Batman will win the box office this weekend. Let’s just point out the obvious. Neither of the new kids on the cinematic block stand a chance of threatening the pole position that TDKR has wrapped up for at least one more week. The fourth installment (in six years) in the Step Up franchise promises to further kill the dancing film brand. What originally started in 2001 as a single venture into the “guy and girl dance until all their problems disappear” genre in the form of Save the Last Dance (a movie that did very well at the box office) has descended into more than a dozen copycat flicks, none of which have attained the quality or success of Save the Last Dance. The original Step Up made $65 million, and each sequel has declined about $10 million, which means this latest version should top out at $35 mil.
Last January, I saw a trailer for a movie called Neighborhood Watch, with Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and Jonah Hill. My initial reaction was “that could be the comedy of the year.” Since then, however, nothing has gone right for the film. In February, a kid named Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Florida by a member of a neighborhood watch. The extremely negative coverage of the shooting led Fox Studios to change the title to just The Watch and drastically change the trailers to point out that the movie isn’t really about neighborhood watches but is just a vehicle for Stiller and company to humorously fight aliens. Unfortunately, the critics are now saying that the humor part of the film is largely non-existent. As it stands now, The Watch will need to do well this weekend on star power alone, because word of mouth won’t likely help it in coming weeks.
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Weekend Box Office Predictions by the Studio Wars Team
Matt
- TDKR: $100 Million
- The Watch: $35 Million
- Ice Age 4: $18 Million
- Spiderman: $10 Million
- Step Up 4: $8 Million
Darius
- TDKR: $83 Million
- The Watch: $21 Million
- Step Up 4: $12 Million
- Ice Age 4: $11 Million
- Ted: $5.5 Million
Ryan
- TDKR: $85 Million
- The Watch: $18 Million
- Step Up 4: $13 Million
- Ice Age 4: $11 Million
- Spiderman: $8 Million
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Kind of surprised at how bad the reviews coing in for The Watch are so far. Curious to see how the user reviews end up.
Ouch, TDKR fell hard. And The Watch did really badly, not helping me at all. At least predictions were the closest, I didn’t have Spiderman in my top 5.