Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, This Means War
Starring Water for Elephants/Legally Blonde’s Reese Witherspoon, Star Trek’s Chris Pine, and Inception/The Dark Knight Rises‘ Tom Hardy, McG’s This Means War scored an unexciting — though better than initially estimated — $20.4m at 3,189 North American sites this four-day Presidents Day weekend, according to studio estimates found at Box Office Mojo.
This Means War trailed Ryan Reynolds/Denzel Washington’s Safe House and Rachel McAdams/Channing Tatum’s The Vow, Josh Hutcherson/Dwayne Johnson’s Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, and Nicolas Cage’s Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. To date, including Tuesday preview screenings, the Witherspoon-Pine-Hardy movie has pulled in $22.01 million domestically.
Internationally, including top markets Russia and Australia, the $65m-$70m-budgeted romantic comedy/action flick mix earned $11 million. That’s also better than expected, though hardly blockbuster material.
The story of two spies fighting for the affections of the same woman, This Means War was widely panned by film reviewers. It has a (quite rotten) 24% approval rating among Rotten Tomatoes‘ top critics.
As I mentioned in a previous post, Reese Witherspoon hasn’t had a personal hit in four years: Seth Gordon’s Four Christmas, co-starring Vince Vaughn, was her last one (domestically only; overseas it flopped). Things don’t look as bad for the Oscar winner (Walk the Line, 2005) when you consider that the animated Monsters vs. Aliens, which featured her voice, earned nearly $200m in the US/Canada, while her pairing with Robert Pattinson in Water for Elephants scored $117m worldwide.
Witherspoon’s one big recent flop was James L. Brooks‘ $120m comedy How Do You Know, co-starring Paul Rudd and Owen Wilson, which bombed both domestically and internationally: its worldwide total was a meager $48.66m. It remains to be seen whether the international market will come to the rescue of This Means War, or if the movie will end up as another box-office disappointment — though definitely on a smaller scale than the disastrous How Do You Know.
So far, things for This Means War don’t look all that promising abroad — but then again, they don’t look all that disheartening, either. Number one openings in Australia and Russia (as per The Hollywood Reporter), even if somewhat low key, are nothing to sneer at.
I should add that an important reason Witherspoon’s Water for Elephants did decent business overseas was the presence of Robert Pattinson, who has a huge following as a result of the Twilight Saga movies co-starring Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner. One obstacle This Means War will have to surmount is that neither Chris Pine nor Tom Hardy has Pattinson’s following abroad.
Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, This Means War photo: Kimberley French / 20th Century Fox.