From darkhorizons, The return of "Indiana Jones" this weekend broke records across the domestic and global box-office.
'Crystal Skull' took in a four-day Memorial Day weekend haul of $126 million, making it the second biggest Memorial Day opening behind last year's "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" with $139 million.
In it's first five days, 'Skull' managed to rack up $151.1 million - the fifth highest first five-day gross of any film, and just $1 million shy of "Spider-Man 2". It sadly failed to get near the top trio of "Star Wars: Episode III", "Pirates 2" and "Spider-Man 3" which all took in around $170 million.
Despite an over 4,000 screen count, 'Skull' took in a whopping $29,586 per screen average - more than four times that of second place "Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" which with $28.6 million for the four-day weekend, had the steepest drop-off (48%) of any film in the Top Ten and looks unlikely to reach $200 million.
On the overseas front, "Skull" did stellar business with $160 million through Monday in its first weekend - making it the fifth biggest foreign opening weekend ever, just beating 'Revenge of the Sith'. It sits only behind the most recent 'Pirates,' 'Spider-Man' and 'Harry Potter' sequels along with 2006's "The Da Vinci Code".
The results come despite some very differing reactions amongst hardcore fans with a sizable amount of online reactions absolutely slamming the film - a surprising move as critics have generally praised the project. Despite the very vocal geek vitrol, the film showed strong day-by-day gains over the holiday which would indicate a healthy shelf life for the next few weeks.
6 comments:
I caught Indy over the weekend and overall I thought it was awesome and I'll buy the DVD the day it comes out. I agree largely with what Octo had to say although I can't say it's better than Temple of Doom. (TOD is part of my childhood and I've seen it dozens of times. I just can't adequately compare the 2.)
I should mention that my friends loathed it (and Running Freak fell asleep 3 minutes in). Their gripes were 1) He's just too old. 2) They were very much opposed to the sci-fi element. This led to a heated discussion about the plotline of the new movie being more plausible than the Holy Grail search in Last Crusade.
They also had a problem with the CGI animals.
Running Freak always falls asleep!
I haven't seen it yet but I honestly can't imagine loathing it. Even at its worst it's still Spielberg, Lucas, Ford, and John Williams.
Most of my LA friends hated it. Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age. I had my issues with it, but still I had fun. And Harrison is still hot.
Glad you liked it, JSP. It's strange that folks are reacting badly to the sci-fi element -- and it also isn't.
The other Indy movies all take place very much in the real world, up to the end point where the veil of mystery is pierced and certain magical elements are revealed to be true. I thought that replacing that hidden mysticism with a sci-fi enigma was an excellent choice, especially when the film takes place in the 50's instead of the 30's. But I can see how people wouldn't warm to it.
I like the idea that Indy, as the twentieth century's premier archeologist, is a guy who finds out the world's biggest secrets, whatever kind of secrets they happen to be.
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