2007 is looking to be Shia LaBeouf’s year. He’s gained a new parent (Indiana Jones), he’s receiving decent early word for his turn in a franchise we suspect might do well this summer (Transformers) and now this, the biggest surprise of the lot - Disturbia, which has held on to the US box office top-spot for a third successive week.
All right, so it’s not traditionally the biggest seven days of the box office year, and Disturbia didn’t exactly have much competition - well, aside from Nicolas Cage starrer Next ($7.6 million), which, with the added appeal of Jessica Biel, was expected to do better despite awful reviews (otherwise known as ‘The Ghost Rider Effect’).
In fact, in the biggest surprise of the week, Cage’s latest didn’t even finish second, being beaten by another ‘big’ new release, The Invisible ($7.6).
The Invisible has no stars, worse press than Next and a high-concept ‘The OC. With ghosts!’ that sounds straight-to-DVD at best, but its marketing campaign - including a surreal sponsorship of myspace’s ‘cool new people’ section - seems to have attracted the teenage buck.
Still, we don’t imagine the Disturbia / Invisible tag-team will survive as the top two next time. Shia or no Shia, if Spider-Man 3 doesn’t swing to the number-one spot, we’ll eat our fringes...
