Joe's View

Everyone expected the big-screen version of “Sex and the City” to do well over the weekend — excerpt, perhaps, for a few snarky critics (i.e. The New York Times’s Manohla Dargis) — but few thought it would end up in the number one box-office slot with a staggering $55.7 million gross.
“This is the first real surprise of the summer,” industry box office analyst Paul Dergardebian told the Associated Press yesterday in one of the major understatements of the season.
On Friday, I read one industry projection of $27 million for the opening weekend of “Sex” and another for $35 million (both of which would have placed it well under the $46 million earned by “Indiana Jones” between Friday and Sunday).
Despite the fact that it was R-rated and skewed female, “Sex and the City” knocked the PG-13 young male-oriented “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” out of the top spot after only one week.
For a super-expensive George Lucas-Steven Spielberg collaboration to lose its hold on the coveted spot so quickly is a devastating development for the two powerful moviemakers (another summer movie that no doubt cost less and was much less anticipated — “Iron Man” — was able to hold on to the number one position for two weeks last month).
Some of the “surprise” over the huge success of “Sex” is rather surprising to me because of the obvious wide-spread interest in the film in the days just before the debut of the spin-off of the HBO series.
Virtually every woman I spoke with — and every gay man I know — said they intended to see the movie as soon as it opened.
At the midnight screening I attended Thursday, the manager of the theater told me “Sex and the City” sold double the number of tickets the similar midnight sneak preview of “Indiana Jones” had sold a week earlier.
The continuing popularity of the “Sex and the City” series is obvious, from the enormous sales of the rather expensive complete DVD set — all over the world — to the way that fans cite dialogue (and costume changes) from favorite episodes. With the possible exception of “Seinfeld,” I don’t know of another contemporary TV situation comedy that has inspired such devotion.
Expect to see more non-CGI entertainment slated for prime summer opening dates in years to come, along with at least a few more big-screen adventures of the “Sex and the City” ladies.