Once in a while the fates of cinema look down and smile, allowing something other than the horror remake or the raunch comedy to be number one.
The Forbidden Kingdom is as much a popcorn flick as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but offers a lot more entertainment and a lot less of Jason Segel's wagging genitalia. For that alone it should have been number one and ticket buying audiences agreed.
Forbidden Kingdom took in a modest $20.8 million, enough to knock Sarah Marshall into second place with $17.3 million. Both films blew the lid off the top of the competition.
Way off in third place was last week's champ Prom Night with $9 million and behind that was the much debated and berated 88 Minutes. With only $7 million it has earned the distinction of having the lowest opening for any wide release Al Pacino movie ever (well, excluding Gigli, but general cinematic logic suggests Gigli be excluded from memory on principle).
Ben Stein's documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed managed to make it all the way to ninth place despite only showing on 1,000 screens. The beauty of documentaries these days is that you have some kind of built in audience so long as your subject matter and approach is controversial enough.
It's a secret Michael Moore has been using to milk millions out of anti-Bushites for the last few years and now Expelled is benefitting. It doesn't matter how much merit Stein's message has, you can bet no one saw it who didn't already agree with him.
While the movie has done moderately well in small release compared to most movies in small release, in the world of documentaries its nothing to get excited about. It will be lucky to break into the overall documentary top ten. Not too impressive since the other three documentaries that have made it to more than 1,000 screens are the top three financial performers.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE TOP TEN April 18 - 20, 2008
LW = Last Week WR = Weeks Released THTRS = Number of Screens * Denotes new release. Click on title to read CB Review
