Box Office - 'Tropic Thunder' Repeats, 'House Bunny' Outmuscles 'Death Race'

We thought it would be a pretty good race for the top spot at the U.S. box office this weekend, but we didn't expect The House Bunny to crash the party. As it is, the new comedy nearly overtook Tropic Thunder for the crown but wound up in second place overall. The big disappointments this weekend were clearly Death Race, the Jason Statham vehicle that was a fairly distant third place, and The Rocker, the new comedy starring Rainn Wilson that finished out of the top ten and wouldn't have made that list even if you counted its totals from Wednesday and Thursday. Tropic Thunder only slipped 37%, according to Box Office Mojo, which means in all likelihood that it was competition with The Olympics last weekend and not widespread disinterest in the movie that reduced its debut audience. The film will most likely make its money back, but you won't be able to call it a hit because of its near-$100 million price tag. On the other side of the ledger, Star Wars: The Clone Wars took a massive tumble, dropping nearly 70% of its audience in its second weekend. As of Sunday, the animated spin-off has only made $26 million, which looks like it'll be about 65% of the film's domestic total. You'd have to think Lucas and Fox aren't too pleased with a total gross in the $42 - $45 million range, but that's the way it's shaping up. In Dark Knight Watch 2008, the second-biggest movie ever took in another $10 million in its sixth weekend, for a U.S. total of $489 million. The worldwide total now sits at $870 million. The record-breaker is still three million bucks ahead of the $535 million pace we predicted by late October. It should enjoy a very strong Labor Day weekend, too, since there won't really be any movies - new releases or carryovers - generating a lot of interest. In fact, I'd be surprised if it finished outside the top five next weekend, and I don't anticipate its gross over the holiday weekend to slip much, if at all. The Top Five: 1 - Tropic Thunder ($16.1 million) 2 - The House Bunny ($15.1 million) 3 - Death Race ($12.3 million) 4 - The Dark Knight ($10.3 million) 5 - Star Wars: The Clone Wars ($5.6 million)

What's New In Theaters - August 22, 2008

In Death Race, a remake of the 1970s camp classic produced by Roger Corman, convict Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) is forced by his hard-as-nails warden (Joan Allen) to compete in our world's most popular sport: The Tour de France! Not really. Although there's so much criminal behavior in that race they might as well hold it in a prison. Shelley Darlington (Anna Faris) has lived at the Playboy Mansion for years. Too many years, apparently. Booted out because she's (gasp) 27, Shelley must find a new place to call home. She winds up being the house mother for the most unpopular sorority on campus, hence the title The House Bunny. More than likely, she'll teach them to put out. Fish (Rainn Wilson from The Office) gave up his drums and gave up on his dream of being a rock god when his old band, Vesuvius, kicked him out on their way to the top. The band has remained on top for 20 years, and their old drummer has never put it behind him. He'll get his chance to exact a little revenge in The Rocker, by backing up a high school band that rivals even The Jonas Brothers.

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The Big Picture Interview with Emma Stone

She grew up just down the road from The Big Picture here in Phoenix, and now Emma Stone has two movies in theaters this weekend, with The House Bunny and The Rocker with Rainn Wilson. She's just 19, but Stone has already carved out a little niche for herself with her new flicks and her turn last summer in Superbad. Stone recently returned home for a couple of days, where we had a chance to catch up with her and talk shop.

Is Amelia in The Rocker a lot like Emma? No, and that's what I liked about it. She felt different than me. She's not a smiler and she looks at the dark side of things more often than the light side of things. I'm a little more silver lining in my life. That's what drew me to her, especially in a comedy, finding a character like that that is so sardonic and so completely stiff-faced, and the challenge of not smiling and not cracking jokes. Speaking of cracking jokes, Jason Sudeikis has some of the most memorable dialogue in The Rocker. Did he just come in and improv all of that or was his character of the douchebag record executive already written? And did everybody else get to improv, too? The majority of Jason's stuff was improv. He definitely went...the distance with his improv. There were hysterical things that were not in the movie. But I've been lucky to have more free reign in movies, like House Bunny and Superbad. This one we knocked out pretty quick, so there were two lines I wrote in this movie, but that was the extent of my free reign. You learned bass for the movie and you guys rehearsed as a band, right? Yeah, we did, to get that feel. We had to have that camaraderie as a band and "get each other" enough, so for about two weeks before we started shooting, we rehearsed everyday in a big empty warehouse in Toronto.

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Fearless Forecast - A 'Death Race' For the Top Spot

This is, for all practical purposes, the last summer movie weekend. I know there's Babylon A.D. and Disaster Movie on the horizon for Labor Day weekend, but this is the last weekend where any significant money will be made. And even at that, "significant" is a very relative term. You might think that Death Race would cruise to victory this weekend, but I'm not entirely sure. Jason Statham has only had a number one movie (though never a $20 million debut) and because this isn't opening in anywhere near 3,000 theaters, it would have a lot of work to do to take the top spot. Ditto the new comedy The House Bunny.

So if it's not a new movie at number one, I guess that means Tropic Thunder will win again, right? It could, but even under optimum conditions, it wouldn't be by a huge margin. It's still the best option in theaters, with the biggest names and the most buzz. However, the movie is still not poised to be the runaway hit I thought it would be. The only thing is, I'm troubled by the drop-off from an already less-than-stellar opening weekend. If the decline is just a little more than it should be, Death Race could slip in at number one without having a huge breakout weekend.

And what about The Dark Knight? What should even more new movies do to its chances to break $500 million? Nothing, really. Because they aren't must-see summer movies, that makes the Batman sequel an even better prospect for repeat business than it might normally be. By Monday, the second-biggest movie in history will be a week away from half a billion. The interest for me is how long Warner Bros. keeps it alive. It's currently in 3,600 theaters or so, but you can expect that number to be cut dramatically very soon. I still like the $535 million we proposed a month ago, with the possibility of more if the studio boosts the film again at Halloween.

The Top Five:

1 - Death Race ($15.5 million)

2 - Tropic Thunder ($15 million)

3 - The Dark Knight ($11 million)

4 - The House Bunny ($8.5 million)

5 - The Rocker ($6.5 million)

Movie Review - 'The Rocker'

The Rocker

Starring Rainn Wilson, Christina Applegate, and Teddy Geiger
Directed by Peter Cattaneo
Rated PG-13

The new comedy The Rocker is both slightly better than its premise and slightly worse than it should be. There are some great little moments that unfortunately are balanced with a couple misfires, although it does showcase something different from Rainn Wilson (The Office) than we've seen before.

Robert "Fish" Fishman (Wilson) was the original drummer in Vesuvius, one of the biggest hard rock bands of all times. Because he didn't have the right look for the band, though, Vesuvius dumped him unceremoniously right as their journey to the top began to take off. It's not by chance that former Beatles drummer Pete Best has a cameo.

Fish has never been able to let it go; 20 years later, Vesuvius is one of the world's biggest bands and he's stuck working in a call center. But he sees his chance to live the rock n' roll life when his nephew's high school band needs a drummer for their first-ever gig at the prom. It's probably the first ever prom performance that included a lengthy drum solo in the middle of "In Your Eyes."

The band does slowly generate interest, though, in part because their songs are catchy and in part because Fish is the butt of the joke - literally - after video of him practicing naked winds up on the internet. I thought one of the biggest missteps in The Rocker was having this high school band, ADD, rise to the top of their vocation over summer break. There are ways to convey the same thing, particularly with a character who longs for any success, without having the band-on-tour montage and the shoot-their-video montage and the watch-them-go-up-the-charts montage.

I think Wilson shows a real gung ho attitude, even though the character is a little underwritten. He has become famous for playing one of the most unusual characters on television, but Wilson has not brought Dwight Schrute to his movie roles. With The Last Mimzy, his walk-on in Juno, and The Rocker, he has played entirely different characters; at least he's not Rob Schneider.

But the rest of the movie doesn't get out of its own way. Ironically, movies tend to tell the same kinds of stories over and over because audiences can connect with them, but we also stop connecting with movies when we sense they're getting lazy. The Rocker doesn't show us very much that's new. It tries to be funny about it, and when it works - SNL cast member Jason Sudeikis' blisteringly funny record label exec - it makes you wonder why the rest of the story is so passe.

And The Rocker is too keen on making you like everyone. With the exception of Vesuvius and the record executive, neither of which are around that long, the characters are too perfectly cut to be believed. So even though I appreciate where Wilson was heading with his deluded drummer in this, there will be no encore.