The Hollywood Blacklist: Cruise's Mission Proves Less Possible

The Hollywood Blacklist

An unapologetic Wisconsin Republican taking the left-wing Hollywood radical elitists to task and fighting spiritedly against their self-aggrandizing agenda of political correctness and liberal methodology which only serves to demonizing the United States military in their efforts to bring victory to the war against terrorism. Only the operator of this weblog can directly post here, but comments are always welcome. You can e-mail the owner of this site at joseph.kastner@marquette.edu.

Monday, May 08, 2006

Cruise's Mission Proves Less Possible

Source: Comingsoon.net

The third installment in the Tom Cruise action-espionage franchise, Mission: Impossible III, failed to meet expectations as it opened the summer movie season with $48 million in 4,054 theatres, the fourth widest release ever. After earning an estimated $17 million on Friday, it looked like "M:i:III" could at least make $50 million this weekend, but that wasn't the case. It opened significantly lower than the previous movie's $57.8 million opening over Memorial Day in 2000, but higher than the original movie's opening four years prior. Its international opening in 9,500 theatres adds another $70 million onto its opening weekend.

Dropping to second place, the Sony road comedy RV, starring Robin Williams, held up well in its second weekend with $11.1 million, a miniscule 32% drop which brought its total to $31 million.

The independently produced and distributed horror film An American Haunting, starring Sissy Spacek and Donald Sutherland, fared decently against the higher-profile blockbuster, grossing $6.4 million in 1,668 theatres, for third place.

The rest of the returning movies took significant drops with the Touchstone Pictures gymnastic comedy Stick It surpassing Paul Greengrass' 9/11 drama United 93 in their second weekends. The former earned $5.5 million, bringing its total to $17 million, while the latter brought in $5.2 million for a total of $20 million.

Moving up a notch to sixth place, the Fox animated comedy Ice Age: The Meltdown continues to do decent business, adding another $4 million to bring its box office total to $183.2 million. It has already surpassed the box office gross of the previous movie, which capped out at $176 million in 2002.

The video game adaptation Silent Hill and the horror movie spoof Scary Movie 4 both took hefty drops from last week, each earning less than $4 million. By comparison, "Hill" has grossed $40 million to Scary Movie"'s $83.7 million.

Opening in over 3,000 theatres, New Line and Walden Media's family drama Hoot, barely made it into the Top 10 with its $3.4 million opening weekend, giving it one of the worst per-theatre averages for a wide release this year. It tied for 9th place with Akeelah and the Bee, a joint venture between Lionsgate and Starbucks, which dropped 43% from its opening weekend.

The Fox thriller The Sentinel took the biggest hit due to the release of "M:i:III," dropping 61% and falling out of the Top 10, with a weekend take of roughly $3 million. It has earned $30.8 million to date.

Meanwhile, in limited release, the latest movie from Ghost World's Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes, Art School Confidential grossed $142 thousand in 12 theatres in select cities, an average of $11.8 thousand per theatre. According to plans, distributor Sony Classics intends on expanding the film fairly wide next weekend.