Worst - Weekend - Ever (Well, in 7 years)

Check out these numbers:

1. Bangkok Dangerous, $6.9M
2. Tropic Thunder, $6.4M
3. The Dark Knight, $5.3M
4. The House Bunny, $4.6M
5. Babylon A.D., $4.1M

Yes, you read that right. I didn't type that wrong (in fact I didn't type it at all. God bless copy and paste). The number 1 movie of the weekend opened with 6.9 million. Nic Cage and his forehead took the number one spot with numbers that would barely creep into the top 5 on a normal weekend. But this wasn't any old weekend. This was the worst weekend at the U.S. box office for 7 years. Even worse than any in the 'year of doom' that was 2006.

This is traditionally a bad weekend at the box office but the top 12 movies managed to generate only $51.61M! That's a new kind of bad. If you factor in inflation it must be the worst weekend for a long time. Not only was it a bad weekend for the box office. It was a bad weekend for Nic Cage. Fantasy Moguls says:

Bankok Dangerous (Lionsgate), the Cage vehicle directed by Pang Brothers, managed just $2.7M on its opening day, received an 11% bump on Saturday for $3M, and it will add an estimated $2.1M on Sunday for a meager $7.8M opening. That is the Academy Award winner's 4th-worst wide opening in a decade ahead of only The Weather Man ($4.2M), Bringing Out the Dead ($6.1M), Captain Corelli's Mandolin ($7.2M) and Next ($7.1M).

Not only has Nicolas Cage been making more bad movies than good ones (his last 6 movies have received an average of 24% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), his films are getting release dates traditionally reserved for bad movies. Two of the worst release dates every year are the weekend after Labor Day and the last weekend of April. Cage's film prior to December blockbuster release National Treasure: Book of Secrets, was Next, which opened the last weekend of April 2007 (a few days before Iron Man's release).

It's quite simple. Bad movies will eventually lead to bad box office. You might get away with it for a while but if you're making turds the audience will eventually get wise. Cage was clearly at the FOREfront (ha ha) of the marketing campaign. Who knows, maybe the audience didn't want to go to a movie that sounded like a health and safety video for the porn industry

Okay we used that one before but the old ones are the best.