Well, I can't say that was very surprising.  Battleship, based loosely on the board game of the same name, had a pretty weak opening weekend here in the US.  The action film took in approximately $25 million.  Considering the film cost over 200mil to make, I don't think this was the debut Universal was hoping for.  Taylor Kitsch meanwhile, cannot catch a break. He's now been in the biggest flop of the year, John Carter, and it looks like he'll have a great shot at being in a second one here. 

Kitsch can't exactly be the one to blame in either instance however.  Disney put far too much money into a film that they gave a pretty bad marketing effort to, and worse yet, the worst name of any adventure film in a long time.  John Carter?  Even John Carter of Mars, though awful as well, would have sounded a little more interesting. With Battleship meanwhile, I'm confident this was pitched as "Transformers with boats," and seeing dollar signs, Universal just kept throwing money to a director, Peter Berg, who had a huge worldwide hit with Hancock in 2008.  I haven't seen it and have heard some of the CG is pretty great, but 200+mil is too much to spend unless its a relatively proven commodity, (Dark Knight Rises, Avengers, Whatever craziness James Cameron wants to do, etc.)

Speaking of the Avengers, it brought in another $55 million in its third weekend. This brings its domestic total to $457 million, and worldwide gross to $1.18 billion!  I don't see it slowing down any time soon, and should glide past $500mil domestic by the end of the month.  Incredible!

-Jay