Cementing its status as the most reliable box-office winner in Hollywood, Pixar enjoyed its 12th number one hit in a row with Cars 2, which earned a healthy $68 million over the weekend, topping the $60 million grossed by the first film in the same frame. Despite receiving the worst notices of any Pixar movie to date—a 33% on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer, and a 55 Metacritic score—Cars 2 connected with its target audience (young boys), at least enough to reap the merchandizing payload that likely prompted a sequel in the first place. Faring even better—in relation to cost, anyway—was the week’s other opening, the Cameron Diaz comedy Bad Teacher, earned $32 million, affirming post-Bridesmaids that raunchy female-centered comedies are the new raunchy arrested adolescent male comedies. Despite the news that Warner Brothers intends to make a sequel, Green Lantern dropped a precipitous 65% in its second week to slide into third, having not yet crested $100 million of its $200 million budget. Perhaps Warner Brothers figures audiences are really clamoring for more Sinestro next time. Sinestro! Sinestro! Sinestro!
In limited release, Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, a behind-the-scenes look at his “Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television” tour, didn’t appear to draw out his loyal supporters in great numbers. At $4,375 per screen on 24 screens, the film grossed a mediocre $105,000, though its future on DVD seems a little more viable. Chris Weitz’s A Better Life, an attempt to bring Italian neo-realist aesthetics to the lives of undocumented Hispanics in Los Angeles, did better, with $15,000 per screen on four screens, but the number can’t be too cheering for Summit Entertainment, which has the muscle of a major studio. The best per screen average of the week belonged to John Turturro’s Passione, a documentary tribute to Neapolitan music, but its $17,300 was made on only screen and that screen was at New York’s premier arthouse, Film Forum.
For more detailed numbers, visit Box Office Mojo.