Johnny Knoxville in Jackass 3D
Some movies are launched with the highest of intentions. Johnny Knoxville's dream was to make a 3-D documentary in which Steve-O, his favorite meta-masochist, would be catapulted 120 ft. (37 m) into the air in a brim-full Porta-Potty, its plethora of poo virtually spraying the audience as it returned to earth. "We're going to take the same 3-D technology that James Cameron used in Avatar," Knoxville said last December, "and stick it up Steve-O's butt. We're taking stupid to a whole new dimension."
Emission accomplished. Jackass 3D earned $50 million this weekend at North American theaters, according to early studio estimates, thus boasting this year's biggest opening-weekend audience since the July blockbuster Inception. Knoxville's merry pranksters were the stars of a bustling weekend that also saw a vivid start for Red, the Over-the-Hill-Gang CIA action caper with Bruce Willis, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren. The film earned $22.5 million, proving that a healthy segment of the audience can't pass up the image of a stately 65-year-old blonde wearing a white evening gown and brandishing a machine gun. The Jackass-Red parlay's $72.5 million provided the best opening-weekend one-two punch since The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and The Last Airbender took in $105 million during the July 4 weekend.
Jackass 3D registered the top opening for any film released in October and attracted the top Thursday-midnight crowd, both figures topping last fall's Michael Jackson memorial documentary This Is It (though far below the $22.2 million midnight stash amassed by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). Final numbers will be announced on Monday afternoon, but if Paramount's prediction stands up, Knoxville's merry pranksters will have secured the eighth best opening for an R-rated film in movie history — after The Matrix Reloaded at $90 million, 300 at $70.9 million, Hannibal at $58 million, Sex and the City at $57 million, Watchmen at $55.2 million, 8 Mile at $51.2 million and Wanted at $50.9 million. That's heady company for an MTV-show spin-off and movie threequel that cost a, shall we say, piddling $20 million to produce.
When you consider the Jackass vintage — the TV show is more than a decade old, the gang's first two movies (in 2002 and 2006) opened in the mid-20-millions, and Knoxville and some of his infantile, self-mutilating, feces-fixated crew are pushing 40 — you have to be impressed by the franchise's box office tenacity and the loyalty of its fan base of young males. The 3-D surcharge helped goose this weekend's numbers, with about 90% of the first-day revenue coming from 3-D screens, and the film's B-plus rating from CinemaScore's polling of exiting moviegoers indicated customer satisfaction. But the gross dropped 23% from Friday (which included the Thursday-midnight screenings), suggesting that the film's most fervent admirers made a beehive line for the box office and that this might be a one-weekend wonder. Could Jackass 3D be the first movie to open in theaters with at least $50 million but still fall short of $100 million total? We'll see. What's certain is that Paramount won't let Knoxville take another four years before the next Jackasstic episode.
[MONDAY UPDATE: Paramount actually underestimated the Sunday take of Jackass 3D: the film ended the weekend at $50.4 million, according to today's official tally. The next four films all came in at least $200,000 below their Sunday guesses. The final figures: Red, $21.8 million; The Social Network, $10.3 million; Secretariat, $9.3 million; and Life as We Know It, $8.95 million. The movies in the six to 10 slots finished very close to their predicted numbers.]
Two holdover movies retained a healthy share of their audiences. The Social Network dipped just 29% from last week, and Secretariat a mere 25%. This is the first time two movies have fallen by less than 30% from the previous week since the January 29-31 frame — the films were Avatar (down 10.5%) and the Dwayne Johnson family caper Tooth Fairy (down 28.6%) — which indicates that these Oscar-aimed biopics will stick around for a while. At the moment, the season's top-earning films are The Social Network ($63.1 million) and The Town ($80.6 million). Give two cheers for movies set in the Boston area and aimed at sentient adults.
In platform releases, the Clint Eastwood séance Hereafter opened on six screens with $231,000, for the weekend's highest per-screen average; and Tony Goldwyn's true-life inspirational Conviction, with Hilary Swank as the woman who got through high school, college and law school to argue the case of her convicted brother, earned a meager $110,000 in 11 venues. Carlos, the terrorist biopic that premiered last week on the Sundance Channel, opened well in two Manhattan theaters: one showing the full 5½-hr. miniseries ($10,000), the other showing a 2-hr. 45-min. version ($8,200). The Venezuelan revolutionary will liberate other cities in the next few weeks. Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger expanded to 118 screens and pushed its cume to $1.3 million.
On the bustling doc scene, the financial-collapse exposé Inside Job took in a stimulating $90,300 at 10 sites; Catfish Facebooked its way past the $2.6 million mark in its fifth week; and Waiting for "Superman" rode its wave of buzz to a $753,000 weekend and $2.5 million in four weeks. The five students featured in Davis Guggenheim's film on the U.S. education system also got to visit President Barack Obama, who called the children's tenacity "a great American story." Not many films get linked to the website whitehouse.gov. And unless the President makes a long-shot attempt to corral the red-state redneck vote, you can bet he won't be doing a photo op with Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O.
Here are the Sunday estimates of this weekend's top-grossing pictures in North American theaters, as reported by Box Office Mojo:
1. Jackass 3D, $50 million, first weekend
2. Red, $22.5 million, first weekend
3. The Social Network, $11 million; $63.1 million, third week
4. Secretariat, $9.5 million; $27.5 million, second week
5. Life as We Know It, $9.2 million; $28.9 million, second week
6. Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, $4.2 million; $46 million, fourth week
7. The Town, $4 million; $80.6 million, fifth week
8. My Soul to Take, $3.1 million; $11.9 million, second week
9. Easy A, $2.65 million; $52.3 million, fifth week
10. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, $2.35 million; $47.4 million, fourth week