Are you seated? Well, can you get seated? I have some shocking news that may forever alter the way you prepare peas.
Nikki Finke, the tough-as-nails Deadline Hollywood Daily editor who once punched her way through the steel hull of a trash barge with her bare fists just for the story, has received word from (I’m guessing) a source deep within Sony that Spider-Man 3 is poised to make a gajillion dollars on its opening weekend. How many gajillions? Try a gajillion gajillions.
All japing aside, the number being quoted is big. Real big. So big that no one could possibly know what it is, save for CHUD box office oracle Andre Dellamorte, who earlier this evening put the number at $17 billion dollars for Friday alone (a direct quote: "Someone at Sony will become the first person in the history of the world to literally drown in money"), culminating in a three-day of $398.3 trillion. It’s a monstrous figure, a mere quarter of which could go a long way toward fixing our nation’s public school system, though I’m told by my source placed even deeper inside Sony than Finke’s source that, "Those smelly fucks got Imus’s head on a spit; what more could they possibly want? A cure for sickle-cell?"
Am I quite done? I guess so. By the end of the May 4th weekend, the tracking suggests that Spider Man 3 will easily rake in over $100 million – which it better, since the first one did $114 million in 2002 back when movies were still being projected onto the sides of barns by unsociable silverback gorillas. We’ve come a long way since then (five whole years to be exact), and what was once the opening weekend record has now been surpassed by Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest, which hauled in $135 million over its initial three-day frame last summer. Can Spidey 3 make that staggering number its supple, unevenly shaven whore? Your guess is as counterfeit as mine. No one’s willing to climb out on that tent-wormed limb yet to see if it’ll take the weight – no one, that is, except CHUD‘s Andre Dellamorte. And that’s why he’s paid in High Life and Merits.
There is actual news in Finke’s piece, however, and it has to do with Spider Man 3 potentially being the Most Expensive Movie Ever Made!!! What’s surprising about this is that no one’s been running with this story like many entertainment journalists did last year with Superman Returns (interestingly, Finke cites Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as the former Most Expensive Movie Ever Made!!! with a budget of $272 million, which is lower than some of the numbers thrown around w/r/t Superman). If Sony’s admitting to spending $250 million on this movie, I’ve got to think they’ve broken the $300 million barrier. If so, that’s a big fucking deal. Like Tiny "Zeus" Lister big.
But not to worry: since Spider-Man 3 is tracking "thru the roof", it’s bound to make back its budget and then some. Actually, I’m glad Finke ran this story because I was just about to pop off about experiencing Spider-Man malaise. Boy, I would’ve looked like a real asshole.