The Hollywood Blacklist: Pixar's Cars Takes Checkered Flag!

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.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Pixar's Cars Takes Checkered Flag!

Source: Comingsoon.net

The big release this weekend was Pixar Animation Studios' seventh computer animated movie, Cars, featuring the voices of Owen Wilson, Paul Newman and Larry the Cable Guy. Set in a world inhabited only by 4-wheeled vehicles, the G-rated family comedy grossed an estimated $62.8 million its opening weekend, an average of $15,579 in 3,985 theatres. Even though it received a wider release than Pixar's last movie The Incredibles and opened in 600 more theatres than Finding Nemo, their only other summer release, it earned less money than both those movies, which each opened over $70 million. It's currently the fourth-highest opening movie of 2006, but it's not a good sign for it to replicate previous Pixar films' success, since the reviews aren't nearly as overwhelmingly positive as previous releases.

After topping the box office last week as the second-highest opening rom-com ever, Univeral's The Break-Up, with Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn, dropped to second place with a second weekend take of roughly $20.5 million. Despite its 48% drop, it has already grossed $74 million.

The 20th Century Fox remake of the horror-thriller The Omen, which grossed more than $12.5 million on Tuesday, setting a new record for the day, fought with Fox's action threequel X-Men: The Last Stand for third place. According to estimates, the latter has claimed victory by a mere $100,000, with each of them making rougly $15.5 million over the weekend. Regardless of its placement, The Last Stand was able to cross the $200 million mark this weekend, making it the first movie of '06 to hit that milestone as well as it being the highest-grossing movie of the year so far.

Another race too close to call is the fifth place feud between DreamWorks Animation's Over the Hedge and Sony's The Da Vinci Code, a mere difference of $1,000 separating them according to estimates. The DreamWorks comedy took a 50% tumble due to the introduction of Cars into the market, but its $10.3 million weekend take brings its total to $130.2 million. By comparison, The Da Vinci Code, which opened the same weekend, has grossed $189 million so far.

Entering the box office at #7, Garrison Keillor's NPR radio show A Prairie Home Companion came to the big screen thanks to director Roger Altman and newcomer Picturehouse, who released the musical-comedy into 760 theatres, where it earned an estimated $4.7 million over the weekend, an impressive average of $6,166.

Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible III earned another $3 million in its sixth weekend, bringing its total to $127.5 million, while Robin Williams' road comedy RV ends its run in the Top 10 with another $2 million, bringing its total gross to $65 million.

Rounding out the Top 10 was the summer's biggest bomb, Wolfgang Peterson's Poseidon, which has yet to gross $55 million including this weekend's $1.8 million take.

Just outside the Top 10, the global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth added another 45 theatres and another $1.5 million to bring its total to $3.9 million.

The only significant movie in limited release was the Miramax documentary The Heart of the Game about a Seattle-based girls basketball team, but it didn't generate much interest in the 3 theatres in New York and Los Angeles, earning only $12.2 thousand.