It's an all-over show of Force

By Chris Lee

May 23, 2005 12 AM PT

Special to The Times

“Revenge” was sweet indeed over the weekend. In its opening weekend, “Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith” annihilated box office records like so many Jedi knights.

Twentieth Century Fox said Sunday that the $158.5-million estimated domestic gross of George Lucas’ epic surpassed the top four-day tally of $134.3 million set by Warner Bros.’ “The Matrix Reloaded” in 2003. Another record fell as well -- though this one needs an asterisk. “Revenge of the Sith’s” box office take on its first three days -- $124.7 million -- broke the $114.8 million three-day record set by Sony’s “Spider-Man” in 2002. “Spider-Man’s” three-day gross, however, spanned its opening Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The Friday-through-Sunday total for “Revenge of the Sith,” which opened Thursday, adds up to only an estimated $108.5 million.

But even with that caveat, “It’s pretty remarkable,” said Bruce Snyder, Fox’s president of distribution. “Our $158.5 [million] also beats the previous five-day record of $152.4 [million] -- set by ‘Spider-Man 2’ in 2004. So we can take tomorrow off and we still have it.”

The final prequel in the “Star Wars” franchise eclipsed the three-day grosses of its “galaxy far, far away” predecessors: “Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones” earned $80 million over its opening weekend in 2002 and “Episode I The Phantom Menace” took in $64.8 million in its weekend debut.

Fox International said the $113-million science-fiction epic also toppled overseas box office records, grossing $144.7 million in 105 countries to defeat the previous record of $127 million set by “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” in 2003. “Episode III’s” worldwide gross for the first four days was an estimated $303.2 million, another record.

As early as Thursday, “Revenge of the Sith’s” first day in release, it had grossed $50 million, shattering “Shrek 2’s” $42.5-million opening-day mark set last year. If estimates hold, it will be the first time five major ticket sales records have fallen in a single weekend.

“It means if you have the right movie and the right marketing, you can get people back to the theaters in record numbers,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations Co. “Not many movies have this kind of cachet.”

So much for the good news for Hollywood.

Even the “Sith” blastoff on 3,661 screens was not enough to end a 13-week slump of lackluster weekends that have drawn smaller moviegoing audiences than comparable dates in 2004. For the year to date, box office of about $2.9 billion represents a decline of 6% from the $3.1 billion accumulated by the same time last year, Nielsen EDI reported.

The tracking firm noted that the “summer” movie season is also down 6%, having earned $451.8 million compared to $478.9 million in ticket sales generated by this time in 2004 -- an indicator that it is going to take something bigger than the highly anticipated conclusion of the most successful movie franchise in history to rescue the industry from its doldrums.

But “Star Wars” of course is in a universe all its own. For many fans, this sixth and final chapter was the culmination of a pop cultural relationship that began in 1977 with the release of Lucas’ original “Star Wars.” Across Southern California fans stood in snaking lines to be among the first to witness Anakin Skywalker’s final transformation into the evil Darth Vader. The film received the best reviews of the three “Star Wars” prequels.

“It brings the first two [‘Star Wars’ episodes] together with the last three [episodes] and ties it in,” said Henry Newton, 54, a painter from Inglewood who saw the movie at the Magic Johnson Theaters there. “I love George Lucas and all the ‘Star Wars.’ ”

Unlike most fans, David Holtzman, 45, a public interest lawyer from West Los Angeles, said he had an auditorium at Pacific’s Culver Stadium 12 in Culver City largely to himself at an 8 p.m. showing Friday. “As a theater manager acknowledged to me later, the Internet ordering system was down for a period of time,” he said, explaining the theater was “more than 50% empty.” (Other fans skipped out on various responsibilities to claim their part in the epic’s opening weekend. “Everyone in my office knocked off early and went to see it together,” Chris Parrish of Studio City said Friday.

Likewise, Bharath Reddy, 24, of Irvine “took the day off ‘sick’ ” Thursday to attend a midday showing in Costa Mesa. But he said he felt disappointed the film’s commercial tie-ins had overwhelmed some of its dramatic impact -- particularly a scene in which a well-known helmet descends upon Darth Vader’s head, prompting his first robotic breath.

“There have been so many commercials with that scene, now it’s funny,” Reddy said. “For a hard-core fan, it’s disappointing.”

The film’s PG-13 rating and darker tone hardly discouraged attendance by those too young to see the intergalactic thriller unaccompanied by a parent or guardian. Ginneh Smith, a 28-year-old nursing student, took her 5-year-old son, Khaleeb Webb, to an 11 a.m. showing at the Magic Johnson Theaters in Inglewood.

“This may be his first show with anything violent,” Smith said, pointing to a sequence in which one of “Sith’s” protagonists kills other characters without remorse. “So I’m going to have to do a lot of explaining.”

Once past “Revenge of the Sith,” the box office plummeted. Last weekend’s top-grossing movie, New Line’s “Monster-in-Law” starring Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda, came in a distant second with $14.4 million, a dropoff of 38%.

With considerably less fanfare, a rival prequel, “Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist” debuted on 110 screens. Chronicling the further adventures of Father Lankester Merrin, hero of the 1973 horror classic “The Exorcist,” the film took in $119,000 -- roughly 1/2500th of what “Revenge of the Sith” earned -- in its first three days.

Times staff writer Andrew Wang and freelancers Lisa Rosen and Mark Olsen contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Box Office

Preliminary results (in millions) based on studio projections.

*--* Movie 3-day gross Total

*--*

*--* Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith $108.5 $158.5

Monster-in- Law 14.4 44.2

Kicking & Screaming 10.5 34.0

Crash 5.5 27.6

Unleashed 3.8 17.6

Kingdom of Heaven 3.3 41.0