Box Office Round Up: Rise (Albeit Slowly) of the Apes

Ho-hum weekend. Rise of the Apes took home number one at the box office with $54 million. Now there are several ways you could judge how successful a movie is. Compared to its relatively tiny budget ($93 million with some of the best CGI to date. Smurfs cost $110 million and it looks like a high school project) it took in a pretty nice haul. It should also take in some pride considering people are actually liking it. But comparing the number of tickets sold to the number of TV spots, the ratio isn't even close.

However, I think the true test of successitude is comparing something to its crappy Tim Burton remake. Planet of the Apes made $14.5 million more than this, and that's 2001 money. Therefore, Rise of the Apes is a colossal failure. In other news, Disney's 1951 version of Alice in Wonderland is the biggest bomb ever.

Despite narrowly losing to Cowboys & Aliens last weekend, the Smurfs pulled out a big victory this time around. The blue guys made $21 million (a 41% drop) vs. the old guys' $15.7 million (a 57% drop). Neither are near their budgets though. My first thought was that the bad reviews brought the Cowboys down, but considering Smurfs had genocidal reviews...

Speaking of bad reviews, The Change-Up was fourth with $13.5 million. This has a shockingly high budget of $52 million, $0 of which went to writing. Jason Bateman shouldn't feel too bad, as his Horrible Bosses (#9) crossed the $100 million mark this weekend. But this is the fourth flop in a row for Ryan Reynolds after Green Lantern, Buried, and Paperman. The last two made $1.05 million combined despite huge film fest hype. Guess you can't replace your abs with merit like the good old days.

Captain America was fifth with $13 million on the weekend, $143 million life to date. Thor had made $145 million at this point of its release, so now we all know Marvel can make consistent movies. Cap adds another $105 million international, and while the movie has yet to open in Germany or Japan, its biggest non-(North or South)American foreign gross comes from Italy, the Axis people forget about.

Finally, Harry Potter is still making some money. It now has made one billion, one hundred and thirty-three million, nine hundred thousand dollars world wide. That moves it into third place for highest grossing movie ever, behind only Titanic ($1.843 billion) and Avatar ($2.782 billion). It is also stealing the hype away from Transformers 3, which moves into seventh place all-time with $1.037 billion. Perhaps the US Government should start asking James Cameron, Michael Bay, and J.K. Rowling for money.