Box-Office Benjamin$: I Told Ya The Proposal Would Take It

Not to brag or nothin, but I did predict last week that the Ryan Reynolds/Sandra Bullock rom-com would take top spot this weekend and it did with a very respectable $34.1 million, beating Jack Black’s Year One in the process, which took in a mediocre $20 million. To make things more fun here on The Movie Mash, from now on during my weekly Box-Office Benjamin$ report, I’m going to start not only predicting the winner of the next weekend, but also how much that winner will take in. Feel free to say “Challenge” and provide your predictions in a comment. The winner will be mentioned in the  following week’s report. Anyway, after two weeks of The Hangover dominating with its outrageous-factor, people decided to get their LOLs from a more traditional, situational comedic outlet in The Proposal.

The Hangover did, however, continue to truck along strong, by posting an astounding $26 million in its third weekend, with a grand domestic total of just over $152 million. Now this is really something. Knocked Up was considered to be a “blockbuster comedy” and it didn’t even crack $150 million during its entire run. At this rate, I think it an be safe to predict that The Hangover will be the first comedy, in a long while, to break the $200 million  mark. This film has turned out to be the saving grace, thus far, for Warner Bros. After the abysmal performances of their two supposed action-blockbusters for 2009, Watchmen and Terminator Salvation, WB was having some very bad luck financially as those two films cost more money to make than they actually grossed. The Hangover, however, only cost $35 million to make and thus far has netted the studio a near $130 million profit (minus advertising & promotion of course). I used the conditional term “thus far” earlier, obviously because WB can rest easy that the long-anticipated Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince hits theaters next month and usually does pretty well at the box-office.

So now what do we have coming up this weekend? That little movie about the alien-robots that turn into different stuff. That’s right, Transformers Revenge of the Fallen finally hits theaters on Wednesday and will obviously destroy everything else. Sucks to be you My Sister’s Keeper. Even though reviews thus far have been sub-par, people have been itching for some kick-ass robot action. Back in 2007, the first Transformers opened with a solid $70 million, solid being the term because Shia LaBeouf was a relative newcomer and Transformers was a known popular culture commodity, but no one knew how they would translate into an action film. I’m going to predict that Transformers Revenge of the Fallen will post the first $100 million+ opening of 2009 with $115 take-in over five days. Now remember, this film opens on Wednesday, so it’s got two full days of extra showings before the traditional three-day weekend kicks in. Challenge?

Here’s a breakdown of the rest of the Top 5 at the Box-Office this weekend.

CHAMP: The Proposal $34.1 million
2) The Hangover $26.8 million
3) UP $21.3 million
4) Year One $20.2 million
5) The Taking of Pelham 123 $11.3 million

Source: Box-Office Mojo

What Do You Think? Discuss.