The box office was cold this weekend … or, at the very least, cold blooded.
Rango, starring a talented-but-scaly chameleon with the voice of Johnny Depp, crawled away with the weekend’s honors, thumping the cash register for $38 million. It was a nice little payday for film’s favorite member of the Chamaeleonidae family—but far less than the $50 million some box office prognosticators had expected the flick to earn.
Another newcomer, the spiritually attuned The Adjustment Bureau, landed in second place with about $21 million, while the teen romance Beastly swooned its way into third with $10 million.
And while we’re talking about underperforming films, a quick update on last week’s box office race: Gnomeo & Juliet actually didn’t win (as we and everyone else had reported). Disney execs were wildly and, as it turns out, unreasonably optimistic with their weekend estimates regarding the animated film, which means that Owen Wilson’s Hall Pass leapfrogged to the weekend win.
Not that it mattered much. Both earned less than $14 million, which underlines the funk the box office has been mired in the last several weeks. “In 15 of the past 16 weeks, the box-office take has been lower this year than last,” reports Time, and not a single film released in 2011 has crossed the $100 million mark (though The Green Hornet, Just Go With It and Gnomeo are getting close).
Movie execs are hoping that the industry’s fortunes turn around next weekend with Battle: Los Angeles.
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