Movie Projector: ‘Funny People’ looking for $30-million-plus opening
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At the end of a difficult few months that has seen “Land of the Lost” flop and “Bruno” struggle, Universal Pictures is taking perhaps the biggest risk of the summer: That audiences are ready for a heavy movie from Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen.
“Funny People” is on track to open in the low- to mid-$30-million range, according to several people with access to pre-release audience polling. Given the movie’s $75-million budget, that’s a decent start that could put it on the road to success.
The film is generating the most interest from males younger than 25, the typical audience for Sandler and Rogen comedies. But it’s not clear whether they’ll take to the movie’s dark tone and weighty dealings with mortality. Reviews so far have varied widely, but most critics agree that it’s a big shift from the comic material for which Sandler, Rogen and writer/director Judd Apatow are best known.
The movie’s prospects may depend on whether audiences saw the trailer, which reflects the movie’s serious subject matter -- a stand-up comic who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness -- or whether they learned about the film through more light-hearted TV spots or billboards.
Universal should get the answer to its question by Saturday. As the studio learned from “Bruno,” buzz spreads quickly thanks to Twitter and text messaging. If Friday audiences don’t like the movie, tickets sales will probably drop more than 15% the next day.
(Company Town poll: Cast your vote for how “Funny People” will perform at the box office.)
Percentage declines may be the biggest story of the weekend, as Disney will be closely eyeing the second weekend box office for “G-Force,” which debuted with $32.2 million. Though it was a surprising No. 1, the opening weekend gross isn’t too strong given the movie’s $150-million production cost (those digital guinea pigs didn’t come cheap).
“We like being No. 1, and we like the performance to date,” Walt Disney Co. chief Bob Iger said on a conference call with analysts following the conglomerate’s second-quarter earnings report today. “But it’s got challenges from an economics perspective.”
Weekday grosses have been strong, with the movie racking up an additional $13.7 million in ticket sales Monday through Wednesday, but it will need a decline as small as that of other family hits like “Up” (which fell 35% on its second weekend) to end up a success.
It may have some revived competition this weekend from “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” The Warner Bros. movie added 162 Imax screens that had been showing “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” giving “Potter” a $4.5-million boost. Wednesday was the first day that “Half-Blood Prince” has outperformed 2007’s “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” since the film’s opening weekend earlier this month.
Fox also opens its family film “Aliens in the Attic,” which it co-financed with New Regency at a cost of $45 million. It’s expected to have a relatively soft opening of around $10 million.
-- Ben Fritz