'G-Force' topples `Harry Potter' at box office

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-07-27 09:47

"You never go into a situation where you're competing against two important movies — the second weekend of 'Harry Potter' and the opening weekend of 'The Ugly Truth' — you never go in cocky," Zoradi said.

The one-two of PG-rated movies reinforces the fact that summer is prime family movie time, said Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com.

"This summer is all about packaging and escapism," Dergarabedian said of the strong showing for "G-Force." "People were scratching their heads and dragging their kids to go see this thing. They were watching the trailers with absolute shock going, 'Is that really happening?' But as a kid you're like, 'I gotta go see it.' This is a testament to the fact that Jerry Bruckheimer, like ('Transformers' director) Michael Bay, knows exactly what summer movie audiences want."

With $27 million, "The Ugly Truth" performed at the high end of Sony Pictures' expectations, said head of distribution Rory Bruer.

"The chemistry between Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler is a blast. It's really a lot of fun, everything we'd hoped it would be," Bruer said. "From sneak previews to word-of-mouth screenings we had on the movie, we knew people liked the movie."

Critics weren't so enamored, though: "The Ugly Truth" received just 15 percent positive reviews on the Rotten Tomatoes Web site.

"If I have a choice of deciding between what the audience's opinion is going to be versus the critics', I'll definitely go with the audience's every day, and they spoke loud and clear," Bruer said.

Also opening nationwide this weekend was another Warner Bros. release, the horror movie "Orphan," about a couple who adopts a little girl who's not nearly as sweet as she seems. It came in fourth place with $12.8 million.

Expanding in its second week of limited release, the Fox Searchlight romantic comedy "500 Days of Summer" made $1.63 million. Going from 27 screens to 85, it's grossed just over $3 million. The critical hit stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in an out-of-order tale of boy-meets-girl.

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