You have to worry when you have investment of $175 million riding on your shoulders – the biggest investment budget for a motion picture comedy yet.
And with ‘Evan Almighty' being only his second leading man role (not counting ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ an ensemble performance), ‘40 Year Old Virgin’ being his first, Steve Carell must be more than a little worried that Evan’s opening weekend only pulled in approximately $32 million from 3,604 locations.
This now means it needs to hold up well in the market over the rest of the summer for Universal and its financing partners to come out safe.
Carell’s big budget ‘Get Smart’ opens a year from now (June 2008), so one has to wonder if this member of the Frat Pack (along with Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell, Owen Wilson, and Luke Wilson) is going to reprise his string of failures experienced in his early days of TV sitcoms.
But distributor Universal is upbeat, studio co-chairman Marc Shmuger and David Linde in a prepared statement said, "As this weekend's positive audience rating polls indicate, the charms of 'Evan Almighty' are persuasive, and we have every hope that moviegoers will continue to discover it in the weeks ahead."
Universal had hoped to duplicate the success of its 2003 predecessor, ‘Bruce Almighty.' “Bruce” starred Jim Carrey, and opened at $70 million going on to gross $484.5 million worldwide.
Box-office numbers in coming weeks will tell how “Evan” and Steve do.
In second place this week, just when annalists were spelling the death of summer horror flicks, the MGM/Weinstein Bros. release of ‘1408’ opened in second place with take of $20.2 million from 2,678 locations, the second best opening of the year for a horror flick after preem of ‘Disturbia’ in April.
‘Distrubia,’ a star vehicle for Shia LaBeouf opened with $23 million in ticket sales and currently is in 19th place at the box-office taking in $87,490,381 worldwide to date.
‘1408’ the movie, was based on a short story by Stephen King.
Fox’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is a victim of this year’s “early burn out” syndrome, dropping 65.3% from its opening at number one a week ago, taking in $20.2 million from 3,963 locations this weekend to land in third place.
The $130 million comic live action adaptation now has $97.6 million under its belt.
In fourth place, is George Clooney and his “rat pack” in ‘Ocean’s Thirteen.’ OT dropping 42.5% in its third week of release, taking in $11.3 million from 3,450 locations bringing its cume to $91 million.
And remaining strong in fifth place, beating out 6th place ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End ($7.2 million from 2,802 locations – fifth release week), 7th place ‘Surf’s Up’ ($6.7 million from 3,309 locations – third release week) and 8th place ‘Shrek the Third’ ($5.8 million from 2,822 locations – sixth release week) is the romantic comedy ‘Knocked Up.’
'Knocked Up' pulled in $10.6 million from 2,975 locations adding to its four week take of $109 million. The Universal release, Judd Apatow helmed pic cost $30 million to produce.
Other openings this weekend, Paramount’s ‘A Mighty Heart’ produced by Brad Pit and starring Angelina Jolie ended up in tenth place taking in $4 million from 1,355 locations.
Stay tuned as the Bruce Willis starrer ‘Live Free or Die Hard’ opens this week which should lead the box-office next weekend.
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