Atlantis bests Shrek at box office

[airlarry!]

This just in from Yahoo! box office (weekend results):
http://movies.yahoo.com/hv/boxoffice/latest/rank.html

Atlantis, per screen average: $164,505.50
Shrek, per screen average: $11,805.90

These are both opening week numbers, of course. Now Atlantis was only open on 2 screens...and shrek was open on 3200+ ......

This of course translates to a wide-release number of somewhere around $525 million for Atlantis true opening weekend, which I think is far above Disney's estimates. And this would probably beat the Lion King's box office records.

Just remember folks, when you read some of the numbers posted on the board, that numbers can be spun one way, and spun another way depending upon the spinner. I'm not flaming anybody, because I enjoy reading the movie posts. Just take everything with a grain of salt and common sense.

 

[wdwguide]

13th spot... not bad for two screens!

 

[MikeS]

Easy guys
First off Shrek is in week four it should lose a little steam.( It lost very very little steam)Second these were company premieres. Largely sold out by Disney. Third There was no Tomb Raider in the mix. If you look at your figures It also wiped out Disney's maga hit wanabe Pearl and almost took Titanic's whole world wide gross in 1 weekend. Sorry guys ..that ain't gonna happen.
Atlantis will do moderate at the box office, I'll say 90 million it's whole run, but Disney will not hold the Summer animated #1 film slot of summer as it has for past years.... that title goes to the ogre.

 

[airlarry!]

Uh. Tongue-in-cheek. Out.

I would hate to see Disney lose the#1 ranking, but it would be worse if I see Atlantis on Friday night and it is a better movie than Shrek.

Mike, we won't see eye-to-eye on this, because we have different opinions on other movies. I think TS2 is vastly superior to Shrek. I kind of sat through Shrek, laughing of couse at many parts, but staring numb at others going, "why did I take my five-year-old to this?"

 

[MikeS]

Larry
I really don't think we are too far off. I didn't like TS2 that much and I didn't love Shrek. I am just telling what the MASSES have said by their ticket purchases and THEY LOVE SHREK. I found it funny at times and boring at others. The masses can make or break a movie and they have made Shrek and they will make Tomb Raidera hit.TR is not my cup of tea. Just what we need another effects heavy female Indy Jones.Hey The masses loved Charlies Angels and that was the worst film I ever saw.

 

[airlarry!]

Yeesh. You are right. I forgot about the numbers that 'Angels' did. I am as guilty as the rest at yelling at Uncle Mike's henchmen for making banal idiotic movies...but what else are they to think when junk makes millions.

As much as I may or may not disagree with the politics of the Miramax movies, I will give it to the Brothers, they seem to make movies for the Art of making movies rather than pandering for the money. Another Voice had a good comment....the original screenplay for Pearl Harbor, with a few tweaks in the right direction, would have been a great movie...but instead they tweaked it into The Great McMovie (BTW: I enjoyed PH, but only as much as I enjoyed Armaggedon--you have to be in the mood for that kind of movie. You cannot go into a movie like that expecting anything more from it==just lots of cool action, stunts, great footage, and a passable storyline).

BTW: Charlie Stossel said TR is a bore, and Jolie is not convincing as Lara. He said the plot is reminiscent of Mission Impossible.

 

[Another Voice]

Actually, Miramax releases it fair share of dreck as well (how about the ‘Hellraiser’ series for a start). And it’s not entirely the American public’s blame for rotten movies –the rest of the world is part of the problem as well. More than half of the box office for ‘Charlie’s Angels’ came from oversee – and at generally better terms for the studio than what they get domestically. It’s also damn hard to make a good movie and most people in Hollywood simply lack to talent anyway. It’s much easier to have the marketing department create a carpet-bombing ad campaign than it is to find a good writer with a good script. With the average Hollywood film costing over $60 million these days, studios are being forced to “playing it safe” with the corporate money. It’s just a vicious cycle that the public can only go to the movies that are playing, so Hollywood assumes that the hits are the kind of movies that people want to see.

I also don’t think The Masses are all that ignorant. Ya, ‘The Fast and The Furious’ may do well but that’s simply because the public is hoping against hope for a good time. But the market for smaller, better movies has never been stronger (run to the theaters to see ‘Memento’) and more can’t-miss-hits are failing at the box office. The public rightly punishes those movies that are made without skill and without ambition. Watch as ‘Tomb Raider’ – one of the most truly insulting movie I’ve been forced to sit through – gets hammered in the second and third weeks of its release. People understand marketing too well these days and aren’t fooled by it for long. Just ask anyone in the ‘Pearl Harbor’ group at Disney.

P.S. The first draft for ‘Pearl’ is pretty dreadful too. But the first draft was only a starting point and the script still had some potential. I “obtained” it because the writer (Randall Wallace) is writing and directing another movie I was really looking forward to (‘We Were Soldiers Once…’) about the first major battle in Vietnam with US troops. One explanation for ‘Pearl’ is that Mr. Wallace just wrote it to pay the rent while he used his talents on his own film.