Your weekly "Atlas Shrugged (Part 1!)" update

[brooklynite]

According to http://boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2011&wknd=16&p=.htm">Box Office Mojo, this weekend, "Atlas Shrugged" increased the number of theaters showing it by 55% -- and its weekend gross dropped by 48%. Total gross to date: $3.09 M.

The miracle of unfettered capitalism...

[Brickbat]

1. "Atlas, show us on the doll where the free hand of the market touched you."

[Richardo]

3. ...

:spray:

[annabanana]

2. smacked upside the head by the invisible hand.. now go away. . . n/t

[regnaD kciN]

6. Or, as someone here put it last week...

..."Sometimes, the invisible hand can give you a visible middle finger." :rofl:

[SpiralHawk]

4. After Atlas got a look at who consumes this Cultural Crap (R), he demanded they change the name

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_CsNAB1sCKNg/SurA6eYc19I/AAAAAAAAFUg/AH16rIw_6kI/s400/Atlas+Puked.jpg

[regnaD kciN]

5. The producer was bragging last week about its gross-per-theater....

...and vowing that he'd have it in 1,000 theaters by May. Anyone want to place odds on that happening now?

[Javaman]

7. Maybe he meant "on DVD in May" LOL nt

[regnaD kciN]

9. I also notice that the budget is listed at $20 million...

...instead of the $15 million the producer had been claiming. With the higher costs plus the uninspiring returns, it would seem far less likely that the other two parts will ever get made. And wouldn't that be an irony? Either the "free market Bible" never gets completed on screen because the free market wouldn't support it, or the producer has to sacrifice his own money to complete it, thus making its completion an act of...altruism?

:crazy:

[jmowreader]

12. I've been referring to it as "part 1 and final"

The reality is I think all three parts are going to be made--if you need a source of guaranteed tax loss, bankrolling an Atlas Shrugged installment will do it for you.

Right now, Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom are thinking, "if we'd have produced Atlas Shrugged instead of Springtime for Hitler, we'd be in Rio now!"

[regnaD kciN]

16. It's a lot harder to use film losses for tax write-offs than it used to be...

Ironically enough, you know who plugged that loophole for film production? Ronald Reagan. :rofl:

Having said that, I think they will have to be made, even at a loss. Abandoning Rand's magnum opus in mid-production will make the producer an instant Public Enemy #1 among Randroids, even if he'd only be following the imperative of rational self-interest in thus refusing to shovel his money down a rat-hole.

And would there be any chance of recouping his investment from parts 2 and 3? Let me answer that question with a question: how many people do you know of who have decided to not see the first installment in a series, but then queued up at the theaters to see later parts? Like it or not, the "take" from part 1 is likely to be as good as it gets for this project.

[jmowreader]

19. In that case, their only hope...

is to have all the John Galts running around out there make contributions to get the sequels off the ground.

All together now: Yeah, RIGHT!

[AlabamaLibrul]

15. they'll be able to sell a thousand DVDs

.....free with your one-year subscription to Newsmax.

[jmowreader]

20. Well, THAT would work...

Take the ten movie houses who will still play this turkey past next weekend...

and add the ten spindles of DVDs they're going to burn and send to teabaggers with 60-inch televisions...

voila! One thousand theatres!

[gratuitous]

8. We're gonna whistle stop, take the country by storm!

An entire nation of little Galts, all entrepreneurially creating a better universe with their bare hands. God, it's going to be glorious.

[cherokeeprogressive]

10. It's a good thing it's not making money based on how many DU screens it's on.

For such a clunker of a movie DU'ers sure talk about it a lot.

[JustAnotherGen]

11. I can't believe

That I can see this at the theater two miles down the road from me . . . but I can't see The Conspirator unless I drive a minimum of 18 miles. Not fair!

[hifiguy]

13. Parts two and three of this colossal turd

will appear when domestic swine take wing and begin circling skyscrapers.

[Motown_Johnny]

14. Any idea how much of the total gross goes to the producers?

If it cost $10 million to make and has only taken in $3 Million is it reasonable to assume that the people who need some more money to make parts 2 and 3 might have only seen ~$1.5 Million so far?

[RamboLiberal]

17. Wow - even NY Post admits it is a huge flop

After a middling performance during its opening weekend that was hyped in some quarters (i.e., The Hollywood Reporter), the per-screen average for this amateurish Ayn Rand adaptation (even Kyle could only muster 2.5 stars' worth of enthusiam for the movie, though he liked its message) plunged to an alarming $1,890 from $5,640 during its opening frame. Overall, the weekend's take was a scant $879,000 -- a whopping 48 percent drop despite adding 166 locations. Which certainly suggest they're running out of audience quick.

That means that at some locations, distributor Rocky Mountain Pictures will be writing checks to theaters to cover the difference between receipts and operating expenses. The only way they're likely to get the 1,000 screens the producers say they want next weekend is to rent them. And, as Kyle put it at his personal blog, "Whether the sequels get made is purely a matter of how much desire the producers have for losing money.''

Surely rubbing salt in the producers' wounds is the performance of Robert Redford's left-leaning "The Conspirator,'' which also added screens in its second weekend and managed a decent hold and a $2,696 per location average. Its current cumulative gross is $6.9 million vs. a hair over $3 million for "Atlas Shrugged.''

http://www.nypost.com/p/blogs/movies/box_office_atlas_shrugged_collapses_1oWcoz9xOxcmfdaik24uFN

[Stevenmarc]

18. ROFL, The Free Market has spoken