Box Office - No to 'Yes,' 'Seven Pounds' Weighed Down

The news was not that good at the top of the weekend box office, with Yes Man and Seven Pounds combining to barely beat the effort of last week's winner, The Day the Earth Stood Still, which itself was something of a minor disappointment.Jim Carrey's new comedy led the way with $18 million, according to Box Office Mojo, while Will Smith's Seven Pounds opened to just over $16 million in business. The animated Tale of Despereaux opened in third place, although its $10 million debut is a lot closer to earlier projections than the soft openings by Seven Pounds and Yes Man.The real success stories right now are the films that will challenge for Oscar and Golden Globe hardware. The per-screen averages for Frost/Nixon, Doubt, Gran Torino, and now The Wrestler continue to dwarf the numbers put up by the wide releases and now, for the first time, Oscar frontrunner Slumdog Millionaire has cracked the top ten. Next week, the box office landscape will be entirely different, with five new wide releases and a number of expansions, so it will probably take on an even more Oscar-friendly look.The Top Five: 1 - Yes Man ($18.1 million)
2 - Seven Pounds ($16 million)
3 - The Tale of Despereaux ($10.5 million)
4 - The Day the Earth Stood Still ($10.1 million)
5 - Four Christmases ($7.7 million)

Box Office - A Bad Weekend for Smith and Carrey

Another flatter-than-expected weekend at the box office awaits us, as the Friday estimates would indicate that no movie will make as much as $20 million from Friday to Sunday. Box Office Mojo reports a fairly close race between Jim Carrey's Yes Man and Will Smith's Seven Pounds through one day, although it's more likely to widen between now and Monday morning.

Still, the way the numbers are now - Yes Man at about $6.5 million and Seven Pounds roughly a million bucks behind - suggests that neither film is really doing the kind of business anyone projected. If you extrapolate those numbers, Yes Man has a shot to get to $20 million, and I actually expect it to do better business today than yesterday, but it's not a guarantee by any means.Will Smith, on the other hand, is looking at his worst debut since Ali opened to under $15 million seven years ago. Again, it will do slightly better today than yesterday, but with the Sunday drop-off, it will probably land on about $16 million by the time the receipts are counted.We project both films to open over $20 million, with Yes Man in the $24 - $26 million range. I know this might be shocking, but there are a lot of films this fall that have received mixed to poor reviews and have then gone out and laid an egg at the box office. Coincidence? Or does it mean that, especially in a tough economy, people might be listening to critics?

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Movie Review - 'Seven Pounds'

Seven Pounds Starring Will Smith, Rosario Dawson, and Woody Harrelson Directed by Gabriele Muccino Rated PG-13

Ben Thomas has a secret and he has a mission. They’re intertwined, and both appear to be testing Ben’s faith and patience, if not more. There is no joy in spoiling either, though you can probably put two and two together from other reviews of Seven Pounds or trailers you might have seen. The story works so well precisely because we don’t know what has occupied Ben’s mind and heart for so long. We learn that he has to find seven complete strangers and that he can change their circumstances. We learn that his circumstances changed completely in seven seconds. Is Ben running a pyramid scheme of some sort? Are the seven strangers connected in a way that they don’t even know? Or is it random? Is it not random at all? As Roger Ebert declares in his review of this film, “I find this more interesting than a movie about a man whose nature and objectives are made clear in the first five minutes, in a plot that simply points him straight ahead.” Director Gabriele Muccino (The Pursuit of Happyness) certainly doesn’t discourage his audience from asking and perhaps even trying to answer the many questions that pop up. Why has Ben (Will Smith) singled out Emily Posa (Rosario Dawson), a woman in the hole nearly $50,000, although her primary concern is her failing heart? Why does Ben call a customer service line, talk to the blind man on the other end of the line (Woody Harrelson), and berate him about not being able to see all the beauty in the world?

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Fearless Forecast - Audiences Will Say 'Yes'

There's a more competitive weekend on the horizon in theaters across America. Last week, only one big new release hit screens, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and it was mired by bad reviews and still made $30 million. That's nice, but not enough of a head start to make the film a huge hit in the long run.

This weekend, two of the biggest movie stars of the past 15 years go head-to-head. Granted, Jim Carrey is not the draw he was prior to The Majestic, but both Bruce Almighty and his last December comedy, Fun with Dick and Jane, were enormously successful comedies. Can he repeat that with Yes Man? Maybe.Sorry, I just can't say yes to that. It certainly has potential to do well, but if it makes $100 million, I think that would be one of the bigger surprises of Carrey's recent career. You've got a crowded weekend and a bunch of new movies next weekend to contend with. Strong word of mouth would help, but that would mean it needs to get strong word of mouth.Squaring off against Carrey is Will Smith, the undisputed box office king. Eight straight $100 million films, and his last two movies earned over $200 million. The streak might end with Seven Pounds, a quality film, simply because it's a bit of a downer. Ask yourself if you want a bit of a downer this holiday season, and a likely response might be, "What, another one?"So give the edge to Jim Carrey, who has the benefit of 800 more theaters. If both movies average, say, $6,000 per screen, that's about a $5 million difference in box office. But I think they'll see similar numbers outside of the grosses.The animated The Tale of Despereaux will either do much better than I'm expecting or it won't do much at all. And I can't figure out why I feel that way. I guess it doesn't have the talk that accompanies these modern cartoons. So while my gut tells me about $8 million, maybe $9 million, I'll bump it up a little bit because of advantageous timing. On the other hand, with all the money parents are spending on Christmas, this may be the last thing they want to do on the final weekend before the biggest gimme day of the year.

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Four Clips of Will Smith in 'Seven Pounds'

Can Will Smith keep his $100 million streak alive? Ultimately, it doesn't matter, probably not even to him, but it's been an incredible run all the same.

Since the first Bad Boys, released almost 13 years ago, Smith has only had two other films earn less than eleven figures at the box office. They were back-to-back, too: The Legend of Bagger Vance and Ali. It worked out well for him, though, with Ali earning Smith his first of two Oscar nominations.He's had a run of eight straight films that have gone over $100 million, and the last three have made over $200 million. All told, dating back to Bad Boys, his fifteen movies have made just under $2.4 billion in the U.S., which is an average of $159 million each. That's not bad when you consider that Hitch and The Pursuit of Happyness performed even better than that average.But Seven Pounds might have a little trouble reaching that milestone. Though it re-teams Smith with Happyness director Gabriele Muccino, it is a bit somber for holiday viewers looking for an escape at the end of a truly awful year in a lot of ways. That's not to say it's a bad or even undeserving movie, because I don't believe those things to be true, but it does illustrate just how difficult it is for movie stars to keep the money train moving, even the biggest movie star in the world.Here are four clips from Seven Pounds, in which Smith plays an IRS agent looking for seven very specific strangers for very specific reasons. I wish I could tell you more about it, but it's best that you don't know too much going in.
I Came to See You

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