I was dead-on on GI Joe, having had it at $56.2M. F@ck yeah.

However, when you look at all this weekend's grosses, it's not much to be happy about. Right now, it looks like Harry Potter will finish just shy of $300 million for the third time in a row, Ice Age film will finish just shy of $200 million for the second time in a row, and Public Enemies will finish just shy of $100 million. Goddamn shame. And it looks like Transformers 2 will finish just above $400 million. Which only makes everything worse. I just hope it doesn't beat Spider-Man's $403.7 million. Also, this marks the first weekend in which The Hangover actually fell harder than I predicted. Sheesh.

Funny People's drop is a shame, I hoped 500 Days of Summer would make more, and The Hurt Locker for whatever reason only expanded to 12 more theaters, thus falling 34%. I don't like all that. Not. One. Bit.

I don't believe it's quite sequel time for Joe. Even if they have plans on making one. I can't wait to see District 9 next weekend. The reviews so far have been really good. I hope it does something astronomically good. Any early word yet on where it's tracking ?

Going into the weekend Potter was on $780m worldwide. Unless your privy to information no one else has, I'll be very suprised if it hasn't reached $800m by now – in less than four weeks. How this is deemed a poor return is beyond me, despite it's hefty budget.

@Michael:
Thats what im saying. It already has over 800mill worldwide and will make or fall just short of 300 domestic. How is that not successful?

Wow. I'm not sure how you could imply innovation on behalf of apatow for Funny People. That movie fails on all fronts. Its "humor" meant to establish a rapport with the audience fails utterly, as hackneyed lines and jokes most of us grew tired of in the 90s were thrown at us. Meanwhile, the dramatic element hits with all the force of a much less talentedly cast "Man on the Moon." Your disappointment with that film should be targeted at your great white hope, Mr. Apatow, not the audience for collectively saying "Screw this, I'm going home."

I'm more upset that Getaway did so poorly. MiJo, Timmy O? Recipe for greatness.

@J.C and @Michael: To my knowledge no one ever said it wasn't successful and Laremy has said several times he goes by Box Office Mojo numbers to keep with consistency, which as of right now has Potter 6 listed at $766,800,000 worldwide. I'm not sure why people can't understand this. And as of right now it is battling with Prisoner of Azkaban for the last spot in worldwide box-office which would make it in a battle for least successful in the franchise in terms of box-office numbers. He isn't faulting anyone, just stating the facts as the numbers spell them out.

Wow, i am shocked Perfect Getaway did that poorly. I have heard only good things from reviews and friends that have seen it. I also enjoyed Funny People. A little on the depressing side at points, but in the end a good movie

Just to say that Boxofficemojo is very slow in updating it's foreign figures. Potter had made at least $515m internationally going into the weekend ($780m worldwide). Sure, it's unlikely to make $900m but the negativity surrounding the box office of a movie that'll make at least $850m, tells you how successful this franchise is. Oh, and The Half-Blood Prince was a great summer blockbuster movie that actually had a plot.

I loved GI JOE. At least they didn't screw up the best character like Wolverine did. Snake Eyes was all over the place unlike Mr. Deadpool. Also, I dare someone to tell me Sienna Miller is not the hottest villain ever. Wow.

Haha, me again! The Hollywood Reporter is reporting Half-Blood Prince's tally after the weekend to be an estimated $815.6m! So to answer the question – nothing has gone wrong.

By the way, I have GREAT respect for Roger Ebert and have defended him a lot lately. However, his review of GI JOE, no matter how structurally well (and cleverly) it was written, made no sense. I am not sure how you could say that GI JOE was better than Transformers when everyone knows they were the EXACT same kind of movie. He used to be spot-on but lately he is very hit and miss. That being said he is still the best ever.

My point with Half-Blood is not to call it a failure, it's to ask "is it the least successful of the series?"

Generally sequels are supposed to make more money each time out, due to shared marketing and the public learning what the product is all about. This Potter will not finish first among the brand, which leads me to believe the brand is actually trending downwards. Regardless of your personal feelings about the film (which again, I liked), isn't that something worth mentioning / noting / talking about?

The Potter series has gone

$974m
$878m
$795m
$895m
$928m

and now this one hitting $800m and counting. So perhaps there isn't a hard and fast rule to draw out of that data set.

Granted, I'm not in the target audience, but I didn't find "Julie & Julia" all that enthralling. The storytelling seemed rather perfunctory, the film had a low-budget look to it, and Streep's portrayal of an over-the-top character was too much like the real Child that Streep also seemed over the top. Her high-pitched voice actually became grating after a while.

This is a long way of saying that "The Time Traveler's Wife," which is going after much of the same demographic, will sink "Julie & Julia" next week. Although I think Streep is a great actress, this film of hers is just a dud.

@DKFan12: didn't screw up? You couldn't have liked that ridiculous rubber outfit they had Ray Park in!? I mean, dude, that thing looked like Ricardo Montalban's chest piece from Wrath of Khan.

HBP will be the 3rd highest grossing potter film with about $900 million worldwide, it's also the highest grossing film of 2009… i think HP is the most stable franchise in the industry, all of the 6 films have made between $790-$970 million, every single studio would like to have these numbers for a franchise of 8 movies.

ohhh i forgot… how can HBP be the least successful of the series if it's numbers are already higher than those from Prisoner of Azkaban (POA: $795.6 million VS. HBP: $815.6 million) by it´s fourth week of release???

@German:

That is pretty much exactly what the original Snake Eyes looked like. So I didn't mind it at all. Even if I did mind the outfit the point about the contrast between him and Deadpool was the fact that Snake Eyes was featured prominently in GI JOE while Deadpool was basically one scene and done.

@Laremy: Laremy, we all have a limited amount of time and can't be on top of everything; but, when you are being negative about a film I believe you have an extra responsibility to get things right. We appreciate your integrity in going back to look at the facts objectively. I am not a Harry Potter fan, but I know it's hard when you are a fan of a movie that gets slammed for no good reason.

Speaking of which: G-Force. In the Beyond The Trailer review, ALL the kids who saw it gave it a 10/10. You wouldn't slam a movie for gay audiences, just because it was targeted to them and not you; so why dismiss a kid's movie that kid's love, just because it's not targeted to you.

Box Office Mojo is a good site. However, they too have limited resources for updating international numbers. The annoying, though perhaps predictable, result is that international numbers for films they like get updated quickly, but if they're not so in love with your movie, the numbers will be updated slowly. Sometimes very slowly. Often their own numbers will show a higher international gross, but the total won't be updated. It's like a silent movie review.

@Pumice Miner: Kids will give 10/10 to any film that is targeted at them. If we slam bad films like G-Force, and they fail, then studios will be forced to produce better product for the kids to give 10/10.

there were three main things i didn't like about gi joe otherwise it was great
#1. sienna miller and channing tatum had no chemistry at all channing tatum needs a serious acting coach
#2. Marlon wayans was the second worst actor in the film and i don't know who rachael nichols is but apparently she was in star trek and one of my personal favorite shows from when i was a kid the inside but she was a good actress and not bad looking either and kinda funny
And last but not least #3. DENNIS QUAID was the worst actor in the film i hated his proformance of general hawk but found the character likeable i never thought he could do worst than he did in vantage point last year but he topped it with this
and by the way there will be a sequel and joesph gordon levett the best actor in the film will be in it more because at the end he says you will call me comander and he did the cobra comander voice top notch

@chewbaca69: i'm like 16 and i saw g-force in 3D with my 7 year old sister and we both loved it

@DarkKnightFAN12: you're right sienna miller was really hot but rachael nichols the girl who scarlett i tjought she was preety hot too

The problem with BOM isn't in how quickly it updates its foreign totals, but that it doesn't list totals for a few countries, most prominently China..

@chewbaca69: Kids can tell you what they like and why. You just have to listen to them. For instance, they said this film was the best execution of a 3D film they'd seen, with the action sequences taking advantage of the 3D. What do you think made G-Force a bad film?

@Pumice Miner: I don't believe that being gay and being a kid are the same thing. Children don't have any context for the films they watch, they love the experience and aren't able to use experience to contrast / compare the work. Kids love movies. Kids also love chocolate. Does that mean I'm off in removing chocolate from my diet? C'mon. It's a complete straw man argument.

I see plenty of movies that are aimed at younger audiences, and I'm the first one to cheer for them when I like them. I like Monsters vs. Aliens quite a bit, for instance. Up was very well done.

Lastly, this is a box office column. The quality of the film is only used in passing as it doesn't usually correspond to box office results. Plenty of good films make nada. Plenty of terrible films make bank. The entire column is an attempt to figure out the "why" behind the results and trends, which is far more interesting than the specific feelings behind each individual film.

Laremy, I did my part. My granddaughter and I went to see "(500) Days of Summer." It was splendid…definitely NOT a typical rom/com or an annoying bromance. This was an old fashioned romantic comedy with a bittersweet touch like was once fashionable in the 1940's, but updated for today's audience. And Joseph Gordon-Levitt with Zooey Deschanel, what more do I need to say?

OK, every mother, father, grandmother, grandfather who has a 14 year and up child/grandchild, go and share this movie. The sideward glancing smiles my granddaughter and I shared plus the "Oh, riiiight"'s whispered under our breath were moments to help us survive the hysteria over her own romantic break ups.

This is an intelligent, well made, funny, touching and well acted film. Come on folks! Where are the peeps who are tired of films aimed way low? And, IT MADE THE TOP TEN! There IS an audience for movies like this.

@Patricia: Nice! If we don't reward innovation at the cinema every so often I fear it will go away… so I salute your efforts.

@Patricia: While (500) Days of Summer is a fantastic film, there's nothing wrong with an "annoying" bromance. I Love You, Man and The Hangover are still two of the funniest films this year. Now, if we could just only make Matthew McConaughey to dissappear…. the world would be just a little brighter.

BTW – What's everyone's predictions for District 9 this weekend? I'm guessing mid-30's, low 40's….

I knew "Funny People" would fall at least 60%. Two reasons: Firstly, its 2nd-day drop was big. Secondly, its weekday drops were large as well. Comparing it to "Bruno" and "Year One," then to past Apatow production, I knew it'd be somewhere in the 60-65% range. Which is very sad, because I watched it on Saturday and I loved it. In fact, the more I think about it, the more my respect grows. It is a seriously fucking smart film! Sandler shows that his true (and only?) acting ability comes in serious roles, making me sad he doesn't do them more often. And Apatow goes for a story that's 100% realistic all the way. There isn't a single moment in the movie that gives way to comedy conventions or to "tidiness," not even the ending. Even the best comedies are liable to reach for the convenient endings, but "Funny People" didn't. Oh, and I would like to clarify that, yes, I consider "Funny People" a comedy. It is a comedy with a great deal of drama and some very serious moments, but I think it is at heart a comedy. I believe very strongly that humor has an enormous power at delivering life lessons and themes because it can do it in a much more palatable way than a drama or a tragedy, and it can do it in a way that makes you want to watch it again and again. Sadly, most people don't realize that the humor genre has this power, which is why PG-13 comedies as they are exist. I'm glad to see that Apatow DOES realize this, however. "Funny People" is by far his most mature work to date. I hesitate to say that it's his best because I love "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" so damn much, but it was definitely better than "Knocked Up" (which, by the way, I also loved; me using the word "definitely" is not meant as a slight upon this film).

Oh, and the length. "Funny People" was 146 minutes long. 110 is consider long for a comedy. Most PG-13 comedies don't even pass 100. I'll bet that grated on a lot of people, just as 162 minutes for "Watchmen" grated on people looking for some early Spring popcorn fun. However, unlike "Watchmen," "Funny People" was not a minute too long. I really liked "Watchmen," but I feel it could have been trimmed in quite a few places, and that Zack Snyder was paralyzing himself in the source material a bit too much at times. But "Funny People" was never too long or too indulgent. I was consistently engaged, entertained, and moved. In fact, I think I want to watch it in theaters again. I guess I'd better hurry, because a 65% drop means that it may only be in wide release another three or four weekends.

@JM: It's true that it's great that Judd Apatow went out of his comfort zone, for all filmmakers should try something new once in a while. Still, I don't believe that gives Funny People any excuse for being monotonous, draggy, and, most surprisingly, so unfunny. Judd Apatow didn't know what he wanted the movie to be- a drama? Comedy? Romance? In the end, instead of blending all of those aspects together to make a great film like, say, 500 Days of Summer, he divided them into different long, ineffective segments. The jokes got extremely repetitive after a while, and, while the film was thoughtful and mature, all the different subplots didn't really connect to the main story, just serving as comic relief that just wasn't that funny. It will definitely be forgotten about by the end of August, and any kind of award nominations seem like a longshot.

With weekend actuals counted, I guessed closest for G.I. Joe ($0.1m off), no prize? lol jk. Stoked for the sequel.

Some thoughts:

Wow on Funny People dropping so fast. It's definitely a huge deal, wonder what Apatow has to say about it/what he's got planned for film #4. I don't think it deserved the drop (but can understand why it happened); on a related note, when recommending the film to others, I call it "a dramedy from Judd Apatow" and then you'll kinda know what to expect.

I really thought HP6 would do better, considering its great opening days (and it DESERVES to gross more than HP5, but it's gonna be close).

Good call on 500DoS actually ranking #9, Laremy.

@DarkKnightFAN12: Agreed on Sienna Miller, she was so damn sexy in G.I. Joe (and so was Rachel Nichols). Also agreed on Ebert, he may be a legend but lately, his reviews lack some sense and he will mask that with a "clever" structure instead. Random example, but did anyone read his Four Christmases way back? I am in no way defending the film (I thought it was okay at best) but you can't just professionally critique a film the way he did. People want to know what exactly went wrong with the film, not a "clever" dialogue blatantly insulting the film with little support or argument behind it. He's done that lately.

For next week: $25-30m for District 9 then low drops because of good WOM?

@JM: I saw Watchmen and was surprised that ,even though it was based on a comic book, it was a fillm more geared to adults. It avoided some of the hallmarks of films for kids like the characters not being in current intimate relationships when they get together, and the movie's struggles being external instead of internal. It was also stlistically interesting even in terms of pacing.

In terms of box office performance, the current economic climate may be rewarding feel good, uncomplicated films. Scripts that raise philosophical questions and make you think might want to wait to be develped a little later. This includes Watchmen. I didn't see Funny People, but as you describe it, it perhaps should have been developed earlier or later.