Weekend Report: G.I. Joe Doesn’t Roll Snake Eyes
by Brandon Gray
August 9, 2009

The summer's last would-be event picture, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, wielded its kung fu grip on the box office over the weekend, though it wasn't quite a real blockbuster hero. With a big movie opening, the weekend as a whole was up 22 percent over the same timeframe last year, when The Dark Knight led for the fourth weekend in a row and Pineapple Express debuted in second. Compared to previous years, though, weekend attendance was middling.



G.I. Joe enlisted an estimated $56.2 million on approximately 5,900 screens at 4,007 sites, ranking as the fourth highest-grossing August opening ever, but a far cry from its Hasbro toyline stable mate, Transformers. Joe's estimated attendance was nearly identical to XXX, another action spectacle that opened on the same August weekend in 2002, and it was slightly higher than similar movies like Mission: Impossible III and Wanted but less than the Fantastic Four movies.

Despite the sizable launches, none of those pictures attained true blockbuster status, and Joe would need to be unusually flinty to break the trend. Distributor Paramount Pictures' exit polling indicated that 60 percent of the audience was male and 50 percent was under 25 years old.



Targeting a different audience than G.I. Joe, Julie & Julia served up a solid estimated $20.1 million on around 2,700 screens at 2,354 sites, which was the biggest-grossing opening on record for a live-action cooking-themed movie (Ratatouille being tops if animation is included). Its debut was more than 60 percent better than No Resrvations, another late summer cooking comedy-drama from two years ago. According to distributor Sony Pictures' research, 67 percent of the audience was female and 64 percent was aged 35 years and older.



Also starting nationwide, A Perfect Getaway captured a soft estimated $5.8 million at 2,159 sites.

Meanwhile, (500) Days of Summer entered nationwide release and surpassed Sunshine Cleaning to become the highest-grossing specialty release of the year.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=2609&p=.htm



USA Weekend Box-Office Summary
week of 7 August 2009

1. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra $56.2M $56.2M
2. Julie & Julia $20.1M $20.1M
3. G-Force $9.8M $86.1M
4. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince $8.88M $274M
5. Funny People $7.87M $40.4M
6. The Ugly Truth $7M $69.1M
7. A Perfect Getaway $5.76M $5.76M
8. Aliens in the Attic $4M $16.3M
9. Orphan $3.73M $34.8M
10. (500) Days of Summer $3.73M $12.3M

Even though it won the weekend, a closer look at the box office from Friday to Saturday tells a story. It dropped over 18%

http://www.hitfix.com/articles/2009-8-9-is-gi-joe-crashing-already-after-big-friday-action-flick-falls-on-sat

With 56.2 Million it isn't a bomb and the people said, "Screw The Critics"!

With 56.2 Million it isn't a bomb and the people said, "Screw The Critics"!

i agree. with any film that makes $56.2 million dollars in just one week, that really cannot be considered a failure. even if it has been slated by the critics. if GI joe made something like 10 million dollars, or less- then that would've been a bomb.

although i'm sure there have been some films that have made even more money than GI joe, even though they have been (just as ) mediocre or plain awful.