"Poseidon" Drowns At Box-Office

From Darkhorizons, "Last week's soft opening for "Mission: Impossible III" was just the start of bad news for exhibitors this Summer. This past weekend saw a 6% decline in the overall market, the first drop in eight weeks and the lowest total gross at the box-office in six months.

By far the biggest loser was Warner Brothers $160 million remake "Poseidon" which, not buoyed by many negative reviews, tanked with a weak $20.3 million opening in second place that already has it labeled by many as one of the year's biggest bombs. The studio will be putting its hopes on the international division making up some of that amount like they did with Wolfgang Petersen's last film "Troy" ($133 million domestic, $365 million overseas).

Also suffering, Lindsay Lohan comedy "Just My Luck" with $5.5 million - the lowest opening ever for a Lohan-starrer. Disney's delayed release of the international soccer flick "Goal!" proved a bad idea, the film's dismal $2 million take not even cracking the Top Ten. Terry Zwigoff's "Art School Confidential" expanded to nearly 1000 theatres but took in just $1.2 million.

MI3 managed to hold onto the top spot over "Poseidon", but dropped an average 49% from last week's debut. At present its on course for about a $160-170 million total gross which would be the worst of the series domestically. Overseas though the film continues doing strong business, especially in Asia, though some European territories like the UK are still a tad quieter than they should've been.

It was glum this weekend, even in limited release circles with rather low per-theatre takes for small films like "Wah-Wah", "Down in the Valley" and "The Proposition". Funnily enough the only film getting any traction is Robin Williams comedy "R.V." which in its third week dropped a mere 14% and has already tripled its $16.4 million opening weekend take."