Speed Racer Can’t Outrun Iron Man’s Repulsors

Take this for what you will: The Wachowski Brothers’ “Speed Racer’, their first movie since the third installment of their “Matrix” trilogy in 2003, couldn’t handle Iron Man’s repulsor rays, opening at #2 with an approximate $20 million take, about the same amount as the Ashton Kutcher-Cameron Diaz romantic comedy “What Happens in Vegas”. Meanwhile, Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man” continues to hold steady, taking in another $50 million in its second week of release, for a 2-week total of $177 at the U.S. box office alone.

The fact that “Speed Racer” couldn’t outpace “Iron Man” is not as big of a surprise as the fact that it came in toe-to-toe with “What Happens in Vegas”, beating the other movie out by a few hundred thousand despite arriving in nearly 400 more theaters. No doubt “Vegas” took all the women in the audience, while “Speed” had to fight for the table scraps of “Iron Man”.

Here’s how the Top 10 at the box office broke down over the weekend (via):

1 —–Iron Man —–$50,500,000 —–$177,134,000
2 —–Speed Racer —–$20,210,000 —– $20,210,000
3 —–What Happens in Vegas —–$20,000,000 —–$20,000,000
4 —–Made of Honor —–$7,600,000 —–$26,275,000
5 —–Baby Mama —–$5,766,000 —–$40,377,000
6 —–Forgetting Sarah Marshall —–$3,778,000 —–$50,772,000
7 —–Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay —–$3,155,000 —–$30,716,000
8 —–The Forbidden Kingdom —–$1,900,000 —– $48,261,000
9 —–Nim’s Island —–$1,325,000 —–$44,257,000
10 —–Redbelt —–$1,140,000 —–$1,237,000

“Hey, Speed, outrun this!”