Jaden Smith, Jackie Chan, The Karate Kid
Starring Jaden Smith (Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith's son) and Jackie Chan, Harald Zwart's The Karate Kid opened in North America on Friday with a surprisingly strong (estimated) $18.8m, according to Box Office Mojo.
Many reviewers have been less than kind to this remake of the 1984 sleeper hit starring Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita, but the public has thus far flocked to see it. Whether The Karate Kid will keep its momentum going throughout the weekend remains to be seen. Early weekend estimates had it taking in $52m.
At a distant no. 2, The A-Team earned an estimated $9.65m on Friday. The $100m-budgeted action flick stars Bradley Cooper, Liam Neeson, and Sharlto Copley.
Down two spots at no. 3, Shrek Forever After, featuring the voices of Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas, Eddie Murphy, and Julie Andrews, grossed about $4.4m on Friday, followed by Jonah Hill and Russell Brand's Get Him to the Greek with $3.28m (-47% from a week ago).
Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl's Killers collected $2.75m (-51.5% from last Friday). Next in line was Mike Newell's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, and Ben Kingsley, which scored $2m.
Michael Patrick King's Sex and the City 2, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristin Davis, took in $1.87m at no. 7. Marmaduke, about a talking dog with Owen Wilson's voice, was next with $1.85m (-47.5% from last Friday).
Rounding out the top twelve were Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man 2 with $1.33m, Sarah Polley's Splice with 925k (down a very high 66% since opening day a week ago), Cate Blanchett's Robin Hood with $786k, Vanessa Redgrave's Letters to Juliet with $555k.
Among the top twelve movies on the chart, The Karate Kid had by far the highest per-theater average, $5,132. (The runner-up was The A-Team with $2,730.) Splice had the lowest, $378.
Also among the top twelve (barring the new entries, of course), Killers posted the highest attendance gains from the day before, +82.2%. Letters to Juliet had the lowest, +20.7%.
Photo: The Karate Kid (Jasin Boland / Columbia Pictures)
It's funny that all those explosives and muscles are getting owned by a little boy with braids. Go Jaden. Will and Jada must be proud that they have another star in the family. This proves that Cooper isn't a leading man just like Jake G. They are better in ensembles, not by themselves. They can't all be Robert Downey or Johnny Depp's.