Weekend B.O. (Jan. 20-22) - "Red Tails" Saves Black Cinema!!

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• Erin Lori | January 23, 2012 9:22 PMReply

  I knew that you were being sarcastic. Thank you for always being the voice of reason. Call me a traitor but, I saw Underworld Friday. I was not making George Lucas richer than he already is...black girlfriend or not.

• Steven | January 23, 2012 1:08 PMReply

  Now I know why Columbia College didn't let you teach there. lol Too funny. Keep bring the heat Sergio. lol

• Sergio | January 24, 2012 12:09 AM

  After four years they had enough of me and showed me the door

• African | January 23, 2012 1:06 PMReply

  Red tails, negros fighting, killing innocents and dying for pigs system and countrie... Inspiration for the comming wars to recrute the billions of deaf blind and dumb negros, to kill rape rob torture for pigs. Adding that the assassination of the negro president, pigs bitch, all negros then lost, confuse, will turn to the boss, and boss will say lets kill rob in the name of god(of pigs), Iran, Venezuela, Korea and counting, and most important you will see negros killing in Africa for pigs, and put the stolen bloody wealth in pigs hand, all african resources, and to end, all negro woman in bed with pigs, to please him, and liking, i thought that was the negros who were hot, but no, when you try pigs you never comeback, like negro say. Sorry for being so direct, but how can i ressurect the deads?

• AJ | January 23, 2012 11:59 AMReply

  Very sad. A Black male writer removes Black women like racists of old removed Black people from films and you all cheer. A terrible day for the Black community. Black women cheering this - I hope you're watching you backs closely as a new form of racism - promoted by Black men - has crept deeply into the Black community

• Lynn | January 29, 2012 11:28 AM

  As a Bw, I agree with you 100%, which is why I'm not spending one penny on this sorry a$$ movie filled to the brim with racist BM.

• Nadine | January 23, 2012 7:39 PM

  @ASH - I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion.

• Ash | January 23, 2012 7:02 PM

  I'm not sure your very well-informed on this subject, AJ.

• cinematic_high | January 23, 2012 6:43 PM

  well it is co-written by Arron "The Boondocks" McGruder......

• Tamara | January 23, 2012 9:19 AMReply

  SMH. I missed the box-office guess by 5 milli. Darn it. No gift card. Could I get partial credit for at least getting the decimal part right? (14.4 is what I said). LOL, Sergio. Now that the hoopla has come and gone, onward and upward...let's dethrone Lucas this 'grand' victory and move on, shall we? ;-)

• ShebaBaby | January 23, 2012 5:22 AMReply

  Sergio you are effin outta control. LMAO! This is heelarious!

• jay | January 22, 2012 10:50 PMReply

  LMBAO!@Sergio. What is wrong with you, ha ha!!

• LeonRaymond | January 22, 2012 9:56 PMReply

  Now we must make sure we please the folks who did not want to fund Red Tails, the next Black film must have an all Black cast, just have them land the planes, and then the black pilots break out into song and dance numbers running down the run way, and then show a couple of fat healthy pigs run across the screen and some more Negroes walk out onto that same runway with torn clothing with Hayseeds in their mouths. We would be able to get that funded up to $200 million.

• Ash | January 22, 2012 8:21 PMReply

  Shut up, Sergio ;)

• Rasheed | January 22, 2012 8:11 PMReply

  @CHERISH I'm gonna call bullshit on that Deadline article you posted. Just this line alone: "George Lucas fanboys let him crap all...support him" tells me all I need to know about the writer. He's basically discounting the enormous support Red Tails got from Black filmgoers this weekend by attributing most of it's box office to Lucas fanboys. This statement also suggests that the writer is himself a Lucas fanboy still butthurt over the prequels and the tinkering with the original trilogy. He doesn't even have all of his facts right. Big Momma's House and Are We There Yet both had white directors and mostly white writers, so how were these films made by Black filmmakers? I guess to him (and you, maybe, since you bothered to post this?), all a film needs is Black faces in front of the camera to qualify, right? He drops this snarky little bit of misinformation in as well: "Without a white multi-billionaire behind them". Really? What maintream theatrical film doesn't have white money behind it? Does he really expect us to believe Notorious, and the rest of those titles just magically showed up at cineplexes around the country without assistance from white owned distribution systems? He pulls a Gingrich by blaming the media for suddenly segregating films. LOL! Yeah, forget about Hollywood's old-boy network and institutional racism. It's always been The Media! "The numbers show that it actually performed slightly below similar films..." 'Similar films'? What similar films are he talking about? Did some other medium budgeted WWII films about Tuskegee Airmen come out that only he saw? Yeah, didn't think so. The films he's fallaciouly comparing Red Tails to are a pair of Ice Cube headlining family films (one with religious overtones, thus chasing Tyler Perry's audience), the sequel to a head scratchingly popular Martin Lawrence comedy where a Black man dresses like a woman (perhaps also chasing the Perry audience), and a hip-hop biopic about a dead musician. What do any of these have in common with Red Tails other than Black faces on the screen (and with most of these, nowhere else)?

• cinematic_high | January 23, 2012 6:47 PM

  Dude....I saw a cat dressed up as Darth Vader in front of Mann Chinese Theater......enough said! You are right though...every word!

• Cherish | January 22, 2012 5:50 PMReply

  I completely stole this post from Deadline.com (arrgh why can't we space): I’m gonna call bulls–t on all of this “George Lucas defied the odds by making the movie no studio DARED TOUCH” kind of frenzied media coverage. Since when has Internet media become so … gullible? George Lucas fanboys let him crap all over them but they STILL breathlessly support him. Both “Red Tails” and “Underworld” did fine. Nothing more than that. But while Screen Gems isn’t going out and crowing about how their film is saving the very nature of filmmaking by white filmmakers, or about how it’s going to to define the future of sci-fi films, somehow we’re still being fed this cockamamie story about how “Red Tails” is somehow indicative of the entire future of black filmmaking. It did all right. No better, no worse than most films released this time of her. Here are some reminders of films that opened in late January: In 2005, “Are We There Yet?” opened to $18.5 million In 2006, “Big Momma’s House 2″ opened to $27.7 million In 2008, “First Sunday” opened to $17.7 million In 2009, “Notorious” opened to $21.2 million Those were all “black” films made by “black filmmakers.” (Without a white multi-billionaire behind them.) Non-black films? (I hate using that term, but since suddenly the media are segregating films by talking about “black filmmaking” so loudly … ) In 2004, “Along Came Polly” (a classic if ever there was one) opened to $27.2 million In 2008, “Cloverfield” opened to $40 million with “27 Dresses” second at $23 million In 2009, “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” (another exemplar of quality filmmaking) opened to $31.8 million In 2009, “My Bloody Valentine 3D” opened to $21.2 million Let the folks at Lucasfilm go on breathlessly about how this validates 23 years of development by Lucas, how this was his passion project, how this shows (despite Jar-Jar) that he really admires black people, about how it proves that there is an audience for black films. The numbers actually show it performed slightly below similar films, and that clearly there is a strong, loyal core audience of moviegoers who support these films. Only, George Tillman Jr., Brian Levant, Ice Cube, et. al., didn’t get coverage from GMA, The New York Times, the Associated Press, etc., about how they were breaking new ground by making their movies.

• Ghost | January 22, 2012 6:27 PM

  I think in terms of subject matter-you can't compare the two. One was about a rapper that most folks know about. Red Tails was about our men fighting in a war. Red Tails is a harder sell than Biggie's life story. So for this film to do that well and not feature females, females being done wrong, rappers killing each other, hood rat behavior and no man in drag-it's a victory.

• Cherish | January 22, 2012 5:59 PM

  NOTORIOUS earned its opening weekend (January 18, 2009) $20,497,596. Now THAT was Black film. Now I know Sergio is tongue-in-the-cheek with this post about Lucas saving Black cinema. But seriously, if NOTORIOUS earned more than RED TAILS opening weekend, can RED TAILS be really considered a success? what does that say? NOTORIOUS was 4 years ago (damn, time flies.)

• stars | January 22, 2012 5:45 PMReply

  Hey Sergio, I'm curious...if you dare....... what kind of movie would you make?

• Orville | January 22, 2012 9:49 PM

  Notorious was also a ghetto rap flick big deal. Ghetto movies do well like Boyz N Da Hood ect. Red tails is different because it is a historical film about African American history. Red Tails is special because it is an action movie with an all black cast with ZERO A list actors! The mainstream WHITE press were very negative in their reviews of Red Tails. The movie is not perfect but the undercurrent of Hollywood and white critics racism is going on here. Red Tails performed solid making $19 million is very respectable and strong numbers.

• CareyCarey | January 22, 2012 9:20 PM

  @ Stars, I guess you must be a newbie. Sergio has repeatedly said his favorite genre is westerns. He also said he even has a couple of scripts under his belt. Yes sir, Sergio has been in this game a loooong time. I believe, I think, if my memory serves me well, he said he once was a teacher of sorts. Now his reward is pissing folks off which keeps them "talking" and he loves every minute of it. Seriously, even his most controversial posts receive the largest amount of "hits" and comments, so I can't help but believe he's over in a corner snickering his ass off *LOL*

• BONDGIRL | January 22, 2012 5:19 PMReply

  God if only it were really true...lol

• Neziah | January 22, 2012 4:24 PMReply

  Wow, and I didn't even have to go see it. ;)

• filmmaker | January 22, 2012 3:06 PMReply

  Whooooooooeeeeee!! I fell out of my chair when I read that headline. Sergio, thank you (&the ENTIRE S&A team) for keeping a thumping sense o' humor on this site...

• Cynthia | January 22, 2012 2:14 PMReply

  LoL @Sergio! What's even more hilarious are the number of people who don't realize you're being facetious.

• Josh | January 22, 2012 1:52 PMReply

  I highly recommend the Foyle's War episode "Killing Time" for a non hokey look at racism during WWII. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhi4XAELBqo

• Josh | January 22, 2012 1:48 PMReply

  The picture highlights some of the lack of attention to detail in the movie. No ciggarette's. I hope this notion that this will lead to better movie's is true.

• Confused | January 22, 2012 1:41 PMReply

  I'm confused. Didn't this movie have a $90 mil budget? How is that a win?

• Sarah Ocea | January 22, 2012 11:30 PM

  Josh 19.4 million in two days tells you that there will not be a problem reaching past the "58 Million" it took to make and distribute this film by the time it leaves the theaters.

• Ghost | January 22, 2012 6:21 PM

  The 90 million is for all the promotion and film costs. The film alone cost 35 million. It would have to make 70 million to make back its budget. I think it can do that because a lot of folks couldn't see it because it was sold out everywhere and only showed on four screens-at least in Dallas theaters.

• ok | January 22, 2012 2:55 PM

  it's a win b/c it could've made substantially less given the subject matter, the actors and it's release date. but sergio got jokes though, lol. if anybody's to thank for this it's "black Jesus" not regular "white Jesus", lolol....

• dean | January 22, 2012 2:48 PM

  WOW. #4 and #5 did even worse with what might be bigger budgets and bigger stars. I understand that Africans in America make up about 20% of the movie going public. That might explain why "Red Tails" was # 2 and the movies with bigger stars (Tom Hanks, etc.) did worse.

• Zeus | January 22, 2012 1:38 PMReply

  PRAISE GOD! Now Hollywood will greenlight all black films with huge budgets! Cue the music! http://youtu.be/tROqE9N2nuQ

• Logic | January 22, 2012 4:45 PM

  Wait, I thought we were only allowed to celebrate to gospel? Oh well ::does the dougie::

• tim | January 22, 2012 1:24 PMReply

  More good news for Red tails. The Hollywood reporter is reporting that films goers has giving Red Tails an A cinamascore.

• jeff | January 22, 2012 1:19 PMReply

  You have had a little too much to drink huh???... "Praise Jesus for George Lucas! Our great savior!"

• curtis | January 22, 2012 1:08 PMReply

  So happy for Red Tails. Love all the headlines in the blog sites saying Red Tails overperformes at the boxoffice. Thanks to all for supporting this film. Looks like Tyler Perry meassage to his fanbase worked. Let's hope Perry does the same for spike lee.

• Sarah Ocea | January 22, 2012 11:35 PM

  Tim, Tyler Perry has never spoken negative of Spike Lee publicly, If I am correct the person with the problem and negative commentary is Spike. I'm sue if Mr. Perry were to extend an olive branch to Spike his pride would not allow him to take it. Seeing as how his career is the one that needs to be revived...

• tim | January 22, 2012 1:21 PM

  Tyler hates spike so the last thing he will do is tell his fans to support spike. Sad though, with Perry boxoffice power and Less's skills these two could be a force together.

• Sergio | January 22, 2012 1:16 PM

  I wouldn't bet on it

• Cinema Nero | January 22, 2012 12:38 PMReply

  Sigh of relief! One less thing to worry about.

• Nadine | January 22, 2012 12:20 PMReply

  ...it almost looks like the real story up there is HAYWIRE...hmmm...I'm going to have to check out the thoughts over on Women and Hollywood given they were having a "RED TAILS" moment as well...

• Nadine | January 23, 2012 1:40 PM

  http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/is-haywire-a-game-changer - They haven't started discussing the weekend B.O. for Haywire yet... we'll see if they do given it's #5 1st weekend out...it may grow, but I like to check out the number of theaters playing etc... http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=3352&p=.htm - Apparently the story is now the high expectations of big numbers for "Red Tails" (which, they admit, did well comparatively) only to have it defeated by the fourth installment of "Underworld", a movie with a well established base... mainstream reviewers are crazy...

• Cherish | January 22, 2012 3:25 PM

  What that's site? thx.

• Nadine | January 22, 2012 12:16 PMReply

  Sergio... I'm quickly becoming a fan... You've been out of control the last couple of days... hilarious.

• Gina | January 22, 2012 11:54 AMReply

  Whew! *wipes brow* I guess I'll have to return all of these canned goods to the store, I was preparing for the apocalypse in the event Red Tails didn't put up Avatar-like numbers.

• Laura | January 23, 2012 8:09 PM

  @Gina. I had to hollah. That was the funniest. In spite of that, I'm gonna take my daughters to see the film. (Hey if I can survive a sitting of "Zoo Keeper" with Kevin James...) My oldest daughter has to, I mean HAS TO see Ne-Yo. Well I off to do my bit on saving Black Cinema.

• Sarah Ocea | January 22, 2012 11:36 PM

  lol

• Darkan | January 22, 2012 11:50 AMReply

  LOL!!! Love you Sergio!!!