Iron Man was stronger than anticipated and only felll 48.1% from its tremendous $100 million weekend opening last week. In 10 days the $140 million budget film has already grossed $178 million and $165 million internationally (the film was released day and date in most territories and only awaits a Japan release later on in the year.) We expect that this film will gross over $300 million domestic and internationally (depending largely on Japan) we wouldn’t be surprised if the film surpassed $400 million. Marvel will reap a giant windfall if this is the case as they fully financed the film and Paramount served as a distributor for a typical fee of 10% (which on a film this big is no chump change….)

What Happens in Vegas , a film co-financed by New Regency and Twentieth Century Fox opened in the second slot this past weekend. The film directed by television turned film director Tom Vaughan (”John from Cincinati” on HBO) earned a typical 27% Fresh ratting on Rotten Tomatoes this past weekend and still managed to eek out a decent box office result. The Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher starrer might not make any sense as far as plot contrivance is concerned, from a marketing standpoint this inexpensive film to make (unless you are counting the Cameron Diaz make-up budget and Ashton Kutcher’s kabballah necklace removal CGI) is a no-brainer. I spoke to some marketing executives at FOX who saw the movies months ago and were giving it the real push. They modelled the campaign after “The Wedding Crashers” and sold the concept (on a white background of course its FOX!) as two mega-comedy stars opposite each other for the first time instead of relying on the whimsical and ridiculous plot-line. Good casting and good marketing should combine for about $70 million domestic and international and DVD numbers that look a lot better than Ashton Kutcher’s last $70 million dollar domestic box-office for New Regency – “Guess Who” with Bernie Mac (that film was a tougher sell with international audiences in Asia and parts of Europe because it featured an African-American cast.)

Speed Racer – Go Speed Racer! Go! – well it didn’t go very far this weekend opening for the Emile Hirsch starring film. The Wachowskis (we would formerly say Wachowski brothers, but now that one of them named Larry is named Lana this has changed the way we refer to them) are accustomed to big box office perfomers as was the case with the Matrix franchise and “V for Vendetta” but this $120 million special-effects and CGI film only managed to muster a $18.6 million weekend in the opening frame. The Warner execs must have known what they had in that the film was only mildly released internationally and performed meagerly with $12 million or so in a handful of countries. The good news is the PG rating domestically and the fact that although the film only has a 35% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes there is good word of mouth from key reviewers like Richard Roeper and the spectical factor of what the film looks like for film geeks like me (and don’t forget the college stoner and acid-head crowd…)