Box Office

Wow. I didn’t see this one coming.

Proving once again that you can’t keep audience members with no taste down, Meet the Spartans stood up to an invading empire of other films and earned $6.5 million on Friday, January 25, 2008, to beat out both Rambo and Cloverfield. Steve Mason over at SlashFilm predicts the new Rambo movie – which features Sylvestor Stallone in his latest attempt to salvage a dying career – will end up winning the weekend… But, what the Hell?

Meet the Spartans looks God awful and likely is even worse, as it is just the latest in a series of terrible spoof movies such as Date Movie and Epic Movie. Are there people who actually like these films? The comedy is inane, and when you can’t even fill out a two-minute preview with funny moments, you know you’re in store for some pain. So how did Meet the Spartans manage to make $6.5 million on Friday? I have no clue.

Rambo, which received only a 34% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes, opened on Friday to approximately $6 million. I thought for sure this one would win the weekend, with not much other competition out there other than Cloverfield. I guess violent action movies really are dead, which is a real shame.

The other real shocker is Cloverfield, however. Everyone knew the movie would fall hard, as last week’s numbers were inflated by a huge fanboy rush to see it opening weekend, but could anyone have predicted a 68% freefall? The J.J. Abrams monster movie earned only $4.5 million for the weekend.

The Diane Lane thriller Untraceable opened to $3.5 million on Friday and How She Move managed to open up outside the Top Ten with approximately $1 million.

Cloverfield, the J.J. Abrams-produced monster movie, earned $41 million over the three-day weekend, according to box office estimates. With Martin Luther King, Jr. Day tomorrow and many of the film’s target demographic free, the movie is set to make a fair amount of money on Monday, too.

The movie only costs $35 million to make (I’ve heard some reports that say $25 million), and combined with the $41 million three-day take means:

• It has already made more than its production budget
• It beat out the re-release of Star Wars‘ $35.9 box office weekend that up until now has held the January box office record
• It beat out Black Hawk Down’s $33.6 MLK holiday weekend record.
• It goes to show that you can make a high quality film on a low budget.

Congrats to Cloverfield for once again showing Hollywood that you don’t need to spend $150 million to make big action movies.

Cloverfield, easily the most anticipated film of early 2008, did not disappoint on Friday, January 18th, as it earned a whopping $16.7 million on Friday. Other Friday estimates have it at $18.25, and I have to figure the disparity between the figures relates to the Thursday-night midnight showings.

UPDATED: Here are the final box office weekend estimates for Cloverfield.

Either way, the Friday grosses put Cloverfield in a position to earn approximately $45-$52 million over the weekend, an astounding feat considering that January is usually a month reserved for expanding Oscar-worthy films and the dreck studios want to dump. I haven’t seen Cloverfield yet (UPDATED: read my Cloverfield movie review), but it’s actually receiving pretty decent reviews – decent enough for a monster movie, anyway. The handheld camera approach is getting a bit of criticism, but it sounds like the movie entertains nonetheless.

The $16-$18 million Friday gross for Cloverfield puts the J.J. Abrams movie in a nearly guaranteed position to set box office records for the most earned over a three-day weekend in January. On top of that, don’t forget that Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is on Monday, which means that the movie is also poised to break records for the MLK holiday weekend. I have trouble considering it a holiday weekend since I have to work on Monday, but that’s another story.

Write your own movie review for Cloverfield here.

Thank you, Lord! In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale has flopped, taking in only $950,000 on Friday, January 11, 2008. That means the movie, according to Box Office Prophets, should only make about $2.5 over the three-day weekend.

Why I am so happy? Well, as you probably know, the movie is directed by Uwe Boll, the worst director in the history of cinema. Uwe Boll’s movies suck beyond belief, and I’m sure In the Name of the King is no different.

I was worried, however. The movie has a better cast (Jason Statham, for instance) than some of his other pictures, and the production values seem higher. As far as the movie trailers go, the marketing team did a pretty good job in making the movie look halfway decent; while it doesn’t look great, the trailer is cohesive enough to pass the film off as a respectable, B-grade fantasy action picture. I was worried that audiences unaware of Boll’s deadly touch would turn out and give In the Name of the King a $5-$7 million opening, which would just be horrible.

But now my Saturday is better… If the Seahawks beat the Packers, I will be on top of the world!