A little belatedly, here's the box office news from the weekend. The big story this weekend is that Forgetting Sarah Marshall was beaten to the number 1 spot by The Forbidden Kingdom a family action/adventure/martial arts/whatever-you're-having-yourself picture. Forgetting Sarah Marshall banked $17.3 million while The Forbidden Kingdom managed 20.9 million.
So what can we read into this. Well it seems Judd Apatow's mojo is fading due to his over saturation of the market. At the last count he's had 900 films on release this year. Or at least it seems that way. Th distributors push his name to the fore if he has any remote involvement in a film. Industry website, Box Office Mojo also cited the fact that the romantic comedy was marketed as a bitter break-up comedy rather than a positive romance which may have hurt the numbers compared to Knocked Up (see poster above).
They could have pushed the Mila Kunis in the marketing as the lead's newfound romance (she's certainly as big a star as Kristin Bell and everybit as hot - see below) But Apatow's whole shtick is to make rom-coms that appeal to guys so it's no real surprise that they pushed the less mushy angle. When it comes down to it, the numbers aren't bad for a film made for $30 million with no real stars. It certainly isn't a failure. Expect it to fare better in Europe where Russell Brand's presence will give it a push.
The Forbidden Kingdom seems to have triumphed because it was a family friendly picture with 2 stars united for the first time in Jet Li and Jackie Chan. It had a wider potential audience than the R-rated Forgetting Sarah Marshall and martial arts fans would have packed it out to see the two leads together.
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