Weekend Wrap-Up: Iron Man Remains Undefeated

It was an easy call: everyone and their grannies were predicting that Iron Man would take its second weekend easily, and it did, adding another $50.5 million to its impressive $100 million-plus haul last weekend. It may be cold and rainy here in New York City today, but I am basking in the heat of the summer blockbuster season, already begun. Hey, I threw my $11.75 into Tony Stark's pot on Saturday afternoon, leading a gang of my geek friends to see the flick, and some of them were on their second go-rounds, too. It's great fun, even on second glance ... and the relatively short drop-off the movie took -- less than 50 percent -- suggests I'm not the only one who feels that way. Iron Man will face its first serious competition next week, in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, and that should be a fun grudge match to watch.

Everyone else was left eating Iron Man's dust. At No. 2 at the moment, Speed Racer barely lived up to his name, earning $20.2 million, which is probably more than this tedious bit of eye candy deserves. And there's an excellent chance that when the final box office numbers come in later today -- the preliminary numbers are always estimates, though they're usually pretty close -- that Speed may lose his spot to What Happens in Vegas..., currently at No. 3 with a payday of $20 million. A difference of two-hundred grand is small enough that the films could easily swap places when all the pennies are counted.

It's barely even worth speaking of the No. 4 and 5 movies, so much further behind, but they were: Made of Honor, with a take of $7.6 million, and Baby Mama, earning $5.8 million. Honor looks like it won't earn back its modest budget during its theatrical run, but Mama already has, which just demonstrates that you can't make any real predictions about which kinds of movies do well at the box office. Because here we have two movies, both of which are terrible, starring major names from TV -- Patrick Dempsey and Tina Fey -- and one is flopping while the other is doing well.

In indie news, Tarsem's trippy fantasy drama, The Fall, enjoyed the best per-screen average among limited releases, earning $8,911 on each of its nine screens. But even that couldn't top Iron Man, which was the best-performing movie of the weekend by this measure, too, raking in $12,284 at each of its 4,111 venues. Somehow, "Go, Iron Man, go!" doesn't have quite the ring to it that it should, but what the hell: Go, Iron Man, go!

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MaryAnn Johanson (email me)
reviews, reviews, reviews! at FlickFilosopher.com

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