Can 'The Lone Ranger' Survive July 4th Weekend?
The big July 4th holiday weekend box-office saga is from over, but The Lone Ranger — Disney's big, big-budget, badly reviewed, unintentional disaster movie — already has a grim future when it comes to making good on the big gamble of a weird Western for Independence Day. That, in large part, is thanks to a heavily accented super-villain named Gru and some adorable little dudes called minions.
RELATED: Box Office Roundup: 'X-Men' Bests 'Hangover 2'
As Nikki Finke points out in her analysis for Deadline, it's still early to evaluate the whole extra-long weekend. What with the BBQs and fireworks, she explains that this particular holiday typically "is a slow moviegoing day." But all signs point to Despicable Me 2 doing some serious trouncing.
RELATED: Sean Penn Was Confused by 'The Tree of Life' Too
The animated film opened to $34.3 million on Wednesday, and added $23.5 million in Thursday's estimates, per Finke. That Wednesday number puts Despicable Me 2 on track to collect $140 million over the full five-day weekend, Grady Smith at Entertainment Weekly reports. By comparison, Finke reports that The Lone Ranger collected $9.6 million on Wednesday and $9.7 million on Thursday.
RELATED: Blame Bad Movies for 2011's Bad Box Office
Despicable Me 2's performance on Wednesday is pretty remarkable. Finke explains that it's "setting records — the 3rd highest opening day ever for an animated feature, the 8th highest Wednesday opening ever, and the biggest Wednesday opening of all-time for Universal." The film cost only $76 million to make, which is change compared to The Lone Ranger's $200 million-plus budget. The Johnny Depp-starring flick will likely only pull in a total in the $40 to $50 million range this weekend. And there's more bad news for Disney: Westerns don't really play well overseas, though Finke writes that Depp's "worldwide popularity may, repeat may," do some good for The Lone Ranger on the international market. A small piece of good news for the film seems to be that audiences don't hate it as much as the critics have; it nets a B+ CinemaScore.
RELATED: 'The Lone Ranger': How the West Was Lost
But The Lone Ranger, in its failures so far, is being hung out to dry as an example of What's Wrong With Hollywood. Over at Vulture, Gilbert Cruz writes: "In addition to being massively expensive, The Lone Ranger also demonstrates the industry’s franchise obsession, origin story laziness, over-reliance on bloodless violence, and its inability to prevent running time bloat." Now that's despicable.
