The final weekend in February is typically an uneventful one for the movies, and this weekend was no exception. This weekend’s top grosser was holdover “Identity Thief,” followed by newcomer “Snitch.” Given the unenthusiastic weekend at the box office, a preview for next weekend’s much more exciting slate includes the highly anticipated “Jack the Giant Slayer.”

A quick overview of this weekend shows “Identity Thief” in its third week regaining the top spot with $14 million. The film has already grossed more than $93 million domestically, which is impressive considering it only cost $35 million to produce. What is especially noteworthy is that by Friday, the film will become the first in 2013 to surpass the $100 million mark. Not bad for a thief.

Capturing the second spot was newcomer “Snitch,” which collected $13 million. There is not much to say about the film, other than that it stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Perhaps he should stick with family movies and ensemble-based films, rather than venturing out into a solo lead role.

Now, onto next weekend’s most anticipated film: Warner Bros.’ “Jack the Giant Slayer.” Ever since Disney struck gold in 2010 with “Alice in Wonderland,” grossing more than $1 billion, rival studios have been following suit with the hope of adapting popular children’s tales into box office behemoths.

Sure, there was slight success in Universal’s “Snow White and the Huntsman” last summer, but just look at the fizzling results of other fairytale adaptations. There was Warner Bros.’ “Red Riding Hood” in 2011, Relativity’s “Mirror Mirror” last March and Paramount’s “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters” last month, all of which failed to resonate with audiences. Given the trend of struggling fairytale adaptations at the box office, it will be interesting to see how Warner Bros.’ “Jack the Giant Slayer” performs next weekend.

With a production budget of $195 million, the film is a huge risk for Warner Bros. While the studio has marketed the film heavily, the problem is that the film’s target market is ambiguous. Though “Jack and the Beanstalk” is a fabled story, one has to wonder whether this film adaptation is a family movie or adult-centered fantasy-action, which can easily affect the film’s gross. In order for a film to be successful, it needs to clearly identify itself beforehand.

Another reason why “Jack the Giant Slayer” will likely not do well at its opening next weekend is because of Disney’s $200 million epic, “Oz the Great and Powerful,” which opens in two weeks. These two films are in clear competition with one another, and there is a low chance audiences will be more excited to see “Jack the Giant Slayer” in its second weekend than they will seeing “Oz the Great and Powerful” its opening weekend. Thus, it appears Warner Bros. will be facing a similar situation to last year’s Disney disaster, “John Carter,” which had a production budget of $250 million and only made $30 million its opening weekend.

If this is the case with “Jack the Giant Slayer” next weekend, Warner Bros. might need to throw away their magic beans and take out their checkbooks to write off this disaster.

—Written by Ian Tecklin, contributing writer, ijteckli@syr.edu

Published on February 27, 2013 at 9:44 pm