Friday, July 25, 2008

Mamma Mia!

I was a little taken aback at the beginning of the week when I read that “Mamma Mia!” had the highest grossing opening weekend ever for a movie musical. “Mamma Mia!”?!!? That didn’t quite seem plausible. Even more amazing is, when you look at its total international receipts, the movie has already made more than $110 million.

I poked around a little and pulled up this chart that showed the movie already #14 on the all-time movie musical chart and also that the #1 movie musical was “Grease.” Where was “West Side Story” or “My Fair Lady,” I wondered? Then I noticed that they hadn’t split musicals out into their own category until 1974 (on Box Office Mojo, at least.)

So I pulled up this adjusted for inflation chart and saw the old favorites I was expecting: “Sound of Music” with a total gross of nearly $1 billion, “Mary Poppins” with more than $500 million, even “Rocky Horror” within shooting distance of $400 million (“Lady” is at #52 and “West Side” is at #64, in case you’re wondering).

Phew! I can rest easy now knowing that, as popular as “Mamma Mia!” is, it’s got a long way to go before it eclipses any of the classics. Personally, I’m hoping to sneak out to see “The Dark Knight” this weekend… “Mamma Mia!” well, maybe it’ll come to the Byrd in a month or two…

PS: While we're talking movies, I came across this list of the greatest screen adaptations of Shakespeare the other day. It's a little tiresome to work through all 30 of them, but I skipped to the end and it gave me a couple of movies to think about next time I'm wandering around Blockbuster wondering what would be good to watch. You might want to check it out!

7 comments:

Andrew Hamm said...

I'm generally not a fan of top-whatever lists, but Rotten Tomatoes always makes good ones.

Thespis' Little Helper said...

#30 Hamlet ROCKS MY SOCKS!!!

Ethan Hawke! Jessica Lange!

(Julia Stiles maybe not so much but whatev)

#27 O

SUCKS!!! Totally ruins Emelia's plot.

#26 Midsummer (I now know it's bad) but I still LOVE it! So accessible before ya know much.

#25 Titus
How is this not number 1?! (but I'm not there yet)

#21 R&J LOVE LOVE LOVE

#18 Hamlet?!! Mel Gibson!? WTF?!
The cut and paste version!!! UGH

#17 Taming of the Shrew with Liz Taylor?! Made me fall IN LOVE WITH HER!!! AWESOME

(surprised at how many of these I know)

ok...so apparently I haven't seen the older ones (maybe cuz I think they are so damn stuffy...but...)
#11 Much Ado...even though I'm not a huge fan of Branagh as an actor (but huge fan of him as a director)= perhaps the most accessible Shakespeare movie ever made (And Keanu Reeves is absolutely riveting and brilliant in it! hahahah)

#8 The Lion King made it in?! Really? Disney is taking over EVERYWHERE!!! (great even if out of place)


Those are my meandering thoughts for the universe.

Oh...still haven't seen Mamma Mia! yet, but I'm very excited! It just looks like so much darn fun!!! (Even if lousy singing...and even worse lip-synching, I'm still excited!!!

Angelika HausFrauSki said...

I have so many faves on that list that it would be tedious to list them all here, and I would probably change the rankings of some of those, but it's a satisfying list.

So glad 10 Things I Hate About You was on it...God, Heath Ledger. Totally fell in love with him in that movie...

Rick St. Peter said...

When I got stuck with directing Taming of the Shrew at Barksdale (a play I had no desire to do initially), I started rehearsals not knowing how the hell to get started so I showed the cast 10 Things I Hate About You so begin to get "the spirit" of what we were going to do with Shrew. I was stalling, I had no idea what we were going to do with Shrew, so I made it up as we went along...Rick Brandt was happy about having to watch 10 Things...I was in love wiht Julia Stiles so I didn't care...

Peace
Rick

Angelika HausFrauSki said...

That's because Rick Brandt knows what's up.

Rick St. Peter said...

That actually should have said Rick Brandt WASN'T happy about watching 10 Things I Hate About You...

Oops...

Peace
R

Anonymous said...

I was coerced into seeing Mamma Mia (the play), which ended up being great... as for the movie version, sounds fun, though it's awkward to think of ol' Pierce trying to sing, yeeesh