Weekend Box Office Report 4/14/2013: Jackie Robinson Hits a Home Run, Ends Racism

If only it were true.  Robinson went a long way to breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball, but racism as we all know, continues onward to this day.  Where would the Tea Farty and many Republicans go and who would they vote for if they didn’t have their fearless leaders feeding into the paranoid delusions of their half witted followers that all minorities are out to get them?

I didn’t get to get out and see 42 this weekend, which was the number one film at the box office.  And I still haven’t made it out to find out if 3D dinosaurs are better than the 2D ones.  And time is running out on that one unless I want to invest in a 3D Flat Screen.  I don’t, not after having just invested in a 2D back in January.

Sometimes…..well most of the time, I hate living where I do.  Being 30 miles away from the nearest theater is a pain in the ass, not only because of the time it takes to get there and back, but because the cost of the gasoline you need to do it just adds to what is usually a pretty expensive outing anyway.  There have been many times I would have gone to see a movie during the week, but when you arrive home from your job at 5:00 or thereabouts, driving over sixty miles is far from being appealing no matter what the reason.

I have a nice enough blu-ray set up here at home, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.  Those movies I don’t make it out to the theater to see, I’ll watch from the comfort of my living room, even though I still prefer the theatrical presentation with it’s sticky floors, overpriced popcorn, crying brats, cell phone distractions, and the guy who sits next to me narrating the film on a continual basis.  Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that you can’t pause the action while you go take a squirt.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, 42 was given a CinemaScore of A+, and was like by all types of audiences be they male, female, young or old:

Financed by Legendary, whose CEO Thomas Tull personally produced the $40 million project, the PG-13-rated 42 recounts the career of Jackie Robinson. The film was written and directed by Brian Helgeland (A Knight’s Tale), and stars Chadwick Boseman as Robinson and Harrison Ford as the Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey. With an excellent A-plus CinemaScore from all four quadrants of the audience, it was embraced by moviegoers as it outperformed expectations, which had the movie opening in the mid-to-high-teen millions.

42 enjoyed something of a hometown advantage in Los Angeles, where the Dodgers now play: Of the top ten-grossing theaters playing the pic, five were in Los Angeles. “It played extremely well in large and small markets, urban and suburban, and we have a great road ahead of us,” said Dan Fellman, Warners president, domestic distribution. “Congratulations to Thomas Tull and Legendary for bringing the picture to us.”

The movie did play older: 83 percent of its audience was over 25, with 45 percent of the audience between 25 and 49. Gender-wise, it broke fairly evenly though, with 48 percent male and 52 percent female. While African-Americans contributed to the audience that turned out for the drama about breaking racial barriers, the film enjoyed broad appeal. “There’s not one pattern that jumps out,” Fellman said. The film is currently playing in 3003 locations, but Fellman expects to expand it further in the coming weekend.

And don't feel sorry for the Weinstein’s Scary Movie 5 either which only managed to scrape up a piddling $15 million which doesn’t at all compare favorably to the $40 million opening of it’s predecessor, Scary Movie 4.  The movie only cost about $17 million to make, and I’m sure it’ll make a profit from the rest of its domestic run and any other Euro’s it can scrape up overseas. You can alread preorder the DVD or Blu-ray if you wish.  Look for this pre-order price to come down quite a bit. 

I know this is going to sound bad but I haven’t even seen the first Scary Movie, let alone it’s long run of sequels.  The whole lame brain premise just doesn’t appeal to me and as long as this blog only has the equivalent of five visitors a week, then there’s no real reason to see some films I don’t want to put any effort into.  And besides that, aren’t most horror films already kind of a parody of themselves?

That doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll exclude bad movies from my viewing habits.  You should already know that from some of my previous Poo Poo winners.  But unless this blog miraculously rakes in $30 thousand a year so I can do nothing but write pointless crap twelve hours a day, I’ll have to keep my shit job until I can retire.  By that time I may be too decrepit to write at all.

On the other hand, Netflix does have the first two Scary Movies available for streaming and if they stay there long enough, I may get to them.  Maybe I’ll even be greatly surprised by their insightful humor and wicked parody of horror films.  Uh-huh.  I’ll let you know. 

There’s one other film I should mention before we get to the chart.  Tom Cruise’s Oblivion actually opened this past week as well.  But not in the U.S.  It hit the European circuit for a rather hefty total of $61.1 Million.  Good for first place in the international market.  It opens in the U.S. this coming weekend.  This is no longer unusual.  Many films have opened overseas before unfolding across the continental U.S.  Spielberg’s Adventures of Tin Tin played in Europe a long time before it arrived here because it was better known.  And there have been films that were declared flops in the U.S. that actually did fairly decent business overseas.  That’s the new world order, so get used to it.  Here’s the tallies: