Featured Stories

By Amy Nicholson

Teacher's Pets: After a sleepy 2008 start where The Other Boleyn Girl and Water Horse: Legend of the Deep sank like stones, Sony/Columbia resurfaced with credible box office returns on 21 that tided them over until Summer could rake in the cash. For a decade, they've crafted a winning formula: Seven of their top ten hits have starred either Will Smith or a superhero arachnoid. Hancock's smashing Fourth of July receipts were a no-brainer. Since the aptly-named Independence Day, Smith's been more popular on that holiday weekend than Thomas Jefferson. With a worldwide gross of over half a billion dollars, it'd take a knockout top grosser to make it feel like anything close to a flop, as a certain man in a cape did two weeks later.

Sony/Columbia continued to bunt solid crowd pleasers like the Adam Sandler-helmed You Don't Mess With the Zohan and Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly's Step Brothers. Both scored solid Bs, debuting at #2 on the charts and leisurely collecting just around $100 million stateside. A dog days salute from Seth Rogan's Pineapple Express was Sony/Columbia's hope for another Superbad success, and like everything else the studio released it earned a respectable silver star as the opening weekend's second place cash cow, and it has brought in around $80 million so far. While this won't be remembered as Sony's Summer --- that was 2002 when the studio launched both Spiderman and Men in Black II into the stratosphere --- even their first entrant, the Patrick Dempsey romantic comedy Made of Honor, scooped up the kinder, gentler audience Iron Man evaded and earned enough globally to keep its head held high.

Staying After School: Sony/Columbia must have crammed in some extra tutoring sessions after last year's string of flops, most notably the Lindsay Lohan vehicle I Know Who Killed Me. 2008 showed none of the desperate floundering from their forays into animation with Surf's Up and family comedy a la Ice Cube's Are We Done Yet? and the disastrous Cuba Gooding Jr. picture Daddy Day Camp. Instead, their smart decision to play it safe by sticking to their strengths -- ie R-rated comedies and PG-13 adventure flicks -- has kept them from any dunce fumbles.

Grade: B+