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Weekend Box Office Numbers For May 23-25

#1 Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull dominates the box office this weekend pulling in $101 million for the weekend, $126 million since it’s Thursday midnight opening. Crystal Skull showed in 4260 theaters. It’s production budget was roughly $185 million.

#2 The Chonicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian was pushed back to a distant second place earning $23,032,000 million in it’s second weekend, thats down roughly 58% from last weekend. Narnia showed in 3929 theaters and has so far grossed $91,077,000. It’s production budget was roughly $200 million.

#3 Iron Man moves to the #3 position taking in $20,147,000, down 36% from last weekend. Iron Man showed in 3915 theaters, this is down 239. Total gross sits at $252,314,000 for 4 weeks. Production budget was $140 million.

Rounding out the top ten are:

#4 What Happens In Vegas: Weekend Gross: $9,000,000 down 35% / Theaters: 3188, down 67 / Gross: $54,246,000 / Budget: $35 million

#5 Speed Racer: Weekend Gross: $4,000,000 down 50% / Theaters: 3112, down 494 / Gross: $36,213,000 / Budget: $120 million

#6 Made Of Honor: Weekend Gross: $3,400,000 down 27% / Theaters: 2393, down 423 / Gross: $39,061,000 / Budget: $40 million

#7 Baby Mama: Weekend Gross: $3,323,000 down 29% / Theaters: 2158, down 345 / Gross: $52,131,000 / Budget: $30 million

#8 Forgetting Sarah Marshall: Weekend Gross: $1,666,000 down 40% / Theaters: 1078, down 523 / Gross: $58,195,000 / Budget: $30 million

#9 Harold And Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay: Weekend Gross: $915,000 down 54% / Theaters: 750, down 653 / Gross: $35,908,000 / Budget: $12 million

#10 The Visitor: Weekend Gross: $781,000 up 16% / Theaters: 270, up 46 / Gross: $4,432,000 / Budget: unknown

A note on “Gross”: On average, studios will earn approximately 55 percent of the final gross.

Sources:

Box Office Mojo

IMDB Charts

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"Indiana Jones" And The Revenge Of The Communists

 

Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. Courtesy of E! OnlineBBC News reports that the new Indiana Jones movie has raised the hackles of Communist party officials in Russia and they are calling for a boycott. “Why should we agree to that sort of a lie and let the West trick our youth?” says Communist party chief Sergei Malinkovich to the Reuters news agency.

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, which debuted on 808 screens in Russia Thursday, depicts the title character in 1957 competing against a KGB agent to find a skull with mystic powers.

One of the Communist party’s concerns was for the youth of Russia “What galls is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame,” said Viktor Perov, a party member in a meeting of the local communist party in St Petersburg. “They (teenagers) will go to the cinema and will be sure that in 1957 we made trouble for the United States and almost started a nuclear war.

“It’s rubbish… In 1957 the communists did not run with crystal skulls throughout the US.” Another party member called the movie “rubbish, simply a paranoid Churchillian fantasy.”

Reuters quotes Vladimir Mukhin, another party member “The film is low-quality and would raise a smile if there wasn’t a danger of drawing into its orbit who know nothing about the 1950s.”

“Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett [are] second-rate actors, serving as the running dogs of the CIA,” another anonymous communist member wrote on a blog.

Sources:

BBC News

CNN

E! Online

Reuters

 

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"Jones" Takes The Box Office

Paramount called in an estimated $25 million return for Thursday’s opening of Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull putting it in the #3 position behind The Matrix Reloaded for top all-time Thursday returns as reported by FantasyMoguls.com. The current #1 Thursday return is held by Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge Of The Sith.

Projected earnings for The Crystal Skull for this holiday weekend range from $140 million to 175 million in just over 4200 theaters. The first movie in the franchise Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark opened in just 1000 theaters and took in $8.3 million. The franchise as a whole grossed over $1.2 billion worldwide.

Philippe Dauman, CEO for Paramount’s parent company Viacom, said that the company was very excited about the movies reception so far.

Sources:

CNBC

FantasyMoguls.com

Defamer.com

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"Indy" Taking An Early Beating

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has just hours ago been screened at Cannes and the reviews are less than kind.

Yahoo! News reports that the movie suffers from a “loss of wit and romance” saying further that “After about an hour, the film abandons any pretense of story for a rush through fights, chases, machine gun fire, scorpions, quick sand, monkeys, huge snakes and finally a secret city,” .

The Hollywood Reporter reports a general thumbs up from journalists leaving the screening though they also took quotes such as “too long,” “too many stunts,” and “too wooden.” “We’re all kind of bewildered about what they thought they were making.” said Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt.

Variety at least reports that the movie “Delivers the goods” but follows up with the caveat “not those of the still first-rate original, 1981’s Raiders Of The Lost Ark but those of its uneven two successors.”

It is estimated that to be considered a success Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will have to gross $500 million worldwide.

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull is scheduled for May 22 2008 release.

Sources:

Yahoo! News

Hollywood Reporter

Variety