Warner Brothers Lied About Speed Racer’s Box Office Numbers
Earlier this week there was a bit of confusion over the weekend box office report, which claimed that Speed Racer had just barely edged out the Ashton Kutcher/Cameron Diaz comedy What Happens in Vegas for the #2 spot. At the time, a lot of people were surprised because the numbers that had come out for Friday and Saturday seemed to indicate that Speed Racer was tracking way behind What Happens in Vegas, and then on the last day suddenly surged ahead. Mysteriously, a few days later, the box office charts changed again to show What Happens in Vegas at #2 after all. What happened?
Well, it appears that Warner Brothers lied, that’s what happened. It seems that they inflated the estimates to save face (and probably save a few execs their jobs). But now we know the truth… Speed Racer grossed just $18.5 million in its opening weekend. Clearly a bit of a debacle when you consider that the movie cost $160 million to make. I just don’t understand how studios can just fudge the numbers like that and have them published before anyone even double-checks them. Haven’t we learned anything from Enron people?! Anyway, I guess the bottom line is that box office stats are even more worthless than we originally thought. And with The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian coming out this weekend, I’m afraid Speed Racer will soon be left in the dust.
Comments (9)
Oh Speed Racer will return! Just watch. It’ll be a miracle. In june it’ll come back with a big weekend cause there is nothing else coming out and people will finally decide to go catch it. Just watch!!! It’ll happen!
Posted by Captain N on May 15th, 2008The Wachowski bros certainly put a lot of effort into making Speed Racer… the movie overall looked and felt like a cross between anime, a kaleidoscope, that Flintstones movie, a video game and the Dukes of Hazard
Posted by patrick on May 15th, 2008I still think someone lied about Titanic’s box-office numbers.
Posted by Reed Farrington on May 15th, 2008I have this dreadful feeling that in 25 years when I’m nearing 60, there will be this contingent of folks praising SPEED RACER like many in my generation praise BLADE RUNNER. Then I can be the curmudgeonly old fellow telling them exactly what I think of those young ‘uns.
Posted by Kurt on May 15th, 2008This same thing happened with Clooney’s “Leatherheads” – Universal’s estimates had the film in 2nd place and Nim’s Island a family film was to be in 3rd place. After the numbers were in Nim’s Island was 2nd and “Leatherheads” came in 3rd.
This was noted in an article on Forbes.com regarding the error:
“Hollywood has the art of box office estimates down to a science, so a mistake of almost a million dollars raised eyebrows throughout the industry as to whether Universal’s fumble was an attempt at protecting Clooney’s reputation.”
http://www.forbes.com/media/2008/04/08/movies-clooney-universal-biz-media-cx_dp_dr_0408leatherheads.html
I think Speed Racer didn’t do well because of marketing you just couldn’t tell if it was a little kid’s movie or aimed at teenagers.
Posted by michael on May 15th, 2008Kurt, you dont need to wait. I like Speed Racer a hell of a lot more than Blade Runner.
“I think Speed Racer didn’t do well because of marketing you just couldn’t tell if it was a little kid’s movie or aimed at teenagers.”
Its not just the marketing. The film is gloriously all over the place.
Posted by Goon on May 15th, 2008I think the thing that’s killing it is the same thing that some people are praising it. The look and style is sooooo all over the place that people don’t know what to make of it. It doesn’t help either that the acting seems to be very straight and very melodramatic and the action looks like a spastic anime.
The second I saw the first trailer way back I knew this film would bomb.
Posted by Swarez on May 15th, 2008Regardless of how much money speed racer made it seems like the kind of movie that will find a cult following on DVD. It is pretty pitiful what warner brothers did but i think there just afraid of being the next new line.
Posted by Drew on May 15th, 2008The movie looks like a piece of crap…just because a film has crazy special effects doesn’t mean it’s good. People aren’t going to see it because no one cares about it. And poor Emile Hirsch…he just can’t seem to make a good movie. How I yearn for THE GIRL NEXT DOOR!!!
Posted by AdamR on May 16th, 2008Leave a Reply