Research Guru / Moderator
Posted:
May 11, 2008, 4:54 PM
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Speed Racer eats Iron Man's dust, crashes in 2nd
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Oops, outta gas.
Anime-inspired adaptation "Speed Racer" lacked horsepower in its opening weekend and was lapped severely by pace-setter Iron Man at movie box offices.
Budgeted at $120 million, the live-action version of the classic Japanese cartoon series made only $20.2 million to head into second place, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Marvel Studios' Iron Man -- based on a comic character who also appeared in a 1960s animated TV series -- was way out in front with $50.5 million in its second weekend.
Just behind Warner Bros.' Speed Racer was 20th Century Fox comedy What Happens in Vegas, debuting at $20 million.
Warner Bros. theatrical distribution president Dan Fellman admitted that Speed Racer will have a hard time breaking even: "Unfortunately, it didn't perform to our expectations."
Made by the Wachowski Brothers and starring Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci and Matthew Fox, Speed Racer had been greeted with mainly negative reviews.
"Our tracking was stalled toward the end" about market surveys before the film opened, Fellman added.
Box office for Iron Man fell only 49% in its second weekend for theater in the United States and Canada. As the opening was huge, that's a respectable result, said Paul Dergarabedian, president of tracking firm Media By Numbers LLC.
"Iron Man is basically pulling everybody's audience. It's really dominating the marketplace," he said.
Total domestic box-office grosses this weekend reached $128 million, up 21% from the same period last year. However, revenue so far this year remains down 2.5% at $2.93 billion, while attendance is down by 5.3%.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theatres were released by Media By Numbers. Final figures will be released Monday.
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"Oh boy." -- Allan Sherman
(This post was edited by eminovitz on May 11, 2008, 4:55 PM)
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