New Jack City: Jack’s Mid-Summer Movie Scorecard

It was an air-conditioned, summer night’s dream by the movie studios…

At the start of summer the studios were braced for what was anticipated to be one of the biggest movie box offices ever. However to date that dream has been more of a nightmare as they’ve watched one multi million dollar investment after another go down in flames.

Now as we enter the week of summer’s most anticipated movie—Christopher Nolan‘s THE DARK KNIGHT RISES—here’s my list of the season’s hits, misses, bombs and surprises—thus far.

But before we examine the summer scorecard thus far, let me predict THE DARK KNIGHT RISES upcoming three day boxoffice gross.

My domestic ticket sales magic number is $155 million.

Will it outgross THE AVENGERS? Probably not but it’ll come close.

Why not? Because THE DARK KNIGHT RISES won’t benefit from the 3-D up charges the way THE AVENGERS did. The Avengers collected an additional (average) of $3.00 per ticket for the third dimension.

Do the math.

Here then the major studios list of hits of this summer since Hollywood kicked off the first week of May.

The hands down big winner: Walt Disney’s MARVEL AVENGERS.

MEN IN BLACK 3 did pretty well as expected, as did SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN and THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.

PROMETHEUS shows up in the winner’s column even though it didn’t have the payoff fans were hoping for.

All three major animated films this summer delivered—including MADAGASCAR 3, BRAVE and ICE AGE: CONTINENTAL DRIFT.

And as the sleeper comedy hit so far of the summer, Seth MacFarlane‘s TED wins hands down.
 
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Now the uh, disappointments and misses.

I’ve got to include Tim Burton‘s DARK SHADOWS. Also Sacha Baron Cohen‘s THE DICTATOR. Then there’s the ensemble chick-flick WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING, PEOPLE LIKE US, Oliver Stone‘s SAVAGES and Woody Allen‘s TO ROME WITH LOVE.

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The total bombs thus far include BATTLESHIP, CHERNOBYL DIARIES, Adam Sandler‘s low rent THAT’S MY BOY, Adam Shankman‘s failed screen adaptation of ROCK OF AGES and the (what were they thinking) ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER and KATY PERRY: PART OF ME.
 
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Oh there’ve been a couple of big surprises this summer.

The first being THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL with its star-studded AARP-worthy cast. This one started out on the art house circuit then successfully added commercial runs thanks to strong word of mouth.

And Steven Soderbergh‘s MAGIC MIKE which no one in the industry predicted would hit the way it did. Not only did it open big but the damn thing has had legs. And butts. And chests. And………
 
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So within reason it’s so far, so good.

Time to unleash the Caped Crusader Thursday at midnight plus one minute