May Summer Movies: Urge to Kill Rising
See, even Spider-Man is going crazy after Louis Stevens took number one at the box office for the third week in a row. Thankfully, the summer movie season officially kicks-off this Friday, May 4, with the opening of Spider-Man 3.
Word on the street has been that the third Peter Parker movie is the most expensive movie ever made ($500 million), which means it has to make $100 million+ opening weekend for Sony to even think about putting the cash down to make a movie about Spider-Man.
The good news is that Spider-Man 3 has a two week window to make some cash before Shrek the Third (May 18) with more theaters and a much shorter runtime begins running away with the summer.
Spider-Man 3 clocks in at two hours and 20 minutes compared to Shrek’s one and a half hours. Of course “Spider-Man” can rest easy because someone at Disney let Gore Verbinski fire his editors. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (May 25) will have a runtime 10 minutes short of three hours. That’s even longer than Dead Man’s Chest which was bearable only because of Bill Nighy’s Davy Jones.
I guess if Peter Jackson’s Return of the King can make a billion dollars with a three hour runtime on fan boy power, then I’m sure the teenage girls, twenty-something women and middle-aged women who seem to push POTC into blockbuster status will do the job again.
One reason I love the summer movie season is there is less crap filling the marketplace. Curtis Hanson’s long-shelved Lucky You will open against Spider-Man 3 because Warner Bros. didn’t just want to dump the movie, they wanted it to wear cement slippers. Thankfully it’s a two movie weekend, something doesn’t seem to happen to often anymore.
Opening against POTC is William Friedkin’s Bug which is the May movie I’m looking forward to most. A grotesque thriller from the director of The Exorcist. I’m there.
Shrek the Third has no wide-release competition.
Also opening this month, all on the dumpster weekend of May 11, 28 Weeks Later (eh), Larry The Cable Guy’s Delta Farce (ugh), Linsday Lohan’s Georgia Rule (eww), and The Flock, which merits looking into only because of the MPAA says it contains “perverse content involving aberrant sexuality and strong violence, and for language.”
See you all at the megaplex.
Get Email Updates
