This week, as I’m sure you’ll all be shocked to know, yields one mighty box office surprise to the tune of a $50, 000, 000 opening weekend for Jackass 3D. By raking in such a hefty figure Johnny, Bam & Co. can relax in knowing they put their nuts on the line and once again, its paid off. After a three season stint on MTV and three movies culminating in Jackass3D, many would be excused for thinking that our favourite gang of man-child daredevils had already reached the pinnacle of their efforts to exploit themselves through self-mutilating stunts and pranks. WRONG. Clearly a three dimensional, slow motion shot of a man getting hit in the face with a dildo is worth the price of a movie ticket – and the extra fork-out for 3D glasses.
As the Americans sober up to the reality that homemade action on a shoestring budget can return more than double the opening weekend takings of Red — an action comedy starring Bruce Willis AND Morgan Freeman AND Helen Mirren AND John Malkovich — Paramount are laughing their way to the bank. In a week that has seen the studio finally hand over its ownership of the Marvel franchise to Disney – including Iron Man 3 – at least they know they can fall back on the tried and true success of blokes getting hit in the groin by stuff.
Aussie audiences looking to catch Jackass3D upon release here on November 4th can expect more of what we have seen before from the crazy crew – puke, pain and an unnecessary amount of full frontal male nudity await. There may be no storyline; they may be characters we’ve come to understand as actual dickheads who share our world and they may make poo jokes with actual crap, but at the end of the day audiences are beginning to show they’re more inclined to watch Johnny jumping a jet ski through a hedge than yet ANOTHER Bruce Willis shoot ‘em up.
So I’ll put it to you now: how on Earth did a bunch of misfits, with a camera in one hand and a paintball gun in the other, come to take the box office by storm?
If you clean out of answers, check out this great analysis of Jackass 3D and 5 reasons why it was an opening success.
