Two Fail To Go 'Whole Nine Yards'
Next to movies, Hollywood's biggest export is hype.
But no amount of hype was able to draw audiences for a few star-powered clunkers that opened last weekend. Instead, they were abandoned by audiences in favor of relatively older movies with good buzz.
Trouncing the competition for the third week in a row was The Whole Nine Yards. The Bruce Willis-Matthew Perry comedy, about a gunman who moves in next door to a dentist, took in $7.3 million from Friday through Sunday.
The new Madonna film,The Next Best Thing, turned out to be just that, placing second with a more meager box-office take of $6 million. It stars the pop diva as a woman who ends up pregnant after a drunken night with gay pal Rupert Everett.
Audiences sat up and took notice of My Dog Skip, which came in third with $5.94 million. Already out for eight weeks, it went into wider release last weekend, zooming into the top three from 54th place last week.
Another heavily promoted newcomer, Danny De Vito's Drowning Mona came in fourth with $5.91 million. De Vito plays a small-town police chief investigating the death of a local shrew, played by Bette Midler.
In fifth place was sci-fi thriller, Pitch Black, which earned $5.02 million.
Rounding out the top 10 slots, according to Hollywood.com were Snow Days ($5 million), Reindeer Games ($4.8 million), Wonder Boys ($4.15 million), American Beauty ($4.1 million), and The Cider House Rules ($4.05 million).
CBS Early Show contributor Gail O'Neill says this week's box office results show the shortcomings of the concept movie. The Next Best Thing - about a gay guy raising a child with a straight female friend - and What Planet Are Your From? - an alien impregnating an earthling - are two concept duds that came up short on content.
Both left Dan Cox of Variety magazine wondering exactly what planet these producers were from.
"What happens is, with these concept movies, they hinge on one note," Cox says. "There's just one thing they're going after and it's not enough."
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"There have to be twists and turns in every plot, every story. It has to start hee and end way over there and somehow keep people in check the whole time," he adds. In his view, these two missed the mark as did The Brady Bunch. A concept film that hit the jackpot was, in his opinion, Wayne's World.
"That was kind of a silly concept film about two guys who do a film out of their basement - a stupid concept, but it was funny. It had enough twists and turns to make it a real plot," he notes.
Supporting roles did offer some viewer value this weekend, such as Annette Bening's performance in What Planet Are You From.
Rupert Everett's British wit added an edge to The Next Best Thing.
But it only added to the embarrassment of the Material Girl's English accent, which came and went with scenery.
Several films had good openings in limited release and were led by Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai by cult favorite Jim Jarmusch. Starring Forest Whitaker as a spiritual hitman who lives by a samurai code, the film opened at 14 theaters in New York and earned $175,000, for a per-screen average of $12,500.
That was four times the average for American Beauty, which had the best per-screen take among the top 10 films with $3,062.
Says Steve Rothenberg, president of domestic distribution for Artisan Entertainment, which released Ghost Dog. "These are terrific numbers. We're very, very happy."
The movie will move into another dozen markets in two weeks.