Public Prefers Payne over Politics

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The videogame-based action fantasy Max Payne won the weekend’s U.S. movie box office competition, easily besting the highly anticipated and widely promoted W, Oliver Stone’s satirical film biography of President George W. Bush.

In fact, Stone’s biopic came in fourth in U.S. ticket sales, bringing in just $10.6 million, behind Beverly Hills Chihuahua ($11.2 million) and the opening weekend of The Secret Life of Bees, a chick-flick starring Dakota Fanning learning life lessons from three African-American women ($11.1 million). Max Payne brought in an OK $18 million—a good haul for a Mark Wahlberg film, but not great for an action fantasy based on a pre-sold, well-known franchise.

Stone’s last movie before W, World Trade Center, actually did much better in its first weekend than his current release (and even beat Max Payne’s first-weekend take), bringing in $18.7 million.

W appears to have been held back by mediocre reviews from critics clearly disappointed that the film doesn’t take the kind of hard-hitting, factually irresponsible attitude toward its subject that Stone did with JFK and Nixon. Instead, they lament, Stone seems rather sympathetic to the most evil person ever to walk the face of the earth.

Of course, the terrible reviews for Max Payne probably didn’t help its prospects either, but its teen and college-male audience is unlikely to be affected by newspaper and TV reviews, and Beverly Hills Chihuahua has been drawing big audiences despite less than stellar reviews of its own.

Making an even more disappointing (to its investors) showing than W was the equally political Body of Lies, another film detailing the horrors of the George W. Bush years.

The film’s box office take was down nearly 50 percent from the previous weekend, bringing only $6.9 million to finish sixth in U.S. ticket sales in its second week. For a film featuring huge-name stars Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by critically acclaimed Ridley Scott, those numbers are disastrously bad.

Clearly, audiences wish the Hollywood left would do what they’ve been nagging George W. Bush to do for several years: Move on.

Tags: box office, Max Payne, move on, Oliver Stone, W