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Weekend Box Office - July 23-25, 2010
Written by US Townhall staff
Tuesday, 27 July 2010 03:33
Boasting the smallest second weekend dropoff of any of this summer's blockbusters, Inception held audience's attention (and maybe they needed to see it a second time to take it all in), and settled in at the top spot, besting the new Angelina Jolie spy flick, Salt. However, Jolie opened quite well, and proved that she can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the guys when it comes to opening a movie. She's also Hollywood's only reliable action chick having starred in previous genre hits such as Tomb Raider, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Wanted.
The news wasn't so good for either the other opener, Ramona and Beezus, which debuted way back in sixth place, or many of the holdovers from recent weeks. The latest flicks from Nicholas Cage, Tom Cruise, and M. Night Shyamalan have become expensive disappointments with Cage and Cruise failing even to break the $100 million mark. At least Selena Gomez'sRamona only cost $15 million to make.
On the other hand, Toy Story 3 has held on remarkably well in its sixth weekend. We don't know that it will break the $400 million mark, but at this point, we won't bet against it, either. Adam Sandler's Grown Ups has also been seeing relatively small week-to-week drops. If Grown Ups can muster another $24 million at the box office, it will be on par with his 2006 smash, Click, in terms of attendance. It has already surpassed his 2007 entry, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry in attendance.
This Friday, we have three debuts: Dinner for Schmucks starring Paul Rudd and Steve Carell; the family CGI feature, Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore; and Zac Efron's latest, Charlie St. Cloud. We don't think that Inception can hold on to the top spot for a third week, but it will be interesting to see just how far it will fall. We're not expecting much from Charlie St. Cloud, not because Zac Efron isn't a good actor, but because he's still in the process of breaking out of his High School Musical fanbase to become accepted by the larger, post-adolescent audience. If he keeps selecting interesting projects, it will happen for him, but it hasn't happened yet.
As for Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, it's a sequel to Cats & Dogs from 2001. Nine years is an awful long time to wait to release a second entry in the family market; the kids who saw it then are teenagers now and way too cool to see the follow up. The first movie didn't perform all that spectacularly at the box office, so we can only assume it did well enough on home video to prompt Warner Bros. to go back to the well and try again.
We're predicting Dinner for Schmucks will open at number one with a box office north of $25 million. At number two will likely be Inception followed by Kitty Galore, Salt, and Charlie St. Cloud. If Dinner opens weaker than we expect, and Inception holds well, it may just end up being number one for a third weekend.
Here are the box office actuals for the weekend of July 23-25, 2010:
Title
Weekend Gross
(US+Canada)
change from
last week
Total Gross
1
Inception
(Warner Bros.)
$42,725,012
-32.0%
$142,883,424
2
Salt
(Sony Pictures)
$36,011,243
debut
$36,011,243
3
Despicable Me
(Universal)
$23,689,060
-27.8%
$161,289,905
4
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
(Disney)
$9,651,495
-45.2%
$42,609,020
5
Toy Story 3
(Disney-Pixar)
$8,917,512
-25.7%
$379,416,551
6
Ramona and Beezus
(20th Century Fox)
$7,810,481
debut
$7,810,481
7
Grown Ups
(Sony Pictures)
$7,428,742
-25.0%
$142,240,828
8
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
(Summit Entertainment)
$7,186,170
-46.5%
$279,827,262
9
The Last Airbender
(Paramount)
$4,217,021
-45.6%
$123,308,790
10
Predators
(20th Century Fox)
$3,120,656
-55.5%
$46,839,081
11
The Kids Are All Right
(Focus)
$2,594,758
+143.8%
$4,909,949
12
Knight and Day
(20th Century Fox)
$1,694,003
-53.0%
$72,675,724
US Townhall RealStories presents: MILL CREEK ENTERTAINMENT
Written by Scott Katz
Monday, 19 July 2010 04:01
Current episode of the US Townhall RealStories radio show recorded on Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 2pm eastern. CLICK BELOW TO PLAY!
Join us for the next episode of our Internet Radio Show, US Townhall RealStories, as we interview Jeff Hayne, the Vice President of Acquisitions for Mill Creek Entertainment. Mill Creek is set to release Hunter: The Complete Series on July 27, a 28-disc DVD box set containing every episode of the 1984-1991 television series starring Fred Dryer and Stepfanie Kramer.
We'll speak with Mr. Hayne about the set and get the scoop on upcoming projects from Mill Creek, who has been licensing many of the classic Stephen J. Cannell produced television series besides Hunter, as well as many of the animated titles previously released by BCI Eclipse (where Mr. Hayne worked prior to Mill Creek) before it folded.
To listen to the show live, visit us here on Tuesday, July 20 at 2pm Easternand click on the link below. Otherwise, come back later in the afternoon, and the entire show will be posted here.
If you have a question, you 'd like us to ask Mill Creek Entertainment, you can email it to
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. Maybe yours will be read on air!
Also, we've been given a sneak preview of the Hunter: The Complete Series DVD set, and we'll have our exclusive review posted here also on Tuesday afternoon.
We're back once again with our exclusive coverage of the summer guilty pleasure series, Big Brother,where 52 cameras and 95 microphones follow and listen in on every move of the contestants who have voluntarily allowed themselves to be locked away from the outside world in a specially-designed house for the summer. Each week one of the houseguests will be "evicted," and the last one remaining in the house will win the half-million dollar grand prize. This twelfth installment is subtitled "The Summer of Sabotage" because, in a Big Brother first, one of the 13 houseguests is not playing to win the grand prize. He or she is in the house for the sole purpose of wreaking as much havoc in the house and on the plans of his or her housemates as possible. If the secret saboteur makes it to week 5 without being evicted, this person will win $50,000. So far, we don't know two things: first, neither the home audience nor the Big Brother contestants have been told who the saboteur is or even been given any clues as to his or her identity. Second, it hasn't been revealed if the houseguest gets to stay in the game after week 5. The way it's been talked about so far, the houseguest will leave after week 5 on his or her own because host Julie Chen said that the saboteur isn't there to win the game. However, this is Big Brother, and they make up rules and twists on the fly, so we can't be 100% certain about anything at this moment.
After watching the first two episodes, we are leaning toward Kristen as being the saboteur. She's received very little screen time so far – to the point where we actually forgot she was in the house until everyone sat down at the round table for the first nomination ceremony on Sunday night's episode. Every other contestant has had a "moment" to be noticed by the other houseguests and the home audience thus far, and the producers are editing the footage in order to convince us that either Andrew or Brendon is the saboteur, which automatically makes us believe it's not them at all.
Who is the secret saboteur? It will be announced to the home audience on the Thursday, July 15 show, and the saboteur will essentially become this season's America's Player as he or she will perform tasks to disrupt the house that are voted on by the home audience.
Below you can meet our 13 incarcerated game show contestants, and keep checking back with us as we begin to post episode-by-episode summaries of this season's shennanigans. If you want to relive the hijinks of last year's game, click on the "Television blog" menu link where our recaps from Season 11 are posted.
These are the 13 houseguests for Big Brother season 12:
Airing for seven seasons on NBC from 1984-1991, Hunter teamed football-star-turned-actor, Fred Dryer, with actress Stepfanie Kramer. The series marked the first major starring roles for each actor (Ms. Kramer was only 28 when the series began), and, while it was not an immediate hit, it soon grew into one of the more memorable 80s action series. Dryer's character, Detective Sergeant Rick Hunter, was seemingly modeled after Dirty Harry, although after Season 1, his violent tendencies were toned way down. Kramer portrayed Detective Sergeant Dee Dee McCall, at first nicknamed "the Brass Cupcake." Hunter was created by Frank Lupo, and produced by Stephen J. Cannell Productions, whose long roster of (mostly action-oriented) television hits includes: 21 Jump Street, The Greatest American Hero, Cobra, The Commish, Renegade, Riptide, Silk Stalkings, Stingray, Wiseguy, and many others, including The A-Team.
Despite coming from the world of sports, Fred Dryer made an easy transition into acting and displayed a natural comfort and charisma in front of the camera. In fact, a few years before the premiere of Hunter, he was one of the few actors to be considered for the part of Sam Malone on Cheers that eventually went to Ted Danson. His on-screen chemistry with Stepfanie Kramer was instrumental to the success of the series and made it a fan favorite throughout the mid-to-late 1980s. Scripts were generally of good quality, and the relationship between Hunter and McCall was allowed to develop and deepen over the seasons. Hunter was a top 30 staple for four of its seven seasons (Seasons 3 through 6), and achieved its highest ratings in Season 5. Kramer left the series after Season 6 in order to pursue other acting opportunities and a music career and seemingly got out of Dodge in the nick of time. The absence of Kramer in Season 7 coupled with a timeslot change to Wednesday from its usual Saturday night perch doomed the series even though it was up against ratings-anemic forgettables such as the one-season wonders WIOU on CBS and the dreaded Cop Rock on ABC.
Now, Mill Creek Entertainment brings together all 152 episodes of Hunter into one 28-disc box set, Hunter: The Complete Series. They were kind enough to send us a copy for review in advance of its street date of Tuesday, July 27 and to join us on our Internet Radio Show today at 2pm Eastern.
Headquartered in Eugene, Oregon, Timeless Media Group is an independent distributor of classic movies and television shows on DVD. It has recently entered into a licensing and distribution deal with NBC Universal in which it will bring several of the classic television westerns from Universal's vaults back into the public spotlight. Among the highlights of this deal were the first season of the highly regarded series Wagon Train, which it released in December 2009 and the first season of The Virginian, which will be released in May 2010.
For this spotlight feature, we'll take a look at some of the other series being distrbuted by Timeless Media which come from the vaults of old Hollywood. All of the following series graced the airwaves during the 1950s and 1960s.
We're back once again with our exclusive coverage of the summer guilty pleasure series, Big Brother, where 52 cameras and 95 microphones follow and listen in on every move of the contestants who have voluntarily allowed themselves to be locked away from the outside world in a specially-designed house for the summer. Each week one of the houseguests will be "evicted," and the last one remaining in the house will win the half-million dollar grand prize. This twelfth installment is subtitled "The Summer of Sabotage" because, in a Big Brother first, one of the 13 houseguests is not playing to win the grand prize. He or she is in the house for the sole purpose of wreaking as much havoc in the house and on the plans of his or her housemates as possible. If the secret saboteur makes it to week 5 without being evicted, this person will win $50,000. So far, we don't know two things: first, neither the home audience nor the Big Brother contestants have been told who the saboteur is or even been given any clues as to his or her identity. Second, it hasn't been revealed if the houseguest gets to stay in the game after week 5. The way it's been talked about so far, the houseguest will leave after week 5 on his or her own because host Julie Chen said that the saboteur isn't there to win the game. However, this is Big Brother, and they make up rules and twists on the fly, so we can't be 100% certain about anything at this moment.
Headquartered in Eugene, Oregon, Timeless Media Group is an independent distributor of classic movies and television shows on DVD. It has recently entered into a licensing and distribution deal with NBC Universal in which it will bring several of the classic television westerns from Universal's vaults back into the public spotlight. Among the highlights of this deal were the first season of the highly regarded series Wagon Train, which it released in December 2009 and the first season of The Virginian, which will be released in May 2010.