TServo2049

Not sure if that is a valid comparison. Blade made $70m domestic/$131m worldwide on a $45m budget, Austin Powers made $53m DOM/$68m WW on a $16.5m budget. New Line at least broke even on Blade after theatrical WW, and Austin Powers was already in profit by the time it finished theatrical WW. Neither of them were domestic theatrical flops - they both cost less and adjust to more DOM than Genisys.

I like the title. It reminds me of 80s sci-fi B-movies like Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone. (But they'll probably just retitle it to "Valerian" in North America though. Though France and several other countries will probably translate the full title.)

The movie was an obligation. It was "We have to release it but we don't give a shit how it does." Warner Bros. gave more of a shit about Cats Don't Dance (which was also an obligation - it was inherited from Ted Turner) than Disney did about this.

What is the highest-grossing movie to have been released in the last two weeks of August? Inglorious Basterds? (Adjusted for inflation, I think Mortal Kombat sold the most tickets.)

Honestly, the weakest is Generations, and even that one isn't that bad. That shows how good the scores for these movies are. I even like Leonard Rosenman's score for Star Trek IV, it somehow fits the kind of film that is.

Maybe it was the potential for further OS expansion. The original made $400M OS, after all ($50M of that from Russia alone).

It was three sequels: Croods 2, Puss in Boots 2 and Madagascar 4. And the last two are officially on indefinite hiatus since the schedule got cut back from three films a year down to two a year.

When are Dwayne Johnson and Chris Pratt gonna co-star in something, I wonder? Because either producers or the Internet want one of them in every potential project...

Because Pratt+JLaw? Because original sci-fi would-be tentpoles are often overestimated here, seemingly out of wishful thinking that THIS will be THE ONE? (And for the record, I could end up interested in this, so I am not trashing it.)

Wasn't that a metaphor for how Tony was falling apart?

Bone would be awesome. I want to see an epic about Hannibal and the Punic Wars. I had a history professor who described a hypothetical movie scene in a lecture to give an idea of how amazing this was, with elephants marching through the Alps and such. Ever since then, I have desperately wanted that movie. (Fortunately, someone in Hollywood does want such a movie to be made. Unfortunately, that someone is Vin Diesel...I can't see that working.)

And which celebrities/has-beens to cast, too. The development process for these kinds of movies probably looks something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz-PtEJEaqY

The Rock is tapped to star in everything these days...

It's being produced by the same animation studio as The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea (Nora Twomey - not Towmey, Variety misspelled it - is one of the two heads of that studio), and there is a 2D promo image, so I'm pretty sure it's going to be 2D.

Do you only mean the biggest single OW-to-2nd weekend TC increase? Or do you include expansions that take place over multiple weekends?

I consider National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation to be merely decent, and I don't like it anywhere NEAR as much as the first Vacation (compared to everyone else who likes it nearly as much, just as much, or sometimes MORE). The last act of The Lego Movie came off to me just as ham-fisted and preachy as the last act of Tomorrowland.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off > Back to School The Untouchables > Beverly Hills Cop II Thelma & Louise > Backdraft, What About Bob?, Hudson Hawk (1st wknd only), Soapdish (2nd wknd only) JFK > Hook, Father of the Bride, The Last Boy Scout, Star Trek VI Field of Dreams > See No Evil, Hear No Evil Road House > See No Evil, Hear No Evil Amadeus > Oh God You Devil!, No Small Affair, Places in the Heart, A Soldier's Story (though not The Terminator) A Nightmare on Elm Street > Missing in Action, Oh God You Devil!, Night of the Comet, Just the Way You Are, Places in the Heart (though again, not The Terminator) Three Amigos > The Golden Child Braveheart > Casper (and possibly Die Hard with a Vengeance) Happy Gilmore > Broken Arrow, Muppet Treasure Island (which also beat it for the President's Day 4-day weekend, but not the 3-day) Napoleon Dynamite > Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, everything else that outranked it on the weekend where it got to #8 (and I say this as someone who has previously noticed that ND itself seems to not be as remembered as I thought it would become; doesn't matter, it's more remembered than anything above it that weekend)

I'd say Shakespeare in Love is remembered, though AS much as Office Space? Not sure. Or it could just be that the people who still think about one aren't the people who still think about the other, I dunno. But everything else, I think you're right. (Even She's All That, IMO, is not remembered so much as the cliches that it propelled into Internet culture snark infamy.)

An honest MJ biopic? Don't worry, Jackson's family will make sure that never ever happens.

In unrelated news, Fantastic Four just had the 3rd worst weekend for a film playing in over 3,500 theaters, behind the 3rd weekend of Just Like Heaven and the 4th weekend of Twilight. (And adjusted for inflation, it's the second-worst attended - the 3rd wknd of Just Like Heaven adjusts to less than $250k under F4's estimate for its second.) Good grief, even if it dropped "only" 69%, that number is horrendous.

L.A. Confidential > In & Out, Wishmaster (and possibly The Game) 48 Hrs. > Tootsie Dirty Dancing > Stakeout Die Hard > A Fish Called Wanda (and for that matter, everything else that outranked it on every weekend it was in wide release, except for Roger Rabbit and Coming to America on its first couple weekends)

More ones from me: The Little Mermaid > Everything but Back to the Future Part II that beat it on its three #3 weekends: Harlem Nights (1st/2nd wks), Look Who's Talking (1st wk), The War of the Roses (7th wk), Tango & Cash (7th wk) Schindler's List > Everything that topped it on the two weekends where it got up to #4: The Naked Gun 33 1/3 (14th/15th wks), Guarding Tess (14th wk), Monkey Trouble (14th wk), The Paper (15th wk)