Are you freaking kidding me? Meet the Spartans is number one at the box office this weekend?
It’s estimated that it brought in $18.7MM vs second place Rambo at $18.2MM. Cloverfield fell 68% from last weekend – a second week drop of that magnitude usually means that a movie has received horrible word of mouth advertising. I knew it was going to split audiences big time into love it or hate it, but it seems that everyone who was going to see it went on opening weekend.
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I’m curious to see how Rambo holds up in it’s second weekend: Will word of mouth bless it or bash it? Of course next weekend is the Super Bowl so movie receipts will no doubt be down regardless.
But back to the title of this article… Are people really THAT desperate for anything resembling a comedy that they pushed Spartans over the top? Or dare I say that people just have incredibly low standards?
If there’s a huge drop next week for that movie there may still be hope for mankind – but if it only drops about 50% I will weep for the future of cinema since it will encourage studios to pump out more dreck.
I mean seriously… Meet the Spartans is sitting at a 5% favorable rating at RottenTomatoes.com and even over at IMDB.com where the voters are much more forgiving, it’s currently sitting at only 2.6/10.
Of course I’m supremely confident that no regular Screen Rant readers contributed to this box office travesty…
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16 Comments
May God have mercy of their souls…
Wait…strike that. Let God kill all those idiots who shelled out $10 for that crap!
Oh my…
Movies and statistics like this always makes me feel like the world is collectively becoming dumber and dumber…
How sad…
The worst thing is that STATISTICALLY speaking, this will spawn even more brain dead movies, wasting even more money and people becoming even dumber…
Wow what a bright future..
One other thing….
The SAW series…
I hear that they are making part 5? Are there really THAT many sick people out there????
What has the world come to?
Oh and Chris Brando died… He was only 49 years old… That family hasn’t had it easy…
You must be joking.
I didn’t even know this was OUT.
It slipped under my radar like a spy-satellite, except far less useful.
And I was at the theatre last night. Saw NO mention of the movie.
And further note of poor choices in movies-
Midnight.
Meat.
Train.
Is the name of a movie.
“Sounds like a downward spiral.”
It’s too early for April Fools.
People want to see Cloverfield less than THIS?
Now “we” have gone and guaranteed they make yet another one of these.
http://www.boxofficeguru.com has an interesting story that Date Movie and Epic Movie, produced by the same guys behind Meet the Spartans, opened at around that same box office weekend figure in February 2006 and January (I believe) 2007, respectively. Looks like low-budget, stinker spoofs in January/February (the dead months, along with September, ironically since a few best picture movies came out in those months), do very well. Ugh.
heath
No Vic, people do have incredibly low standards.
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A little good news!
The dropoff factor was higher for spartans than Rambo. 47% down from friday and saturday.
Where Rambo was down only 29%.
Its a safe bet that Spartans won’t break 30 mil by next week as Rambo should break 30 by next Saturday. I’m sure world of mouth well help Rambo next weekend.
^
I have to question why they released Rambo in January, the deadest movie month of the year, aka, the dumping ground. Sure, there are exceptions to the rule (Cloverfield), but I wonder why Lionsgate did that. March would’ve been better, esp. since Wanted is gone from there.
heath
The best it can hope for is breaking 30 million next weekend ?
The Rambo franchise has fallen a bit it seems .
couldnt Sly afford some advertising?
so we could see adds that had more then just Rambo killing people ?
so that he could share the STORY with us?
If Sly really wanted to bring attention to what was going on in Burma, the ads didnt reflect that .
Low standards? That’s giving people too much credit, since you’re assuming they have standards to begin with. In my experience, that’s expecting too much.
I’m actually surprised it didn’t do better than it did.
I have NO idea how this movie did so well, considering that the PREVIEWS looked dumb! I admit that I occasionally like spoof movies (the best of all time being Spaceballs), but the lastest ones are all just AWFUL!! I think the last one that I enjoyed watching was “Not Another Teen Movie.” Then again, they’re probably shooting for the 17-24 year old audience with this dreck….
Yeah Gary I agree.
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All we got was that Rambo spray painted face.
He brought mention of what was going on in Burma during the Film.
Be honest, who would have actually gone to see the film if it was chocked up as though Rambo was looking to take a “diplomatic solution” against the agressors.
So what did we get for advertising? Violence.
Images and scenes of Rambo ripping apart the enemy forces indiscriminately while seeking to further his uber-patriotic and heroic agenda. Rambo embodies the concept of “violence for the greater good” and it should be noted that, exactly what we got, is the concept for the movie.
If the trailer started out “In Burma, terrible things happen everyday. Today, that terrible thing’s name is John Rambo” I would have been impressed. But the truth is, Stallone says “Rambo” and people say “when?”
To speak of diplomacy and story would have been a box-office kiss of death for that movie. It is as such: “Action, Violence, Gore, and Awesome.”
Those are the four key ingredients in Rambo.
Sorry, Ranting.
Yeah Alex, Rambo is violent, and we expect it when we go to see the film.
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Yeah whatever…
^
I guess all I can say is that when we see others getting screwed our American reaction is to get involved.
Sometimes this means that we have to kill evil people…(Been going on for centuries).
^
Please don’t get all political here I know there’s plenty of evil going on…
^
However
I would rather see this version of violence then “meet the spartans” version of violence. You know what I mean. Throwing Britney Spears down a hole, etc.
I honestly don’t know what to say. How can absolute crap like this be number 1. Even if it was the only movie out at the time it shouldn’t be number one.
I’ve givin’ up on people. This is crazy.
I’m not sure, Steve.
I think I’m quite content on seeing Britney Spears chucked down a hole.
Wouldn’t be near enough justice for the trauma she’s causing in the lives of her children.
I didn’t mean it in the sense of getting political; it’s the politics of Hollywood, in a sense. When you release footage of a movie, it’s in small dose to sell the concept.
They showed us a lot of action, and minimal, if none-at-all plot. Normally, this is unacceptable, but in a movie as graphic as Rambo, with as “minimal” a plot as it has, to show much more than what they did would be to “give away the goods.”
I understand the marketing strategy very well: word of mouth, and 3 previous installments to get the testosterone fired up. We didn’t see any advertising because advertising more than they did would be to ruin the entire impact of the movie.
A movie with no plot can’t sell a plot it doesn’t have, you know what I mean?
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