...about the insanity that we've created: with Iron Man opening to $100.8 million this weekend, it has now become possible to break $100 million in your opening weekend, and yet still NOT be in the top 10 of all time best opening weekends. In fact, Iron Man will most definitely fall out of the top ten in just a few weeks, when Indiana Jones 4 opens.
It feels like we need to track box office differently now, and I'll use a sports analogy. In baseball today, there's a complaint that the small markets can't even hope to compete with the larger ones, especially since there's no salary cap in baseball, unlike basketball or football. Some are even saying that it's so unfair, that to maintain competition, the league should be split in two: one for the Yankees, Mets, and Red Sox of the world, and another for the small market Twins, Royals, and Brewers, etc.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, and I've written and re-written and deleted some ideas a few times now in this entry, but it feels like there's a level of "fairness" that isn't being addressed in regular box office tracking.
What does it mean when a film in just 3 days can (hypothetically) gross more than all the Best Picture nominations combined through their entire runs, but still can't break into the top 10? I don't know...
I have to noodle on this a bit.
Did you see it? I actually went opening night and I was pleased with the movie. This is the only decent "underwear pervert" movie in the last five or so years outside of the last Batman movie. I hope this begins a trend of actually decent superhero shows.
Posted by: Al Billings | May 05, 2008 at 10:00 PM
Not yet... didn't want to fight off $100 million worth of people to get my Goobers and Diet Coke. Trying to see it this week, as I know I'll appreciate Robert Dowey Jr.'s effort, if nothing else. Hopefully, much more.
Posted by: Craig Beilinson | May 06, 2008 at 10:47 AM