Weekend box office was good for videogame heros, chihuahuas, and bees.
Nikki Finke has some interesting internal numbers about W.
Exit polling showed that among W. filmgoers, 89% disapprove of Bush.
78% are voting for Obama,
6% are voting for McCain
6% don’t know.
97% of filmgoers who think Beverly Hills Chihuauhua is better than WALL-E also believe Sarah Palin is qualified to be vice-president. (Though it’s very likely I made that last part up, because I’m just a meanie.) There are more actual factual stats after the cut.
More W. demographics:
Moviegoers were 52%/48% male vs female.
And a whopping 47% were over age 40.The audience was overwhelmingly liberal at 55%,
followed by moderates at 31%,
conservatives at 10%,
and those who don’t care about politics 5%.The audience was primarily white at 66%,
with African Americans at 10%
and all other ethnic groups less than 10%.Most attended because
of the prospect of making fun of Bush (42%),
or because of Oliver Stone as director (41%),
or because the preview looked good (39%),
or because of the prospect of humor (33%).In terms of expectations:
only 27% felt the movie was better than expected,
with 38% feeling it was not as good as expected,
and 35% felt it was as good as expected.Those who disapprove of Bush felt very strongly that the movie was not as good as expected. W.’s on-target debut still doesn’t mean the movie will recoup its $30M mil budget, plus $25M marketing costs that included a surprisingly aggressive TV ad campaign emphasizing the script’s humor… it also served the pic well that Lionsgate had experience with this kind of controversial film: it released Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 which went on to open with a $24M weekend from just 868 theaters, and an eventual worldwide total of $222M. W. won’t be in that league.
If you were looking in vain for political satire lolz this weekend, here’s where they were: