20 Weeks Archive for May, 2007
20 Weeks: The Sequel
The point of this column is not to shovel dirt on the past, but to look to the quite immediate future. There is an entire summer ahead of us that looks a lot like one of the strongest summers ever without The Big Three being any more than The Big One.
Last summer, it was Pirates 2 followed by Cars in #2 slot with $244 million domestic. In 2005, it was Star Wars 6/III followed by $234 million domestic for War of the Worlds. In 2004, it was Shrek 2 and Spider-Man 2 in the ether and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with $250 million domestic in third.
The closest thing to this summer was 2002, with Finding Nemo and The Matrix Reloaded huge in May and Pirates of the Caribbean huge in July with Bruce Almighty at $243 million for #4 and X2 with $215 million domestic at #5. But that was so very different also. Nemo opened to “just” $70 million and did almost 5 times that opening. Bruce Almighty was a surprise with a $68 million opening and about 3.5 times that total domestic.
The rest…
20 Weeks… A Month In
Back to the suckage …
Spider-Man 3 … Shrek The Third … Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End …
The irony is that all three of the triquels suffer from many of the same diseases. The most significant one is the confused disease of trying too hard to be people pleasers. All three add characters that really have nothing to do other than to be new. The two non-animated films add massive special effects, some of which really don’t work, although they are well done in and of themselves. All three seem to forget what is at the core of why people love the previous movies.
The rest…
And the not-much-changed chart