Box Office Review: Speed Racer crashes, burns!

Emile Hirsch now regretting agent's 'can't miss' advice. | Photo courtesy of xiaming via flickr

On Friday I surmised that Speed Racer would bomb and now the events of the weekend have borne that prediction out. The live-action cartoon sputtered to a weak $20.2M weekend, just ahead of What Happens in Vegas ($20M) and well behind the summer's first true blockbuster, Iron Man ($50.5M/$177.1M). Once the actual numbers come in on Monday, many expect Speed Racer to fall to an embarrassing third.

The rest of the top 10 was filled with hold-overs: the harmless, disposable Made of Honor ($7.6/$26.2M), the funny Baby Mama ($5.7M/$40.3M), the funnier Forgetting Sarah Marshall ($3.7M/$50.7M), the below-average Harold & Kumar ($3.1M/$30.7M), the obvious The Forbidden Kingdom, ($1.9M/$48.2M) the unexpectedly strong Nim's Island ($1.3M/$44.2M) and the pseudo-tough but ultimately silly Redbelt ($1.1M/$1.2M).

The limited release crowd had a fairly mild weekend in the face of the rising summer popcorn-movie season. Tarsem Singh's long-gestating The Fall averaged a respectable $8911 per theater. Before the Rain was okay in its debut ($6537 per) while Noise didn't make much of any ($2025) in only a couple theaters.