Maybe Americans aren’t as keen about seeing their military portrayed by human exterminating aliens as screenwriter David Koepp thinks they are.
FoxNews;
The $182 million horror epic, struggling to hold its own among new releases, was beaten at the box office by an indie film about a pimp-turned-rapper.
“Hustle and Flow” (search), a Sundance favorite this year, is playing in only 1,013 theaters. “War” is on 3,265 screens. But the former film took in $2,750,000 on Friday night, beating the latter by about $300,000.
“War of the Worlds,” finishing in the eighth spot Friday night, has just passed the $200 million mark domestically. Internationally it’s made a little more than that, giving the Tom Cruise (search) pic a total worldwide take of $500 million. Believe it or not, that means it’s just about broken even. If it weren’t for the foreign audiences, though, War would have been a money loser for Paramount Pictures.
“Hustle and Flow” wasn’t the only film that beat “War” at the box office on Friday night. So did newcomers “The Island”, “Bad News Bears”, and a Lions Gate film called “Devil’s Rejects”. The Top 8 was filled out by “Fantastic Four”, “Wedding Crashers”, and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, the latter at number 1.
Or, maybe they looked at the Martians and looked back at the “hero”, and decided that Tom Cruise was scarier.
Via Neale
War would be a money-maker whether or not the international audience came through. Keep in mind there are aftermarket sales of DVD’s and TV rights which these days are worth more than the actual theatrical release itself.
Personally, I will no longer support the leftist, whacked out group of self-righteous, overbearing hacks who assume their talent for pretending translates into knowledge.
I agree with rebarbarian. I really don’t care what Cruise thinks about psychiatry or anything else. My daughter is an aspiring actress (I’m hoping she grows out of this) and in the unlikely event she was offered a small part in a Cruise movie, I’d be hard-pressed to support her on it, and would be hanging over her like a mama bear anytime Cruise and his loonies got within 10 feet of her.
Actually I thought War contained a fairly robust lesson for the stoppers: when an insane fool risks innocent lives by screaming out bizarre fantasies and won’t shut up, the protector of those lives silences him by any means necessary. A hard lesson, and perhaps not one I would approve of; but then I didn’t write the script.