Impressed with the $36 million opening of Flubber last weekend? It couldn’t begin to compare to the continued summertime heat of Men In Black. Not only is M.I.B. still drawing almost half a million a week at the box office (more than the third week of Mad City), but its video release grossed over $100 million in its first week. This figure included the biggest rental numbers ever, pulling in $13.5 million, which alone would place it fifth in last week’s box office race. Add in sales of five to six million copies of the video, averaging $17, and voila: $102 million. And it occurs to me that M.I.B. is one of those rare smash hits that offers the very real possibility that the sequel will improve on the original. With the origin “problem” out of the way, producers can probably concoct a story much more interesting than Chasing Mikey.
Kirstie Alley is pissed off again and it’s not just because she isn’t getting “The Big One” from Parker Stevenson any more. Kirstie was forced to audition for her role in For Richer or For Poorer, opposite fellow TV star Tim Allen. Why? “There was a certain person at Universal, who shall remain nameless, who told me that I wasn’t box office,” Ms. Alley admits. Well, Kirstie, you aren’t box office. But I don’t understand what doing a screen test could ever do to make you box office. B.O. pull has a negligible connection to talent. Either you is or you ain’t.
Alley also appears in Woody Allen‘s upcoming starfest, Deconstructing Harry, which is being described as everything from an Oscar-worthy film to a piece of crap. We’ll soon find out for ourselves. But another piece of Woody history was recently pulled out of the wastebasket at New York’s public TV station, WNET. The film, a 25 minute mockumentary spoof of the Nixon Administration entitled Men of Crisis: The Harvey Wallinger Story, was made on the fly by Allen in 1971 and was summarily round-filed by the WNET brass for being too politically dangerous. In the film, Allen plays Wallinger, a top Nixon aide with a Harvard Ph.D. in needlepoint, graduating 96th in a class of 95. The film can’t be shown unless Allen agrees, but his management says that it’s unlikely. The film is 26 years old. Way too old for Woody to enjoy.
Will Alien: Resurrection rise from the dead box office week to take top spot? Will Flubber flub its box office break and drown under The Rainmaker? E-mail me what you think.