The Pink Panther Inexplicably Tops US Weekend Box Office

Say what you like about Steve Martin’s turn in his awful-looking Pink Panther remake - enough people wanted to see The Pink Panther to put it at the top of the US weekend box office chart this week.

We’re completely staggered as to why so many people - almost $22 million’s worth - wanted to see Steve Martin mumble and stagger his way though a remake of a film that nobody wanted to see in the first place. Maybe the rubberneck audience - the people who enjoy paying to watch messy car crashes - is larger than we thought. Or maybe The Pink Panther really is a valid and worthy topper of the weekend box office chart. No, that’s a ludicrous idea…

The Steve Martin (DVDs)-starring remake of The Pink Panther had all the hallmarks of a horrific failure. It’s release date kept being pushed back further and further, Steve Martin had appeared to reach cute family movie burnout with the Cheaper By The Dozen films, the standard Beyonce tie-in single didn’t appear to have a tune and - worst of all - Jason ‘I’ll kill yer movie stone dead, guv’ Statham is in it.

But what the hell do we know? The Pink Panther sits at the top of the US weekend box office this week, doing the unthinkable and toppling, um, Big Momma’s House 2. Oh. Here’s the US weekend box office chart…

1 - The Pink Panther (First Bilko and now The Pink Panther - eventually,
Steve Martin is going to run out of decent comedies to tarnish with
sloppy remakes. The reality of a Red Dwarf movie remake starring Steve
Martin creeps ever closer. And nobody wants that, do they?) $21,700,000

2 - Final Destination 3 (Isn’t the point of the Final Destination films
that everyone dies? If that’s the case, why are some of them still
alive after three feature-length movies? If we were Death, we’d think
about a career change) $20,125,000

3 - Curious George (Earlier this week, the creator of Curious George was
found dead under some dustbins. The creator of Hoodwinked must be
bricking it) $15,319,000

4 - Firewall (We love it when dull generic thrillers get given vaguely
technological titles to try and make them sound more interesting and
get it wrong. What are we talking about? We don’t love it at all, we
think it’s shit) $13,830,000

5 - When A Stranger Calls (Coming soon: the sequel to When A Stranger Calls, entitled 1471: Revenge Of The Called) $10,000,000

6 - Big Momma’s House 2 (Featuring a scene where a woman gets a hot stone burnt into her bum. And nothing else very funny) $6,825,000

7 - Nanny McPhee (We think there’s a talking donkey in Nanny McPhee. Either that or Celine Dion has a cameo role in it) $5,230,000

8 - Brokeback Mountain (Brokeback Mountain is so popular that Brad Pitt
is said to want to try starring in a gay role to capitalise on the
trend. Hello? Didn’t he see Troy? That’s the gayest film ever!) $4,192,000

9 - Hoodwinked (Roughly as advanced, animation-wise, as a load-up screen
for an Amstrad version of Manic Miner. Actually, we genuinely would
like to see that in a cinema) $2,502,000

10 - Underworld: Evolution (Valentine’s day is coming up, boys. Why not take the special lady in your life to see a film about a sexy girl vampire exploding a million werewolves with a giant gun?) $2,500,000

Read more:

BOX OFFICE MOJO WEEKEND BOX OFFICE February 10–12, 2006 - Box Office Mojo

[story by Stuart Heritage]