Come on, Hollywood. A $10 million opening weekend is nothing to celebrate.
You certainly wouldn't know that, though, if you read all the glowing press releases about last weekend's new horror-comedy, "Piranha," better known as "Piranha 3-D." (Despite the misleading advertising, the film is playing in either 2-D or 3-D, depending on the location.)
Anyway, officials from Dimension Film crowed about the $10 million haul and the No. 6 slot where the movie finished in the weekend Top 10. In fact, they already announced that a sequel is in the works.
Don't believe the hype, though. This is simply more movie business "spin," as it's known.
Other studios were putting similar spins on the performances of a glut of new movie releases. Almost all of them bombed at the box office last weekend.
The most successful of this lot was the horror romance spoof "Vampires Suck." Even that movie trailed "The Expendables" by more than $5 million. The Sylvester Stallone action movie won for the second consecutive week.
But what did the studios expect? There's simply too much "product" out there for anything to succeed on a large scale.
Even a film as well-reviewed as "Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World" can't find an audience in this overcrowded movie market. (Hopefully that film will make up its production budget in its European and home-video releases.)
PIRANHA BITES. Speaking of "Pirahna," I'm a little surprised by the mostly positive reviews of the film that appeared on such sites as Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic.
Some of these raves came from critics that attacked the testosterone-fueled action movie "The Expendables" because of its cheesiness, as well as its more over-the-top tendencies.
Say what? Excusing "Pirahna" by saying that it was intended as a parody or spoof rings hollow.
The movie drives out its one, supposed "joke" — namely sequences featuring excessive gore and nudity — into the ground repeatedly. You wanna talk about being cheesy and over-the-top ....
HAVEN'T YOU MADE ENOUGH, MR. CAMERON? If there weren't enough film options out right now, Fox also decided to rerelease "Avatar" in theaters this weekend as a "special edition" featuring extra footage.
Several local theaters, including the Megaplex Theatres chain, are showing it now. (Megaplex's Jordan Commons complex even has an IMAX format version.)
There are a lot of doubters questioning whether audiences will want to pay full price to see something that's already available on DVD. Even when it's a phenomenon like "Avatar."
e-mail: jeff@desnews.com