Movies Lose To Olympic Games
According to CBS News Early Show Contributor Laurie Hibberd, the weekend movie box office suffered largely because of the Olympic games.
"Let the games begin."
That phrase usually spells trouble at the box office. Ticket sales over the weekend were down 33 percent from a year ago. Here are the numbers according to Hollywood.com.
- Universal's thriller The Watcher barely hung on to its No. 1 spot with just $5.7 million. That's the lowest take for a No. 1 film this year.
- Jamie Foxx's action-comedy Bait pulled in over $5 million to come in second.
- The cheerleading comedy Bring It On came in No. 3.
- Nurse Betty and the thriller What Lies Beneath rounded out the top five.
Despite Bait's poor showing, industry watchers think the crossover trend is encouraging, and that we're at the point when a serious drama with a black cast finds a broad crossover audience.
The trend seemed to start earlier this year when a movie called Next Friday surprised the film industry by debuting at No. 1.
"That proved to the Hollywood suits, [that] this is a film that not only brought in black audiences but audiences in general: male, white, black, young, old, male, female. And because of that, Hollywood really had to sit up and take notice," said Entertainment Weekly editor David Karger.
Crossover was strongest with young, white suburbanites who grew up in the hip-hop culture.
"For them, entertainment is color-blind and doesn't matter so much if their favorite rap artist is white or black. And it's kind of the same way with their movie taste. They'll go see it if it's Martin Lawrence or Jim Carrey," Krager said.
So with all this crossover appeal, does being black and funny guarantee you a choice of roles these days? Not according to Chris Rock, one of the co-stars of Nurse Betty.
"As far as me being a leading man, I’m going to have to create those situations. No one's throwing romantic comedies my way. No one," said Rock. "You know, the only thing I'll ever get is the con man hooking up with the rich guy."