78,757,407 |
| 6 | Larry Crowne | $8 (+1.7m) | $6,264,480 (-52%) | $2,105 | $26,525,765 |
| 7 | Super 8 |
– | $4,825,000 (-39%) | $2,105 | $118,056,341 |
| 8 | Monte Carlo |
– | $3,800,000 (-49%) | $1,537 | $16,124,903 |
| 9 | Green Lantern |
– | $3,125,000 (-49%) | $1,551 | $109,708,956 |
| 10 | Mr. Popper’s Assholes | – | $2,850,000 (-49%) | $1,428 | $57,746,774 |
Avg. CHUD Prediction Difference: +/- $1.7m
Friday I did what I could to implore chewers to support Horrible Bosses over Zookeeper this weekend (preaching to the choir, certainly, but folks have kids…), and I’m happy to see that Horrible Bosses lived up to this summer for adult comedy. If it’s cool I’m just gonna go ahead and take credit for the $7m discrepancy and pretty much assume that I’ve singlehandedly saved comedic cinema for a while. Or whatever.
That said, it wasn’t as if a vaguely homo-erotic pairing of Charlie Day and Jason Bateman bore Kevin James’ proverbial ring of power all the way across the barren and broken Sony lot to be tossed back into the unfunny Happy Madison offices from whence it came… A shadow still lurks over Culver City. Zookeeper‘s debut may kill hopes that James will be the next powerhouse comedic opener, but it’s strong enough that he’ll probably get another high-concept piece of shit movie to fall down in. If there weren’t enough other films opening in the coming weeks, I’d even suggest that it could limp its way past $100m- hopefully unlikely in the current climate though.
Oh, and apparently Horrible Bosses has the strongest opening for a “dark/black comedy” ever. That’s an odd record to hold, but it’s true. And since dark comedies are usually box office slow-burns, the film could end up with the same kind of legs that Bad Teacher is showing. Speaking of which, the Diaz vehicle barely flinched with several new comedies on the board, and ended up sticking around in the top 5 (sorry Larry). I still maintain that Bad Teacher is the severely weak link in the comedy chain this summer, but again, at least it was trying for something out of the ordinary.
Naturally Transformers 3 topped the box office again, and it did so with a better second weekend come-down than its predecessor. That much improved word of mouth is definitely helping it out, and since it will be nearing $300 by the time Potter hits (which I still don’t see getting too huge of a “last movie” bump) I don’t think it will have any problem taking the number 1 spot for the year. It’s at $645 million wordwide by the way. Even if it doesn’t quite make it to the Revenge of the Fallen domestic total, it will quite likely surpass the $836m wordwide total. Of course that’s been the case for most major sequels this year, like clockwork.
Potter, Potter, Potter. I see it tonight, and I’ll have many words on it. I have no doubt.
Cheers till then.