The movies slumped this weekend, as a wave of new releases failed to get the necessary momentum to knock “Real Steel” off the top of the box-office charts.
Neither “Footloose” nor “The Thing” nor “The Big Year” proved a sufficient challenge to the Hugh Jackman robot-boxing movie, which grossed $16.3 million in its second weekend of release and remained in first place. Craig Brewer’s “Footloose” remake came closest with an estimated $16.1 million; Matthijs van Heijningen’s “Thing” prequel took in $8.7 million to take third, while “The Big Year” came in ninth with a dismal $3.3 million.
It’s hard to imagine a movie starring Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson did that poorly. Will Fox blame the unfocused marketing campaign, which failed to sell the whole birdwatching angle, or the movie, which is a little on the unfocused side itself?
Funny to note that “The Thing” suffered almost exactly the same fate as “Let Me In”, another horror remake/reinterpretation that opened this time last year and was critically embraced as surprisingly not-bad but ignored by the fan base that would have loved it. Ah, well, they’ll discover it on disc, just like they did with Matt Reeves’ movie …