Sunday update:
After a hot start that had it on pace to top $60 million for the weekend, Paramount's "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" slowed 18 percent Saturday, taking in $18.3 million in 4,007 North American theaters.
The $175 million action film still will finish the weekend with $56.2 million, according to studio estimates, ahead of original estimates that pegged it at below $50 million.
Meanwhile, Sony's decision to counterprogram the weekend with a smart comedy, the Nora Ephron-directed "Julie and Julia" starring Meryl Streep as cooking legend Julia Child, paid off handsomely.
The PG-13-rated film, which Sony said costs $38 million to produce, took in $20 million for the weekend, with over-50s comprising more than half the audience.
More to come ...
Saturday update:
For Paramount, it is becoming a predictably winning formula: adapt a Hasbro toy line into an expensive, effects-heavy action film that costs a ton, ignore the reviews, and watch it open big.
The strategy worked again Friday, with “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” taking in $22.3 million in 4,007 North American locations, according to Hollywood.com estimates, putting it on track for a $60.3 million weekend, the third biggest three-day period in August ever. Optimistic estimates for the $175 million film going into the premiere had it pegged at around $50 million.
With the youthful male throngs rushing into “G.I. Joe,” Sony effectively counter-programmed a smart PG-13-rated comedy, “Julie and Julia,” which made $6.4 million at 2,354 locations to finish second at the domestic box office, according to studio figures. The film is on pace for a $19.3 million weekend, the high end of Sony's “high-teens” projection.
Disney’s 3D Jerry Bruckheimer guinea-pig movie, “G-Force,” finished third with $3 million, putting the expensive CGI effort on pace to finish its third weekend with $85.5 million domestically.
In fourth place Friday, Universal’s R-rated Judd Apatow dramedy dropped 70 percent from its premiere a week earlier, taking in just $2.6 million and on the way to finish its second weekend with just $40.6 million in domestic revenue.
Universal had hoped this curveball Apatow offering, an uncharacteristically somber two-hour, 16-minute effort starring Adam Sandler as a terminally ill version of himself, would eventually find some kind of audience. But the prognosis for the studio making back the $91.5 million it spent to produce “Funny People,” not to mention the $70 million it spent to market it worldwide, now seems pretty grim in its own right.
Paramount and co-financier Spyglass Entertainment, meanwhile, had plenty of their own dollars riding on the Stephen Sommers-directed “G.I. Joe,” which cost $175 million to produce and well north of $100 million (and counting) to market worldwide.
“Joe’s” North American opening pales next to the $109 million premiere in June of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” another Paramount Hasbro toy adaptation.
But with foreign returns also expected to be robust this weekend, Paramount officials are expecting “Joe” to ultimately surpass $300 million globally. And with a share of toy sales, not to mention DVD revenue, the studio expects the film to finish in the black.
