Box Office - September 2-4, 2011

1	1	The Help	BV	$14,594,623	+0.4%	2,843	+65	$5,134	$118,985,176	$25	4
2	N	The Debt	Focus	$9,909,499	-	1,826	-	$5,427	$11,810,913	-	1
3	N	Apollo 18	W/Dim.	$8,704,271	-	3,328	-	$2,615	$8,704,271	-	1
4	N	Shark Night 3D	Rela.	$8,404,260	-	2,806	-	$2,995	$8,404,260	-	1
5	3	Rise of the Planet of the Apes	Fox	$7,915,295	-10.7%	3,193	-181	$2,479	$160,139,988	$93	5
6	2	Colombiana	TriS	$7,463,200	-28.3%	2,614	-	$2,855	$22,025,322	$40	2
7	5	Our Idiot Brother	Wein.	$5,450,884	-22.3%	2,555	-	$2,133	$15,686,228	$5	2
8	4	Don't Be Afraid of the Dark	FD	$5,195,268	-39.1%	2,780	+20	$1,869	$16,635,457	$25	2
9	6	Spy Kids: All the Time in the World	W/Dim.	$4,817,284	-19.8%	3,007	-298	$1,602	$29,216,589	$27	3
10	7	The Smurfs	Sony	$4,099,478	-13.8%	2,706	-155	$1,515	$132,052,090	$110	6

Read more »

conan the barbarian 2011

Read more »

Spy Kids 4 Trailer

Read more »

Rise of the Planet of the Apes - Trailer

Read more »

Surprise box office tie for "Cowboys", "Smurfs"

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The tiny blue "Smurfs" battled big-name, big-budget "Cowboys & Aliens" to a surprising tie at the domestic weekend box office with each film ringing up an estimated $36.2 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates on Sunday.

"The Smurfs" live-action and animated 3D film drew families to the latest adventure of the classic Belgian cartoon characters and grossed higher-than-expected sales. "Cowboys & Aliens" fell short of pre-release estimates from box-office watchers.

The totals are estimates of ticket sales from United States and Canadian theaters for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The leader will not be known until actual sales are tallied on Monday.

Going into the weekend, "Cowboys & Aliens" was seen easily topping box-office charts with starpower from James Bond actor Daniel Craig and "Indiana Jones" star Harrison Ford, plus director Jon Favreau from the hit "Iron Man" series and Steven Spielberg among the producers. The film is set in the Wild West in 1873, when a spaceship arrives in Arizona and runs into a posse of cowboys.

The movie offered "a fresh and unique concept," said Nikki Rocco, president of distribution for Universal Pictures, a division of Comcast Corp that released the film. "It was a bet worth taking with these filmmakers."
A lower-than-expected total for "Cowboys & Aliens" collided with a bigger draw from "The Smurfs," a movie that revived characters that debuted more than 50 years ago.
"In the summer, family films are a hot commodity," Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst with Hollywood.com, said of the "Smurfs" success.
Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution for Columbia Pictures, said the "Smurfs" film "performed beyond our expectations." Columbia Pictures is the unit of Sony Corp that released the movie.
Third place for the weekend went to superhero flick "Captain America: The First Avenger" with $24.9 million in domestic ticket sales during its second weekend in theaters.
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 2," hitting its third weekend, finished fourth with $21.9 million. The final installment of the popular boy wizard series topped $1 billion in worldwide sales to date, the ninth film in history to hit that mark, distributor Warner Bros. said.
"Crazy, Stupid, Love," a new romantic comedy starring Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Julianne Moore, took the No. 5 spot in the U.S. and Canada with a solid $19.3 million.
"Captain America" was released by Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom. Time Warner Inc unit Warner Bros released "Crazy, Stupid, Love" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 2."
(Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

Read more »

'Potter' finale conjures up $1 billion worldwide

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Harry Potter has joined the billion-dollar club.

Distributor Warner Bros. said Sunday that "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" crossed the $1 billion mark at the worldwide box office. It's soon expected to pass "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," which is this year's top grossing movie at $1.03 billion.

The last of the eight films about the young wizard is the first in the franchise to reach the billion dollar mark. The previous best global haul was $974.8 million for the original film, 2001's "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."

With $21.9 million domestically this weekend, "Deathly Hallows: Part 2" climbed to a domestic total of $318.5 million. That tops the franchise's previous best of $317.6 million for "Sorcerer's Stone."

But factoring in today's higher admission prices, "Deathly Hallows: Part 2" has not caught up to "Sorcerer's Stone" in terms of actual tickets sold.

The 2009 film "Avatar" holds the record for the biggest worldwide box office haul, grossing $2.8 billion. It's followed by another James Cameron film, "Titanic," which brought in $1.8 billion.

Read more »

Captain America: The First Avenger trailer movie

Captain america poster.jpg
There's an element of slavish worship to any superhero myth, but that's particularly true for Captain America, a WWII-era propaganda comic that took a sickly young man who just really wanted to fight those damn Nazis and made him into the pinnacle of the American ideal -- which is, of course, a 'roided up war-machine in a red-white-and-blue lycra suit. Now, because interminable, ambiguous wars with no clear objective are for pussies, we are privileged to welcome back the Cap'n into our popular consciousness equipped with Adolf Hitler as his foil -- every hero needs a villain, after all, and plus, comic-book-origin flicks are totally hot right now with nostalgic Gen-Xers, all of whom are expected to walk out of theaters and immediately vote Republican.

It's hard to argue that, like pretty much every cinematic effort Marvel has been cranking out for the last decade or so, Captain America: The First Avenger looks like a pretty engaging flick. But it's also hard to argue that it lays on the nationalism pretty thick -- the "new breed of super-soldier" thing actually comes off pretty sinister within the context of the ensuing years of American warfare. But then again, Captain America is not exactly inviting us to consider the context, either.
Where this trailer gets bizarrely fetishistic, though, is right about at its halfway point -- at exactly 1:28, in fact, when our spunky hero emerges from his not-so-subtle cocoon like he just spent the last year at Goldberg's Gym. Did the tech guy just check him out under his shades like he was 2 Live Crew at the beach? Yes, he did, and as we all know, that means only one thing: Captain America is about to start getting all the chicks

Read more »