If there's one thing the Disney machine does well it's pimping moderately talented kids to the point of absurdly overrated popularity. It used to be that Disney's cash crop kiddos landed movie deals where they could show how their acting mediocrity matched their digitally enhanced singing abilities. These days Disney doesn't even have to cough up the cash for writers. They just video tape the kids in concert, toss the footage in 3-D on the big screen and watch the cash roll in.
It worked for them with Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana whose movie-concert debut raked in $65 million. Now they've tossed the Jonas Brothers on the big screen, but to lesser success. The boys don't seem to have the same popularity, bringing in only $16 million, half of the $31 million that Miley's concert experience drew its first weekend out. That wasn't enough to top Madea Goes To Jail which remained on top for a second weekend. I hope the Jonas boys are putting their share of the cash into savings accounts. Obscurity is just a drum beat away. Don't believe me? Just look at what's left of Hillary Duff.
The lastest dismal failure of an attempt to bring a video game to the big screen, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, flopped huge, making only $4 million and taking 8th place for the weekend. A movie like this might have had a chance fifteen years ago when teenagers actually knew who the heck Chun Li was. These days you're more likely to find audiences wondering whether it's some kind of Chinese chicken dish and what on earth it has to do with street fights. Hopefully all those bizarre talks of a sequel have been KOed.
