Halo 3 Leaves the Box Office with a "Heartbreak"

The most highly anticipated game of the year might have stumped the alleged funniest movie of the year.

Many movie executives are convinced that Halo 3 has crushed box office hopes due to the popularity of the newest installment. With the 3 million people that have logged onto Halo 3 in the past couple weeks, they feel that people are more interested in frags than the big screen.

Halo 3, which released for the Xbox 360 on September 26, netted Bungie and Microsoft $170 million in sales on the first day. While everyone has been hitting Xbox Live, movie sales have been sliding. Media sources are claiming that October tickets sales have already plummeted 27% compared to last year. With the phenomenal success of Halo 3, you can sort of see where the execs are coming from.

The Heartbreak Kid, for example, was supposed to be a sure hit with ticket sales. Ben Stiller, teaming again with the Farrelly brothers with whom they made the box office smash "There's Something About Mary", starred in The Heartbreak Kid, which was supposed to be the funniest movie of the year. Expecting sales ranging from $20 to $25 million for the opening weekend, the film hardly hit the $14 million dollar mark . . . in the U.S. AND Canada. Unfortunate indeed when the movie reportedly required $60 million to make.

With the colossal rippling that Halo 3 left in the universe, it is fairly understandable that movie executives needed someone to blame. However, there was probably more to blame than Halo 3 for the unexpectedly box office droop. The movie was praised highly by some critics while other critics didn't display the best of opinions. Combined with the R rating, this could be more of a suitable explanation for the slump in the movie's success. There is not doubt that Halo 3 was a bigger event then the release of The Heartbreak Kid. Now the notion that the video game giant stumped box office sales might or might not be true. There is really no way to tell. I personally didn't see The Heartbreak Kid myself but based on the review articles I've read from my fellow content producers, it probably deserved its outcome. Very humorous is the reality that video games will severely interfere with ticket sale outcomes. The verdict comes down to Halo 3 being a groovy game and The Heartbreak Kid being a lame movie.