“Sex and the City 2” failed to repeat the smash-and-grab success of the first movie, pulling in just $32.1 million at the North American box-office over the weekend. Even if you factor in its Thursday opening, the four-day total of $46.3 million falls well short of the $56.8 million the first film made in its first three days.
But within that weekend frame — which is all that counts when the box-office chart stories are being written — “Sex 2” got its clock thoroughly cleaned by “Shrek Forever After”, which held the top spot for a second weekend with $43.3 million. “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time”, which had been pitched as Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer’s latest world-beating franchise-launcher, scraped into third place with $30.2 million.
What happens next? If the blessing of Bruckheimer can’t turn Jake Gyllenhaal into an action hero and Carrie and the gals are looking increasingly like extras from “Land of the Dead”, can we be sure of anything anymore?
Well, people still go to see Shrek movies, we can be sure of that. But this is supposed to be the last one, so that rule isn’t particularly helpful going forward.
Don’t you worry about there not being any more Shrek movies. The Puss in Boots spinoff is already in the pipeline for release next year.
The lameness of the upcoming summer slate is not promising. Tired stars (Cruise! Diaz!), dumb TV retreads (A Team – which looks like they gave the Flashpoint team double their normal budget) and disapointing comic book adaptions (Jonah Hex bigs it up to distract the kids from the fact it’s a WESTERN).
These look to be the only things with any juice – Splice (yay!), The Last Airbender , Inception and [Rec]2.
@ Josh — yeah, I know. And it’s a prequel.
@ Nathan — what’s weird is that anyone would make a Jonah Hex movie at all. (Before the Flash or Green Lantern? Really?) And I’m not sure whether “[Rec]2” is getting a proper theatrical release, but it’s screening June 17th at the Bloor Cinema in Rue Morgue’s Cinemacabre series, so if you’re in town …