Mark Ruffalo, Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter Island
Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island has gone from potential 2009 Oscar contender to apparent 2010 dud to potential 2010 Oscar contender and box-office hit — despite decidedly mixed reviews. Nikki Finke reports at Deadline Hollywood that Scorsese's thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio will not only be the top movie at the North American box office this weekend, but will probably turn out to be the most successful Scorsese-DiCaprio pairing to date. The director-star previous narrative collaborations were Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004) and the Oscar-wining The Departed (2006).
Shutter Island, about a couple of investigators trying to track down an escapee lunatic who may or may not be a serial killer, is expected to have grossed $13.5 million on Friday and to go on to earn more than $35 million by Sunday evening at 2,991 theaters. Not bad at all for an R-rated film. In fact, if those numbers hold, Shutter Island will give Martin Scorsese the best opening weekend of his career.
At a distant #2, Gary Marshall's all-star romantic comedy Valentine's Day will take in an estimated $17 million; the adventure fantasy Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief will come in third with $16 million; James Cameron's sci-fi adventure Avatar will be #4 with $16 million; and the Benicio del Toro-Anthony Hopkins horror flick The Wolfman will be #5 with $9 million.
More fine-tuned estimates for the weekend will come out on Sunday.
Photo: Paramount
—The once promising, long rich and decades stale
Martin Scorsese can find nothing more complelling
or essential to offer than routine, over-cooked, echt Stephen King retreads —like Shutter Island?
—huh?
Meanwhile, Boomer Hollywood has been selling-out
and sucking-up franchise-style to history's most
awesomely genocidal regime across
the Pacific since the early 80's.
And NOW our entire economy is being underwritten by the same even as we psycho-pathically balk any quality revelation of our own staggering 45 million exterminations of the the unborn.
—Ahhhhh! —sounds like a plotline! -better
than Stephen King —because it's TRUE!
AMEN
Can't wait to see it. A different type of role for DiCaprio.