Box Office - 'Funny People' Draws Fewer People Than Expected

I don't think Universal, which on Thursday announced a new three-picture deal with Judd Apatow, figured their new collaboration would have a slightly disappointing opening weekend. Though Funny People isn't exactly a comedy on the level of The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Knocked Up, he's got a loyal audience and this film stars Adam Sandler, who has had his share of hits.

Instead, the $75 million movie will struggle to make back its money in the U.S. A debut well below the general projections of around $30 million is not an encouraging start for a movie that will probably lose some future ticket sales because it's not an outright comedy. The opening weekend was $23 million, the worst of this summer's R-rated comedies, which is something of a surprise because of the three-headed monster of Apatow, Sandler, and Seth Rogen. It was enough to win the weekend, but its best day was Friday, which doesn't bode well for the future. Harry Potter finally showed some stability, taking second place with nearly $18 million. That's a little less than a million dollars north of G-Force, last week's number one. I'm still not positive it can make another $45 million to put it over $300 million in the states, but it's now in the ballpark with five of the other Potter films.

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Box Office - 'Funny People' Opens Slowly

Friday marked a less than auspicious start for Funny People, the latest Judd Apatow movie, which stars Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen. Those three names and their track records should have been enough to push Funny People over $10 million on opening day, but the film fell short of that, totaling only $8.6 million.

That's still enough to win Friday and possibly win the weekend, but for a movie with $30 million aspirations in its opening frame, $8 million won't get it there. It's worth noting that even with Apatow's two previous films and Sandler's loyal audience, Funny People opened with less cash than The Hangover and last weekend's The Ugly Truth.

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Box Office: 'Potter' Loses to 'G-Force'

It's time to admit I was wrong about the box office potential of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Not completely, utterly wrong, but when a movie starts out with the biggest midnight opening ever and trails off rather quickly from there, it's tough to keep up with projections. And that's the case here: It's still over $200 million, it still made almost $30 million in its second week, but it should be a little higher.

Potter didn't complete back-to-back turns at number one, and the last big, big blockbuster of the summer will now face a more difficult time going for the all-time record in the series, currently $319 million. Instead, Half-Blood Prince slipped to second place behind the new release G-Force and a little bit ahead of The Ugly Truth. Overall, Harry Potter stands at $222 million, which isn't bad for 12 days, but much like Transformers, an overwhelming amount of that cash came in the first couple of days. The family friendly G-Force picked up the win this weekend, due as much as anything to Potter's 61% drop from last weekend, which is like falling down an elevator shaft for a movie with outstanding reviews. G-Force earned $32 million in three days, which is a few million more than expectations, but probably not enough to put this in Ice Age territory, or north of $120 million.

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Box Office - 'G-Force' Forceful, 'Potter' Slumps

There's good news and bad news for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The good news is that the film crossed the $200 million mark in the U.S. on Friday, the fastest any film in the series has reached two bills. The bad news is that it might not win this weekend's box office derby.

The 3-D live action-CGI G-Force roared out of the gate with $11.6 million on Friday, followed not by Potter but rather The Ugly Truth with $10.8 million. Half-Blood Prince sits about two million dollars off the pace. Those positions could shift over the weekend, and with Potter in about many more theaters (and because it's a very good film by Potter standards), I'd say there's a chance that will happen, but not great odds. We know it's going to do consistent business this weekend, although the Friday finish in the $9 - $10 million range may be a bad omen for the rest of the film's time in theaters. If Potter only manages around $30 million this weekend, that's a steep drop, and there's no reason to believe the film will bounce back in the future, meaning that golden $300 million barrier only one film in the series has crossed could be out of reach again.

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Trailer - Next Summer's 'Space Chimps': Disney's 'G-Force'

What's the deal with Disney and caged rodents? It all began with Bolt, where the best character was the hamster named Rhino. And this past weekend, Bedtime Stories tried incredibly hard to get comedic milage out of a bug-eyed guinea pig and it didn't work, and next summer, Disney's devoting an entire freakin' movie to guinea pigs with the new Jerry Bruckheimer kids' flick, G-Force. If you were just reading the cast list, you might think it's moving in the right direction. I dig Will Arnett, Sam Rockwell, and Bill Nighy, and have no enmity toward Penélope Cruz or Tracy Morgan. Nic Cage is definitely evaluated on a case-by-case basis. So that's fine. But, ooh, this trailer. I can only hope this wasn't really what they were shooting for.
Trailer courtesy of Movie Web Maybe more trailers will help, but are we willing to sit through them? This is a tough first impression to overcome, don't you think? G-Force will be in theaters on July 24th.