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The Betting Table: Summer Edition - This Week: 28 Weeks Later

by Barry Wurst
May 11, 2007

Welcome to The Betting Table, a look at the weekend's theatrical fare and a place where you can place your bets on what will swim and what will sink.

THE STATS:
28 Weeks Later - the sequel to 2003's surprise hit, 28 Days Later, a zombie horror movie with an apocalyptic look and lots of flesh munching (so essentially it's Children of Men crossed with Dawn of the Dead).

THE GOOD NEWS:
28 Days Later has a huge following that extended well past its successful run in theaters and is considered one of the best zombie flicks of all time, though many declare :it's not a zombie film!" The original's opening weekend gross took a bite out of the competing opening of Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (thanks freaky zombies!) and, atop of the hit remake of Dawn of the Dead (and Shaun of the Dead the following year), made the long term prospects of the zombie movie genre go from iffy to solid. And it made a star out of Cillian Murphy, who went on to star in Batman Begins. Audiences clearly get the concept for this follow-up, which creators Danny Boyle and Alex Garland are producing. One of the few summer horror outings and the first of the summer spook fests out of the box. It offers great counter-programming to the second week of Spider-Man 3.

THE BAD NEWS:
A sequel to a movie that came out four years ago? Is the fan base for this flick gonna turn out for it or (more likely) wait for the DVD release? Like the sequel to The Blair Witch Project, the original creators are credited as producers but had no involvement with the film (and we all loved how Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 turned out, right?). No one from the first film is in this (though, in all fairness, they all died). Robert Carlyle is a solid actor who has no luck in picking good projects (after Trainspotting and The Full Monty launched his career, he did Ravenous, a pro-vegetarian horror western flop). His name won't help the film open and his considerable skills as an actor may not go beyond running and screaming for this horror exercise. Was anyone really excited by the much heralded trailer (which was unveiled in front of the execrable Hills Have Eyes 2)? Doesn't this look like more of the same? Does this even have a chance of opening against week two of the biggest opener of all time?

LAST WORD:
Variety loved 28 Weeks Later and all this low budget effort has to clear is $50 million domestically to see a profit (overseas it's already playing in packed theaters).

PLACE YOUR BETS:
If it's great (e.g. better than 28 Days Numero Uno), it could open $21 million, a big splash against Spider-Man 3, and top off around $60 million. If it stinks, it still could muster $14 million over the weekend, before it sputters out at around $40 million (less than the first one made, but again, considering how much this one cost, Fox Atomic looks like it finally has a real moneymaker on its hands).

Please don't actually place bets with money, just discuss what this weekend's box office may do!

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