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The royal wedding will probably be funnier

Kim Hollis: Your Highness, the medieval comedy featuring James Franco, Natalie Portman and Danny McBride, earned $9.4 million. Why did this Universal release fail?

Brett Beach: For all the focus on Portman's hot streak, Franco's high visibility, and marketing this as being from the director of Pineapple Express, this is a combo of two genres that, with a few exceptions, never open that big and never wind up with high grosses - films set in medieval times and pot comedies. Throw those two styles together and you get a result such as this, probably this year's Year One.

I do wonder two things: Did featuring Danny McBride overtly in the ads (I understand he is the lead) turn potential viewers off? I like him in small, small doses, but not in every scene. Second: Is David Gordon Green ever going to go back to All the Real Girls and Undertow-type films or is this his future?

Josh Spiegel: Based on the interviews I've read, Brett, the only way Green's heading back to those kind of movies is if he has to. This result is clearly a failure, but I don't know what people expected at Universal. It's telling that the reviews here were almost universally awful, even from the demographic you might think would like a movie like this. I like Franco, Portman, and McBride fine, but I grew more and more skeptical of this movie being worth my money. Suffice to say, I'll wait until Netflix for this one.





Edwin Davies: Comparing this result to that of Pineapple Express, which opened to $23 million and finished with $87 million back in 2008, I wonder if the film would have done better if Seth Rogen had been cast in the Danny McBride role. Many of the same components from that film were in place for this one, but I get the feeling that in that instance having someone like Seth Rogen, who is a pretty cuddly presence in most films he's in, at its center made that film more appealing than one starring Danny McBride, whose persona is much more abrasive. (I love his work on Eastbound and Down, but his strength seems to lie in playing characters who are pretty much irredeemable.) Perhaps, like Arthur, it is a film which has failed by putting someone who fits more comfortably into supporting roles center stage.

David Mumpower: Shaving with Occam’s Razor here, the film failed because it looked heinous. Brett mentioned Year One and that is exactly the title I have been using as a comparison. It was the last unforgivably awful looking comedy that had big enough names in the cast to maybe earn a better fate than it deserved. And that film’s $43.3 million feels like a pipe dream. We’re probably talking about a $25 million finish for a movie that stars the Black Swan. If we break this down to its basic essence, a proven comedy box office and the reigning Best Actress were just deemed the inferior comedy to a pointless, needless Arthur remake.

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