“Shrek 2” Off to Fairy-Tale Start
A happy-ever-after beginning for Shrek 2.
The continued adventures of Mike Myers’ Scottish-braying ogre picked up where the fractured fairy tale left off, cleaning up at the box office with an estimated $11.8 million from Wednesday’s opening day.
DreamWorks hit the books, crunched the numbers and declared the bow a record–a “record for a mid-week opening by an animated film,” topping the illustrious PokÈmon: The First Movie, which coerced kiddies out of $10.1 million in 1999.
Brandon Gray of the ticket-tracking site BoxOfficeMojo.com, predicted a $60 million Friday-Sunday opening weekend for Shrek 2 and a five-day (Wednesday-Sunday) gross of about $84 million.
The original Shrek took in $42.3 million in its first three days of release in May 2001. It went on to score $267.7 million–its year’s third-biggest moneymaker.
Gray said Shrek 2 should live up to its birthright, and avoid a Van Helsing (i.e., a precipitous fall at the box office following a big opening weekend) as the summer wears on.
“It has a shot at outgrossing the first movie,” Gray said. “It will have longer legs than most sequels.”
Still, it’ll have a ways to go to become the top-grossing animated film of all-time, with Finding Nemo’s $339.7 million being no easy catch.
The CGI-animated Shrek 2 reunites Myers with his costars from the first film: Cameron Diaz as the now-blushing bride, Princess Fiona, and, Eddie Murphy as plucky Donkey.
Julie Andrews and John Cleese, as Fiona’s parents, are among the fresh voices in the sequel.
The first film was that rarest of beasts: The popular film that’s popular with critics. Shrek 2 has shaped up the same way, with a rosy 88 percent positive-review average on RottenTomatoes.com. Exploiting a good thing while it’s still well-liked, DreamWorks has already ordered up a third film.
About the only glitch in this fairy tale: A miffed screenwriter.
Ted Elliott, who with partner Terry Rossio cowrote the Oscar-nominated script for Shrek (two other writers also received credit and nominations), took to his and Rossio’s Website, Wordplay (www.wordplayer.com), on Wednesday to vent about Andrew Adamson, the director of the original film and sequel.
In a post titled, “The only post I will make on the topic of Shrek 2,” Elliott took issue with Adamson’s story credit on the new film.
“More than half of the story elements in the movie were created by Terry and me,” wrote Elliott, who is not credited on Shrek 2. “This the second time director Adamson has attempted to claim writing credit for the work of the other people. The first time, on Shrek, he failed; this time, he succeeded.”
Elliott closed the brief post with even briefer advice to writers considering working with Adamson: “Do not,” he wrote.
A message left with a DreamWorks seeking comment was not immediately returned Thursday.
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