Uh-oh...a New England Patriots-style cloud of doubt has formed over Screengrab’s ‘til now perfect record of summer box office predictions. While our prognostications were right on the money for Iron Man, Speed Racer and Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (hit, miss, hit, respectively), the $100 million-budgeted Prince Caspian (which seemed like a surefire box office lion thanks to its successful predecessor, kid-friendly CGI and built-in Christian fanbase) will probably wind up in the “disappointment” column by the end of the season, earning less to date than The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe did in a similar period, and unlikely to gain momentum as multiplexes grow ever more crowded with fresh titles in the coming weeks. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney CEO Robert Iger blames the goofy fantasy flick’s underperforming box office mojo on competition from other, more successful movies. Well, duh.
Meanwhile, our testosterone-addled prediction that nobody still cares about Sex and the City may have been a little...uh...premature. (But it’s not a “problem,” we swear!) Thanks in part to the kind of massive, all-consuming marketing campaign usually reserved for returning messiahs, Reuters is reporting brisk sales of tix for the chix flick across America, with opening weekend box office estimated between 25 and 40 million dollars. Considering the production’s relatively low budget (somewhere in the vicinity of $65 million dollar’s worth of Manolos), the film could turn out to be hugely profitable for the fashionista posse.
My own observations last night at AMC’s Boston Common theater (where I was seeing the awesome, uber-dudely Iron Man) would seem to confirm the hype. In a scene reminiscent of Hitchcock’s The Birds, I found myself in the midst of a frankly unnerving swarm of cell-phone toting ladies, many costumed in Sex-y fashions like an XX-chromosome version of the standard Wookies-and-Jawas Star Wars crowd. It was the most women I’ve ever seen in a movie theater (or anywhere, really, outside of Filene’s Basement), and surely bodes well for the future of women-centric films starring actresses over forty.
Or maybe I’ve just had one too many Cosmos.
