‘30 Minutes or Less’ Misfires at the Box Office

It’s been a rough year at the box office for Danny McBride. Just months after Your Highness became of the year’s priciest losses, his bomb-strapped comedy 30 Minutes or Less opened like a… bomb. Just a week after The Change-Up failed to ride the R-Rated Comedy Wave of 2011, the opening weekend numbers for 30 Minutes or Less have confirmed a fatigue for the genre during Summer’s end.

Early box office tracking had suggested 30 Minutes, re-teaming the Zombieland duo of director Ruben Fleischer and star Jesse Eisenberg, could open near $20 million. Its 2 redband trailers were definitely well-received across the blogosphere (including by our readers.) However, Sunday’s final number show the film played far below expectations, grossing only $13 million. Despite the obvious pun, 30 Minutes may avoid being an all-out bomb thanks to its minimal $28 million budget. However, one wonders how these disappointing returns will affect future projects for stars McBride and Aziz Ansari, including their next planned collaboration Olympic-Size Asshole, or the 3 pictures Ansari has developing with Judd Apatow at Universal.

In a bit of box office irony, 30 Minutes or Less was beaten by two of its stars’ previous co-stars: McBride’s Pineapple Express buddy James Franco took the Number 1 spot with Rise of the Planet of the Apes (for the 2nd week in a row), while Number 2 went to Eisenberg’s Zombieland costar Emma Stone in the drama The Help.

Source