The box office can sleep easy now that the spring season is over. Ironically, nightmare slasher Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street were the easy winners this weekend with $32.9 million, helping the box office to a 2.2 percent increase in anticipation of the jolt that will come from Friday’s Iron Man 2.
Producer Michael Bay’s vision has finally done what his last two attempts at horror revisions failed to do: keep the focus on the villain. In 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the whole movie was driven not by Leatherface, but by his father (R. Lee Ermey), whose performance was way over the top. In last year’s Friday the 13th remake, the pretty boy and girl actors take away from Jason more than any of the previous films did. But in A Nightmare on Elm Street, Jackie Earle Haley (taking over for Robert Englund) is the star power behind the movie and he’s entirely in the driver’s seat. His performance in Watchmen and Little Children helped convince producers that they found a suitable replacement for the role of Freddy Krueger.
One of the goals we have at Player Affinity is to create an open dialog with our readers. I don’t know how many of you there are yet, probably not much, but it’s never too early to start asking for your thoughts and opinions.
One way we thought to do this was through a weekly competition. We want you to get out your box office crystal balls and tells us which five movies will place in the top five of each weekend’s U.S. domestic box office chart. Simple enough, right? I will make my own predictions here and explain them to you each week to give you some sort of reference point. It’s then your job to enter a comment with your top five.
Gather all ye Norse fans and worshipers of Asgard. Here’s your first official glimpse of Chris Hemsworth as the titular hero from Columbia Pictures Thor courtesy of Yahoo! Movies. You’ll have to click the link for the more complete shadowy profile shot, which reveals nothing but costume details and a golden mane that’s filling in nicely.
It happens a lot these days, but I’m about to lose my “write about news that broke on Twitter” virginity. Producer/director Adam McKay tweeted that Paramount has passed on the opportunity to take on an Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy sequel as we previously reported looking like a go not but a few days ago. One can only assume he’s a bit upset since he broke this news quickly to the public through a medium often used for spreading quick buzz.
At some point, every movie-watcher grows really tired of the horror film or thriller where a mysterious or overpowering killer knocks off one main character at a time and then only two survive long enough to make it to the final showdown and usually one of them is a minority. See, at least a dozen movies just popped into your head. That’s why I’ve created this list of ten movies that actually would’ve been way better had they been conceived as slasher films. I’d love to hear some of your ideas, but here are some solid ones I came up with. You can tell that I took this half seriously and half jokingly, which I think is fair.
Dr. Chris continues his nightmarish campaign to review every A Nightmare on Elm Street film or Freddy Krueger movie ever made prior to friday’s remake. Today it’s Part 3, 4 and 5, sometimes referred to as
