Box Office - 'American' Tops 'Machete' on Slow Friday

Another internet-created movie phenomenon will remain exactly that: Machete took a leisurely stroll on Friday, and while it could still be the top movie of the weekend, it won't be a big number at all. With only $3.8 million on Friday, the exploitation flick lost to George Clooney's The American, which really isn't trying all that hard. Clooney's latest opened on Wednesday and has been number one ever since, but its overall total through three days is only about $7 million, including $3.9 million yesterday. Again, that's a narrow victory over Machete, but it's doing slightly better than was expected and the opposite is true of the Robert Rodriguez movie. It is Labor Day weekend, as you know, and that's almost always a bad frame for the studios, which you may not have known. Whichever movie takes the crown will be lucky to get to $14 million, a bad result for a number one movie. What won't be number one - and by its performance proves how studios really view this weekend - is the Drew Barrymore romantic comedy Going the Distance. In the most theaters of any new release, a healthy 3,030, Distance won't make $6 million this weekend. With the extra day, maybe it gets over $7.5. Drew only made it to number five on one of the worst Fridays of the year, and filling the void between her movie and Machete were Takers and The Last Exorcism, earning about $5.25 million between them. So maybe the distributors have the right idea to never release, say, Inception on Labor Day. I still maintain as I always have that hits are hits and if you'd put one of the many superhero movies here that would otherwise congest the summer movie season, you could see good returns for about three weeks because it's not like there's anything massive coming out for a while. However, as long as the executives see returns like this, they'll stay away. With the holiday travel, college football, and fairly weak options, it's no wonder they do.