Monday Morning Mixer: It's 'Dark' in here

Posted Monday, January 14, 2013 at 12:54 PM Central
Last updated Monday, January 21, 2013 at 10:11 AM Central

by John Couture

So, there was this little thing called the Golden Globes that you all might have heard took place this weekend. Believe it or not there was actually other news out of Hollywood this weekend, but not much.

I could spend the whole Mixer just on the Golden Globes, or trying to decipher Jodie Foster's speech, but I think that would be overkill. Besides, all you really need to know about either is that Ben Affleck got to tell the Academy to Argo f#$* themselves and Jodie Foster is desperate for a date.

In other Hollywood news, a film that didn't enjoy quite the success at the Golden Globes that it expected to finally expanded to a wider release and I think they'll be able to comfort themselves for losing the Golden Globes with all those dollars they earned this weekend. Enough with the opening, it's time to get this MMM started.

Box Office 411

Zero Dark Thirty, the true story of how we tracked down and killed Osama Bin Laden. Of course by we, I mean a dozen or so highly trained, lethal Navy SEALs. I can barely climb the stairs at work without getting winded.

The controversial patriotic film from director Kathryn Bigelow expanded to just short of 3,000 screens and took home the top spot at the box office with $24 million. The film that is expected to be a serious Oscar contender only took home a single Golden Globe award, Jessica Chastain for Best Actress in a Drama.

As I alluded to above though, I don't think they'll be crying for long as this weekend's performance and the extra Oscar push should help it to surpass $75 million with an outside chance at $100 million if things fall just right.

The real surprise came in the second place slot where another Wayans scored a win for yet another horror spoof. A Haunted House is the first of two films to spoof the popular Paranormal Activity franchise and it seems that it chose a great weekend to debut.

It took home $18.8 million and looks to end up just short of $50 million. For a January spoof release, that's really impressive.

What's not so impressive is the lackluster $16.7 million debut by Gangster Squad in third place. The film was tracking for a much higher release last Fall, but the Dark Knight Rises shooting in Aurora, Colorado scuttled its initial release so that the studio could re-shoot a controversial scene in the film.

It seems that the delay cost them more than a few dollars and the 1940s crime thriller will be lucky to make back its reported production budget of $75 million during its theatrical run. Given the awards season is upon us, I have a bad feeling that Gangster Squad will sink away quick and might not even earn $50 million.

In other news, Django Unchained pushed its cume over $125 million to become director Quentin Tarantino's highest grossing film ever. In the little engine that could category Silver Linings Playbook continued its climb back into the top 10.

Silver Linings Playbook has earned just over $41 million despite only being on a maximum of 800 screens so far. Those numbers are bound to increase this weekend thanks to JLaw's Golden Globe win for Best Actress in a Musical and Comedy and Oscar Nom for Best Actress. It also won't hurt that the film is finally going to expand to northward of 2,500 screens this weekend as well.

The Real Deal

We tweeted it out last week, but this was just too cool not to post here. Apparently, fans of Toy Story recreated the entire film using real toys.

You can peep out the entire film below or fast forward to your favorite scene. They created puppets out of real toys and used the actual soundtrack from the movie, so it's actually a really cool look at what the film would look like in live-action.

There's no word about whether they plan to make the sequels, but from the attention to detail in this one, I would think that if they do recreate the sequels, it might be a few years before we see them.

I think I'll leave the Mixer there for this week. If you want to know how the Golden Globes turned out, be sure to check out our story on all of the shenanigans last night.

Until next week, mix well.