High School Musical 3 debuted to 42 million dollars this weekend, the highest opening ever for a musical but color me unimpressed. Given that the last sequel was the highest rated basic cable program ever with 17 million viewers and the 57 million dollar opening of that OTHER TV to film adaptation Sex And The City I had slightly higher expectations. Furthermore, the audience for HSM3 are the 18 and under crowd, notorious for rushing out opening weekend as opposed to the geriatrics who hobbled to the theatre for Sex And The City, a group more prone to go second or third weekend, or even wait for it on DVD. Who knew the latter would turn out to be the Stalingrad/Gettsyburgh/D Day for middle aged women across America?
That said, credit is due to the producers of HSM3 who somehow managed to have it made for 10 million dollars which is mind blowing. That is how much money should have been spent alone to guarantee the presence of Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale. Not to mention the worldwide launch that brought in an extra 43 million bringing its total to 83 in just three days. Perhaps we can take this as a good sign, the rest of the world maybe doesn't hate us so much or they're at least curious, gobbling up our All American tale of Prom, Musical Theatre and Big Game Night drama just as enthusiastically as we are.
Also opening was Saw 5 with 30 million which you might say "hacked" or "sliced" into their audience, "bloodying" the film enough to prevent it from breaking further records. [Tee hee hee!] That 30 million take by the way is REMARKABLY sanguine for the 5th entry in the series. It will become the highest grossing horror franchise of all time after this week and before everyone starts griping about INFLATION and this and that you can look at the 5th entries in any other horror series and see how much trouble they were in fiscally and to a larger extent creatively. Michael Myers was going toe to toe with an 8 year old psychic girl at the 5th entry. That series like many others of its day were not meant or planned out correctly to be so prolific. The Saw series seems to be consistently competent for fans and ever so slowly inching forward its storylines while offering the same dismemberment and torture during each installment. No underage psychics or trips to exotic locals are needed at this point. I've written about the Saw phenom before here, so I don't have much new to add. Respect and admiration is due to the industriousness of the series which seems to poop out on the dot once a year with seriously low budgets. Sadly this probably guarantees that we’ll be seeing at the very least a Saw 9 opening around 2012, lucky us!
You would think the combination of super saccharine and sadistic viewing options at the theatres would be mutually exclusive audiences but I imagine they are not. The same bored 16 year olds who frequented HSM3 I'm sure have also been raised on a steady diet of Law And Order: Special Victims Unit and have no problems sticking around for a stronger fix in Saw 5.
Aside from the content of the films, this weekend gives me hope as you have audiences showing up in huge flocks for low budget entertainment that came from unconventional methods. High School Musical was originally a made for TV movie and the original Saw was an independently produced movie that was sold to a movie studio. In a strange way ingenuity is being rewarded, just not in the case of what's being seen on the screen, and showing that films can turn a profit while still playing in a theatre.
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