Roman Catholicism Beats Space Deism Every Time
Religion on Earth just slightly trumped religion in space this weekend, though that should not, we repeat not, encourage any Scientologists that they're gaining traction.
1) Angels & Demons — $48 million
Certain crazed members of the Catholic church were too busy heckling President Abortion this weekend to see, and then get mad about, the new Dan Brown makes things up movie. Though Angels' opening was about $30 million less than Da Vinci's bow a few years ago, it still did solidly enough, and racked up some $100 million additional ducats in the international box office. We suspect that number would have been higher had the always-lucrative albino Paul Bettany factor been in play.
2) Star Trek — $43 million
Showing great legs in its second weekend, J.J. Abrams' revisionist space drama rode a raft of positive word of mouth to a small 46% decline. While some nerds hate that Romulus and Vulcan are now dead and exploded, regular people were all "who the fuck cares" and got sucked in by images of dreamy/shabby Chris Pine getting eaten alive by lens flares. This bodes very well for a potential sequel, the script for which is already being written. We hear from insiders that in the next film, Jean-Luc Picard will be murdered by Christopher Lloyd and then Whoopi Goldberg's Guinan will inadvertently destroy Starfleet Academy with one of her oversized hats.
3) X-Men Origins: Wolverine — $14.8 million
Despite being sadistically bad, the Hugh Jackman meat show trots along gamely, with a good three-week tally of $151 million clams, domestically. While Wolverine was an obvious choice for the first of Marvel's Origins pictures, future installments ought to be a bit of a harder sell. Watching Professor X play croquet and drink tea and read his nanny's mind might only fare well in the art houses, as James Ivory is attached to helm. And the made-on-the-cheap Storm edition is just clips from Catwoman digitally spliced into The Day After Tomorrow. It'll go straight to Blu-Ray.
4) Ghosts of Girlfriends Past — $6.9 million
Never discount ol' Wooderson! Matthew McConaughey's sad little comedy has kept its manicured claws dug into the public consciousness, despite being surrounded by big tall movies about horny green alien girls and gay Australians with sharp fingernails. While we probably couldn't care less about what this means for Bongos' career, we are hoping that Emma Stone gets some more work out of this. Oh, and Lacey Chabert, too. Because why not. Mean Girls 2: Toaster Strudels' Revenge, anyone?
5) Obsessed — $4.6 million
Yes, this movie continues to make money. Ali Larter has now been thrown through a plate glass window several thousand times. Beyoncé has smacked her gums and said "Oh hellll no" more than all the 90's WB sitcoms combined. And Idris Elba has stood at the window of his fancy office, supposedly thinking about what to do about this hot-ass white lady temp, when in actuality he's thinking back to an understudy role in the West End and, oh dear, should I have just stuck with the theatre after all?