Weekend Movie News Wrap Up: March 8, 2009

In this weeks Wrap Up:

Watchmen watches the top of the box office; Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan are A Couple of Dicks; we may not get Three Stories About Joan but we will get a lot of suing; Wahlberg takes Prisoners; Steve Carrell brings us the worlds first “Testosterone comedy” in Hi-T; Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck knows The 28^th Amendment (and breaks my spell check).

Box Office

As predicted Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen captured the top spot at the box office with an estimated $55 million opening weekend. A pretty substantial sum considering the near three hour running time and the R rating. Time will tell if the film has legs and the mainstream crossover appeal to the general public.

Madea Goes to Jail banked another $8.5 million to keep acquire the runner-up spot. So far the Tyler Perry film has netted $76 million.

Liam Neeson’s sleeper hit Taken has earned another $7.5 million on its sixth week in release! The film has now almost taken $120 million. I haven’t seen the film but I can only imagine that someone, somewhere is talking about a sequel.

Slumdog Millionaire has made another $6.5 million over the weekend bringing total gross of the Oscar winning film to $125 million.

According to Variety:

“The scripting team of Robb and Marc Cullen penned the screenplay, centered on a pair of cops who track down a stolen baseball card, rescue a Mexican beauty and must deal with gangsters and laundered drug money.”

The film will be directed by Kevin Smith – the first time he hasn’t penned his own work.

Variety is also saying that the Warner Bros. film is Smith’s “first major studio pic” – this is untrue as Mallrats was a Universal production.

The studio also thought about calling the film A Couple of Cops but I’m sure that they realized that Dicks had more comedic mileage.

A Couple of Dicks will be released on January 29^th 2010.

Now get your mind out of the gutter (although that was obviously Kevin Smith’s intent – again)!

Source: Variety

2. Speaking of… Bruce Willis – the star and his production company is being sued by producers for breach of contact over his (ill-fated) directorial debut Three Stories About Joan. They claim that Willis quit the film without notice and are looking for $4 million in damages. However, these guys obviously haven’t seen Die Hard because Brucie is fighting back with a counter suit for $8.7 million. Willis’s lawyer Marty Singer said:

“In over three decades of practice, I have rarely seen such an absurd lawsuit. The production companies admitted they did not have the financing in place for the film, failed to pay members of the cast and crew, and failed to deposit Bruce Willis’ compensation in escrow, which resulted in the film not going forward. After Mr. Willis threatened to sue the production companies for their breach of contract, they responded with this baseless lawsuit.

Mr. Willis and other individual producers will proceed with their multi-million-dollar affirmative claims against the production companies this week, and are confident that they will prevail.”

Source: NY Daily News