06.30.08: ‘WALL*E’ Wins the Box Office, LAFF Gets ‘Wack,’ ‘The Women’ Gets WB Push
WALL*E Beats Wanted
The big question of the weekend was, would people go see an animated flick with a nearly silent protagonist, or a butt-kickin’ adventure starring Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy? Well, wonder no more, because WALL*E clanked to #1 with a weekend gross of over $62.5 million. Wanted brought up the rear with over $51.1 million, while Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway-starrer Get Smart snuck in at third $20M. Kung Fu Panda and The Incredible Hulk held steady with $11.7M and $9.2M, respectively. More at Box Office Mojo.
LAFF Gets Wack
The Wackness, the coming-of-age indie starring Ben Kingsley as a pot-smokin’ shrink who snogs Mary-Kate Olsen, took home the top audience award at this year’s LA Film Festival for narrative feature, while Man on Wire was the audience fave for foreign flicks. Read about the rest of the winners at Variety.
The Women Gets WB Push
Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood Daily has the scoop on Warner Bros’ "about-face" on The Women. Finke has previously reported that WB would shoo the remake to its struggling indie division Picturehouse for a quick, quiet death, but now it seems that the monolithic company will instead blow out its marketing budget to $25 to $30 mil in the wake of SATC’s success. More at Deadline Hollywood Daily.