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Speed Racer Gets Lapped by IronMan
Bring on all the racing puns and innuendos you can find. Speed Racer just didn’t have what it takes to beat IronMan to the finish line.
“Speed Racer” was lapped in its opening weekend at the box office as “Iron Man” continued to fire its jets with $50.5 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.The anime-inspired race movie edged into the No. 2 spot with $20.2 million, slightly ahead of the 20th Century Fox comedy “What Happens in Vegas,” which debuted at $20 million.
Rarely do movies ever make more than they did on the first weekend in any other following weekend, so the studios are going to be hard pressed to come up with the $120million budget after this $50million opening weekend.
After they get the money from merchandising (my kids are crazy about the cars) and the dvd sales, they might recoup a lot of their costs, but I don’t imagine this will be enough to bring about a sequel.
Yahoo also points out that sites like this one were already bashing the film before it even came out. Oh the power of the intarweb!
Edit: It appears that some of the numbers were skewed to make the agony of defeat not so painful. But keep in mind Yahoo was reporting based on “projected numbers” for Sunday, so that wasn’t in stone. The Production budget may have been underestimated as well.
BoxOffice Mojo puts out final numbers.
Iron Man = $51,190,629
What Happens in Vegas = $20,172,474
Speed Racer = $18,561,337
Thanks for the tip MizH
That’s not the big story though – Speed Racer also got lapped by WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS but Warner Bros. was SO ashamed about it that they deliberately lied when presenting their estimates so they could appear as number 2 in the major media reports. Scandalous!!!
Link here: http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/toldja-speed-racer-finishes-distant-3rd/
Completely unnaceptable and unprofessional in my opinion!
Box-office Mojo confirms it:
http://boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2008&wknd=19&p=.htm
This is a huge story in Hollywood right now… Emile Hirsch just fired UTA today as well. Actual costs for Speed Racer are exceeding 300 million dollars. Everyone’s talking about this numbers forgery!
Emile Hirsch is a great great actor, i didnt see speed not because of him, but because of the films style. The style looks like its really well done, but its just not for me.
This shit couldn’t even make $20 million? AAHAHAHAAAAA! Go Iron Man, GO!!!!!!
Damn. the Washowskis trumped by Ashton & Diaz. that’s funny.
i knew Iron Man wasnt drop down a spot at all. positive word-of-mouth has given this great film long legs.
Oh! OH! BBBBUUUUUUURRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“Never underestimate a family film.” In this case, never OVERestimate a family film! Bend it over and kiss it goodbye, Iron Man just kicked this sucker HARD!
Allow me to sum it up like this; Ouch! ‘Nuff said!
for most wide release movies, they make about half less each weekend after opening, so iron man made 50 mil after a 100 mil
Harold and kumar 2 made 6 million last weekend and 3 million this weekend, So im guessing speed racer will make about 10 million or so this weekend. It is gunna be a big bust. Too much money was spent for that film especially in the blockbuster season where a big movie will come out every weekend
the guys just thought: the car-chasing scenes from matrix were so awesome, let’s cut all the crap about storyline and other unimportant stuff and let’s make a movie just about car-chasing. Well, that’s what you get. speed-racer.
I’m already looking forward for the sequel. Ironman is so much cooler than spiderman, which was highly overrated.
Well I said it many many moons ago that this film was going to be the biggest bomb this year. Looks like I was right.
Strangely enough I had a very vivid dream last night about The Incredible Hulk. In the dream it sucked any number of ass and it was one of those dreams that nothing goes right, no matter how you try and getting out of the theater was my goal.
Dream Hulk was horrible. Now to see if my dream comes true.
this isnt something to be happy about.
i was hoping for speedracer to be good i grew up on it, i would never say that its better then ironman- this only saddens me. what do people have against this film anyways? i feel bad about it sucking but i liked the show so theres no way i could be happy from this.
this movie did suck. but that only fucks up my day it doesnt cheer me up i was looking forward to this…
First of all:
“Yahoo also points out that sites like this one were already bashing the film before it even came out.”
Sites like TMB are small pebbles in the sand on a huge beach. “Meet The Spartans” made its blood money, didn’t it?
1) I think what people “had” against the film was…well, simply put, the CGI effects. In all the trailers, they looked off, like Speed Racer going down a track through The Schumacher 1997 B&R Gotham City.
2) While the age for ‘Iron Man’ is a serious PG-13, somehow I suspect Iron Man looks “cooler” than Speed Racer. The effects are better, acting’s better, story’s better. Everything is better. Better nostalgia too.
3) The kids want to save up allowance for this coming weekend’s Prince Caspian. There’s your “family film” Darkkinger.
4) From my understanding, the Diaz/Kutcher comedy is also doing better per screen average on fewer screens than SR. Either “Vegas” is that good, or “Racer” is that bad. Or both.* (note: this “could” also be thought of as a chick flick/date film- our g/f’s may not want to see SR, they saw Iron Man with us last week…)
5) SR should have come out a month ago. Sandwiched between Iron Man, Caspian and pretty much Indy, there had to be a sacrificial lamb among the lot.
And there you have it.
*because of the numbers, the “Vegas” film might pull in a few more numbers, simply because it does look good for that film
Unfortunately Hazmat, this movie was taking a risk going with the style it did.
It was very unique in its execution leaning heavily on the camp of the original cartoon series. The choice to go with the eyecandy overkill was risky since people could love it or hate it.
There was also some timing issues. Bringing out a movie aimed at children, on Mother’s day weekend, right after Ironman and before Caspian. I don’t know that this COULD have succeeded.
If it was sold off season in a slow week they could have triumphed in the kiddie crowds (my children are DYING to see this) but it had too much going against it.
If the style caught on, it could have rocked. Wachowskis are going to have to do something that doesnt lean on their “the guys who brought you the Matrix” reputation anymore.
RODNEY
oh yeah i tottaly agree- it was made for the younger crowd and that was a stupid move. it was the older people, some grown up some younger but its older people that used to watch this show not the kind of people that would watch a PG movie. this should have been made more serious and more- well…”dark” i guess. i think the show stopped being played EVERYDAY like in the 90s or something. the kids now watch other things, and the ones that do want to watch speedracer is probably because of the trailers or maybe they have a dvd at home from their dad or soemthing.
as for the risk, it was unessesary and stupid, they could have had more viewers if it was aimed at people 13 and older. AND it still would have been cool enough to atract a bunch of kids.
and yeah another thing is the timming which was horrible but that doesnt have to do THAT much with the movie. if they did make it for an older audience wed be talking about how narnia had bad timing not speedracer.
Speed Racer was awesome. I loved every minute of it. People get over yourselves. Over course this site dissed it. Just last week they were calling for a X-men – Cable/Biship movie for christ sake (PUKE). Speed Racer was 100 times better and more stylish then transformers which was a piece of garbage.
no it wasnt. it merely sayd that if they HAD to make a movie about a character that would never be in the big screen anyways: which one would YOU want it to be. and people had opinions and i actually liked the nightwing one.
and i wont get into transformers being beter then speedracer or else the message this comment will be about 8 paragraphs long.
Ricky, this site’s commenters have been pretty harsh on Speed Racer but if you read most of our posts about it we were skeptically optimistic about the movie.
It had potential. The over stylized look was destined to be a love or hate thing.
And while you are criticizing John’s choices for superheros he would like to see in film and using that as the basis to establish our bad taste you rave about Speed Racer and call Transformers garbage?
Back atcha kiddo!
I really liked the Speed Racer movie! I wonder if it made so much less ’cause all the older kids were at Iron Man instead? Maybe when school gets out in few weeks there will probably be a lot more little kids going to see it with the grown-ups.
The little ones in our audience loved it and I bet they tell all their friends. I suspect that it’s gonna be a sleeper hit.
I loved the film.
Its years ahead of its time!!!
The critics can blow me!
movies are never years ahead of any time. everytime they make a movie about the future, 10 years later we look back and we say “wow. not even close” i remember all the movies from like 20 years ago that sayd “this happened in the future…the year 2005!!!!’ there were like hovering houses and walking robots.
dont agree with me? watch starship troopers or tell me a movie that talked about this year as the future and nailed it.
what year was speedracer in ANYWAY? they made it TOO MUCH like the show- but that was in the 70’s- so is this in the year 2069 or the 70’s? you cant tell this movie was the worst combination of the future and the past. the one thing they changed about it is the stupidest thing.
“hey lets leave all the homoness the way it was in the cartoon show even though our biggest fans are now 40 but we have to make changes so lets change the time it was supposed to take place and make it the year 3000 but still make them look like elvis pressly look alikes”
The Wachowski bros certainly put a lot of effort into making Speed Racer… but the movie overall looked and felt like a cross between anime, a kaleidoscope, that Flintstones movie, a video game and the Dukes of Hazard
Looks like Iron Man beat Speed Racer to the finish line (weekend gross.)