Weekend Box Office: Oscar nominee Jonah Hill dazzles America again
Even in a Hollywood crazy for remaking and re-adapting every last property on the books—Car 54, Where Are You? got made into a movie, as did The Gong Show—a comedy based on a largely forgotten 20-year-old Johnny Depp series from the still-infant Fox TV network didn’t sound terribly promising. But powered by good word-of-worth and reviews of the flabbergasted, this-is-so-much-better-than-it-has-any-right-to-be variety led the gleefully post-modern, Jonah Hill-Channing Tatum team-up 21 Jump Street to a dominant $35 million haul on opening weekend. (That the number exceeded John Carter’s from the week before, despite being made on less than a sixth of the budget, adds salt to an already gaping wound.) Of course, it helps that 21 Jump Street was given the widest possible berth, with only the second largest opener, the Will Ferrell curiosity Casa De Mi Padre, getting just 382 screens to its 3,121. Considering those limitations, Casa didn’t do too badly, earning $2.2 million on $5,759 per screen, enough to squeak into the Top 10 at #9.