Box Office - 'All About Steve' Leads Slow Friday

I say it every year: If a studio released a high profile movie on Labor Day, it would not only completely enslave the rest of the films that weekend, but it would also have a pretty good run through September, which is not the strongest month of the year because Hollywood doesn't want to program against the Toronto Film Festival, and those early fall weekends are dominated by football viewing. So here again, we have three new releases, none of which have massive appeal: Gamer, Extract, and All About Steve. It was expected that the first of those would probably gut out a win over The Final Destination and Inglourious Basterds, but instead, it's All About Steve that took the Friday night box office, such as it was, with about $3.5 million. We're only looking at a four-day holiday weekend total of maybe $14 - $15 million, though, so you can see how barren the landscape is on Labor Day. It may not take the weekend, though; reviews for All About Steve have been among the worst of the year, and it currently has a 6% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes. One of the scenarios we thought was a distant possibility was Basterds maintaining just enough audience to cut through the competition, and it finished Friday in second place. Supposing its audience is more consistent than a new comedy with bad reviews - and that should be the case - Basterds could make $13.5 - $14 million over the four days and win the extended weekend. Then again, Final Destination, which we picked to just barely top Gamer, has a good chance, too. It was right on the heels of Steve, but I don't know if it will remain as solid throughout the weekend as Basterds. Gamer opened really soft, given the advertising and the expectations, such as they were. It's only on pace for about $11 million this weekend. Extract was never going to be a major factor once the number of theaters were announced, but it's still performing under what we had projected on Thursday. It won't be pretty, no matter which film comes out on top. There will be a winner in the box office derby, but only because there has to be.

Comments

[Laura (HUGE FAN of SB)]

All About Steve didn't amount to The Proposal, but it was almost as good. There was a huge crowd at the movie theatre. It seemed pretty popular, and I personally loved it! I thought it was really funny and it deserves the #1 position in the box office. It's definitely in my top 3 favorite movies. I don't see why the critics thought it was so bad :(

[loIS Bernard]

This is the first positive thing I read about this movie which had me laughing out loud through alot of it and touched at some of it and it must be that I identify with this character and am different and smart and love crossword puzzles but Sandra Bullock put her heart into this and clearly for some people it was worth the price of admission and more.