If this were NASCAR, Team Racer might have earned a suspension for this weekend’s antics. Variety reports Warner Bros. big budget adaptation of Speed Racer got its widely publicized second-place finish by the studio fudging its numbers.
Racer actually pulled in $18.6 million, putting it in third place at the weekend box-office behind Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz’s comedy What Happens in Vegas. Rival studios were very skeptical of the $20 million number when Warner released it. To pull $20 million, it would have needed strong viewership on Sunday, which was Mother’s Day. Did you take your mom to see …read more

Video game movies are usually pretty bad, to put it mildly. Knowing that the license alone will sell it in most cases, companies just take the checks rolling in for the shovelware.
But in a reversal of usual trends, the Speed Racer game has earned positive reviews. The game has been better received than the movie, in fact, which will be lucky to break $50 million by most accounts. Game Rankings, a site that compiles video game reviews, says the Speed Racer game is tracking at an average of 70 percent. In contrast, last week’s Iron Man game has an …read more

According to numbers provided by Nielsen, Marvel Comics’ Iron Man has made $177 million in 10 days. It raked in $50 million this past weekend to remain atop the box office charts.
 
Warner Bros. Speed Racer, which at one time was thought a potential rival for Iron Man, stalled into second place with $20 million. Critics mostly panned this Wachowski Bros. adaptation of the popular anime. Its price tag is rumored to be well over $100 million with millions more spent on marketing. Warner can’t be happy with this abysmal opening, Racer just barely edging out romcom What Happens In …read more

If the Wachowskis can’t make a convincing live-action anime, I don’t know who can. Their Matrix films were as close to that as any movies ever have been. There’s much of that style at work here, throwing a lot of colors, kung fu and car chases at the screen in the hopes some of it makes sense.