Box Office: Got Bank? The Butler Will Get That For You.

With the major success of Lee Daniels' The Butler, second week at the top and already his highest grosser, one senses that Crazy Daniels can do whatever he wants next, carte blanche. Will it be that troubled Janis Joplin biopic as rumored? I actually hope so because I want Amy Adams to sing onscreen more (when don't I want singing actresses to do this?) and I think she could use some of the abandon that Lee Daniels seems to inspire in his actresses.

I liked her rare rougher edges in The Fighter so much. If it weren't for her meercat fixation that one time, the peak of her career might well be that porch scene with Christian Bale. What have you ever done with your life, Amy?

I like my life. I like my life [...] 

All right. I drank too much. I worked in a lot of bars. And I ruined a lot of opportunities but I'm trying to do something better here. And so is Mickey. 

Come on. Come on. People took several pieces of that heart already, baby. So bring that Janis Joplin biopic on!

Oh but now we're way off track. Where were we? The weekend box office...

BOX OFFICE
01 LEE DANIELS' THE BUTLER $17 (cum. $52.2) Podcast & Review
02 WE'RE THE MILLERS $13.5 (cum. $91.7)
03 THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS $9.3 *new* 
04 THE WORLD'S END $8.9 *new*
05 PLANES $8.5 ($59.5)
06 ELYSIUM $7.1 (cum. $69) Podcast & Review
07 YOU'RE NEXT $7 *new*
08 PERCY JACKSON 2 $5.2 (cum. $48.3)
09 BLUE JASMINE $4.3 *wide* (cum. $14.8) Podcast & Review
10 KICK-ASS 2 $4.2 (cum. $22.4)

In limited release Wong Kar Wai's The Grandmaster led the newbies with $132,000 at 7 locations and Short Term 12 opened with $60,000 at 4 locations. If I controlled the world Short Term 12 (reviewed) would have opened on 1000 screens to sold out houses but the world is a poorer place because I do not and it did not. But go see it anyway! Fruitvale Station (reviewed) inched past $15 million and Una Noche, a Cuban film winning rave reviews that Glenn just discussed, opened with $18,500

What did YOU see this weekend? Why are you so quiet this weekend?

Burning Questions: Is the Summer Blockbuster Broken?

Michael C. here to sift through the Doomsday warnings that the Summer box office has provoked. How fitting is it that the story of this Summer’s box office is beginning to resemble one of the disaster movies Hollywood so loves to foist on audiences? 

Seldom does a Summer go by without a high profile flop or two, but these days we can’t get through a weekend without some mega-budget Summer tent-pole crashing and burning. R.I.P.D., White House Down, Lone Ranger, Turbo. One bomb after another. Slate dubbed it the Summer of the Mega-Flop, while the AV Club simply asked “Are Movies Doomed?” These are intelligent, well reasoned articles but in disaster movie terms they are the equivalent of the crackpot scientists prophesying Armageddon, warning everyone to “Look to the heavens! It’s an extinction level event!”

Many blame the crowded media landscape vying for consumer attention. Others point to the recession limiting the disposable cash in consumer pockets. The overall crappiness of the movies themselves hasn’t gone unnoticed either (out of the many underperformers I’d say only Pacific Rim doesn’t richly deserve its fate). The truth involves some mix of all of these factors, but I think the main problem may lay somewhere deeper. I ask you, Is Hollywood’s blockbuster formula fundamentally broken? 

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Top Ten Biggest Money-Making Actresses Right Now

For today's Tuesday's Top Ten we're using Forbes numbers for discussion lift-off We recently discussed their list of the top paid actors from the past twelve months and came to the conclusion that they don't challenge themselves much at all. The women are a slightly different story. While it's true that no one would mistake this for a list of 'The Best Actresses Working' or 'The Actresses Who Are Currently Testing The Limits of Their Range,' this list does have slightly more variety in filmography though far less in terms of beauty and age as is always the case with the men and the women of Hollywood

01 Angelina Jolie $33 
Tops the list by way of signing on to Maleficent for Disney. The Sleeping Beauty prequel is a surefire hit, both because it's presold -- branding being everything -- and because it's Jolie who rarely falters at the box office. 

nine more ladies and an actress poll after the jump

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What Did You See This Weekend: Wolvie or Jasmine?

Amir here, bringing you this weekend’s box office report. Hit by superhero fatigue (more specifically ‘X-Men fatigue’ or even more specifically ‘Hugh Jackman as Wolverine’ fatigue) and feeling generally uninterested in most of the weekend’s leftover offerings, I spent the past couple of days at home catching up with some classics. The rest of North America felt differently, rushing to see Jackman’s sixth outing as the adamantium-clawed hero to help it to a total gross of 55 million dollars. Box office analysts suggest this number is well below the expectations but considering that with the international gross, The Wolverine has already surpassed its entire production budget in three days, it is well beyond the limits of my understanding how that is not considered a success.

BOX OFFICE

01 THE WOLVERINE $55 *NEW* 
02 THE CONJURING $22.1 (cum. $83.8)
03 DESPICABLE ME 2 $16 (cum. $306.4) 
04 TURBO $13.3 (cum. $55.7)
05 GROWN UPS 2 $11.5 ($101.6)
06 RED 2 $9.4 (cum. $35)
07 PACIFIC RIM $7.5 (cum. $84) 
08 THE HEAT $6.8 (cum. $141.2) Review
09 R.I.P.D. $5.8 (cum. $24.3)
10 FRUITVALE STATION $4.6 (cum. $6.3) Review
11 THE WAY WAY BACK $3.3 (cum. $8.9)
12 WORLD WAR Z $2.7 (cum. $192.6) Review

The weekend’s other wide release is the virginity comedy called The To-Do List. Not helped by the generally negative critical response, Aubrey Plaza and co. sold less than two million dollars worth of tickets and debuted outside the top ten, surely a failure by all measures. On the other hand, The Conjuring continued its strong run and proved once again that horror films are the most consistently profitable genre in today’s cinema. Meanwhile, Fruitvale Station added more than 1000 screens and The Way, Way Back nearly 600, and they were both rewarded with strong returns, allowing them to finish at 10th and 11th respectively.

The real story of the weekend, however, was in the tiny release of Blue Jasmine. Those of us not lucky enough to live in NY and LA will have to wait at least a week to see it, but Woody Allen’s latest opened to an astonishing 102k/screen average on six screens, surpassing the screen average of the widely successful Midnight in Paris. It’s probably a bit much to expect a similar final tally for Jasmine, but the signs are all good so far.

What did you see this weekend? (If you are as uninspired by the top ten as I am, may I suggest the acclaimed documentary The Act of Killing or Computer Chess? See them if they’re open near you!)

What Did You See: Hauntings, Shootings or Snail-Races?

If people were actually going to see the new Patrick Wilson movie to see Patrick Wilson he'd be a bankable star instantly! But we know they're going to The Conjuring -- just like they went to Insidious -- because the audience for cheaply produced horror flicks is enormous and insatiable.  But at least Our Mr Wilson has found a cash-cow niche since Hollywood proper couldn't figure out what to do with him despite a) talent, b) a stellar singing voice, and c) matinee idol looks.

Patrick Wilson recording reactions to Vera Farmiga's Emmy nomination

TOP O' THE CHARTS
01 THE CONJURING $41.5 *NEW* 
02 DESPICABLE ME 2 $25 (cum. $276.1)...about to become the 2nd biggest hit of 2013
03 TURBO $21.5 *NEW* (cum. $31.2)
04 GROWN UPS 2 $10 (cum. $79.5)
05 RED 2 $18.5 *NEW* 

It was a rough weekend for The Lone Ranger (reviewed) which lost a huge swath of screens and fell out of the top ten in only its third weekend. Things weren't much rosier for the crowded field of newbies apart from the documentary Act of Killing which had the best per screen average and excitable reviews and The Conjuring. The latter has already doubled its budget where other newbies like the snail-racing cartoon Turbo and the CGI action comedy RIPD (Ryan Reynolds just can't open movies but Hollywood keeps trying to fix that) with budgets well over $100 million struggle to find an immediate audience. I hope that the disappointing totals for Red 2, which opened weaker than its predecessor though sequels usually build these days, and RIPD which looked like a plagiaristic reboot of Men in Black (at least in trailer form) with aliens swapped out for dead people, give Hollywood cold feet about greenlighting sequels or reboots of EVERYTHING ...but that's hoping for a miracle, I know. 

In limited release The Way Way Back is still building an audience and Fruitvale Station (reviewed) did well in its second weekend passing the million dollar mark. It goes wide next weekend and is surely hoping to win enough box office attention to seal its status as a talking point Oscar contender.

Last Chance! If you can find Frances Ha and The Bling Ring, two of the most unique and discussable 2013 movies, in a theater near you, do it. They'll vanish from theaters any second now and you won't see them on DVD for awhile and good movies are better in theaters anyway!. Only Bling Ring has a date (September 17th) announced.

What did you see this weekend?