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Monday Morning Mixer: 'Game' Over?

Posted Monday, November 4, 2013 at 4:21 PM Central

by John Couture

I apologize in advance. I know that you're never supposed to start a story with an apology, but this one can't be helped.

If you were hoping to get a well-thought out analysis of a ho-hum box office weekend this morning, I'm sorry. It will be quick and dirty and probably won't make it out until this afternoon. There's really nothing that can be done about it.

That's what happens when time change messes with your head and you come in after a couple of days off to a barrage of important emails. But what am I doing wasting your valuable time and my too little space with such unnecessary words? I don't know either, but let's get back into that MMM, shall we?

Box Office 411

In the hush leading up to the event weekends that should hit every week from here on out, this weekend's relatively small performance was to be expected. A couple of films such as Ender's Game and Free Birds tried to sneak out a few bucks before being relegated to second, third or worse fiddle. And what can we possibly say about Last Vegas? Don't worry your parents will go see it and you won't understand why.

Nabbing the top spot is the latest young adult SciFi franchise wanna be Ender's Game with a "haul" of $28 million. That's not too shabby for the timing of its release, but when you compare it to similar fare such as The Hunger Games ($152.5 million) and even The Last Airbender ($40.3 million), its performance fails to earn merit. I mean this is a film that features Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley and Viola Davis for Heaven's sake.

This performance will beg the question, does Ender's Game get a sequel? I tend to agree with the "experts" they pooled over at MTV, to quote the Magic 8 Ball: Outlook Hazy.

When it's all said and done, Ender's Game is going to find tough sledding these next couple of weeks with Thor and Hunger Games returning to the box office with their sequels. For this reason alone, I highly doubt that Ender's Game will surpass $100 million.

Last Vegas is the film that you laughed at not because you thought it was funny but because you thought it was a sequel to Space Cowboys. Don't worry, this is like porn to your parents and just because it only did $16.5 million this weekend, don't count it out for a $60 million gross when the dust settles. It takes a while for a certain generation to get out to the theater. Again, the inclusion of Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro and Morgan Freeman prove that just having a stellar cast isn't enough these days.

The real stinker of the weekend was the animated film Free Birds. At $16.2 million and fourth place this weekend, it has a lot of work to do if it just wants to break even. At this rate, it won't even make it to the top of the animated Thanksgiving films list. And trust me that list is pretty short.

Quick Hitters

Again, this list is going to be pretty short because, well, if not this might end up being a TMM at this point. Friend of the site Kevin Smith commenced filming on his latest project Tusk this morning. We've got the Instagram to prove it.

OK, it's not much, but that's a pretty killer keyart reveal for the title. Also, Kevin throws out a few updates on the process on his blog. Among the various little nuggets on that heavily redacted call sheet is the casting of Harley Morenstein in the role of "Border Agent." Seems pretty fitting.

Social media being what it is, it didn't take long to score these gems. First, a picture of Harley and Jason Mewes on set.

After that, a simple twitter search turned up a couple of Vines from Harley himself.

There's still no word on whether my prediction that Michael Keaton will be cast in Tusk coming true, but I'll keep my head down. For now, this Tusky MMM is in the books. Until next week, Mix Well!