'The Happening' is a Happening After All

There's some good news for Night Shyamalan, after all. The Hollywood Reporter tells us The Happening debuted well overseas, where it also got negative reviews, taking in an estimated $32 million on 5,700 screens. In fact, that number makes it the highest grossing overseas film this weekend, despite its third-place finish in the U.S. Now, to be fair, it was in 2,500 more theaters than The Incredible Hulk, which made a whopping $31 million and nearly doubled the per-screen average of The Happening, but...any port in a storm, or so they say. Fox is putting the positive spin on the numbers. "We were in 88 countries, we were up against Hulk in eight of the top 16 markets and we had the European soccer championships," said co-president of Fox International, Paul Hanneman, "and still we had some really good numbers coming out most of these markets." Hanneman admitted the reviews were "mixed to difficult," which is hardly flattering, but countered by claiming victories in France, Italy, Spain, Venezuela, Chile, and Ecuador. As for The Incredible Hulk, Universal says the new Marvel film should easily exceed the $113 million rounded up by its 2003 predecessor, and the international total for the film is now up to a comfortable $85 million. What could that final number look like? Well, Universal hasn't released the film in all of its international territories, so some money will come in that way, and it should continue to have strong business for a couple of weeks. All told, we might be looking at a movie that makes $275 - $325 million worldwide. That's respectable for a property that had so recently left a bad taste in moviegoers' mouths. Still, it's not going to be able to compete with the big tickets of summer; Iron Man is over half a billion and Indiana Jones has now racked up $633 million around the globe, good enough for 33rd all time.

Comments

[John Hoffman]

Big in France huh? He should make a film with Jerry Lewis. He could play some sort of Mer-man that lives in an apartment complex pool who convinces people to kill themselves by telling them jokes. In an ironic twist, Jerry Lewis is killed by water, the most abundant resource on the planet. He slips on the pool stairs, shatters his glass mer-cane, and drowns. Haley Joel Osment, then has to softly break the news to the mer-man that he is in fact dead. Donnie Wahlberg may have been the guy that tripped him. We then learn that the apartment complex isn't actually an apartment complex, but a jail for Amish people who have embraced technology. M. Night of course portrays the pool cleaner, with a higher purpose.