Following the poor box office performance for movies released around the time Halo 3 came out, the film industry began to blame the major game release for causing the poor attendance rather than the poor quality of their films. Insiders began to speculate that the release of Grand Theft Auto IV would have significant impact on this last weekend's big movie release, Marvel's Iron Man. Well consider the whole video game versus movies theory shot down, as Iron Man earned an estimated $104.3 million this weekend including preview showings on Thursday, the second-highest grossing opening weekend ever for a non-sequel behind Spider-Man. I did my part, seeing the film twice over the weekend, and enjoying it immensely both times. Considering the fact that Iron Man is much lower on the public's radar than Spider-Man and the fact that GTA was a multi-platform release compared to the 360-exclusive Halo 3, we can safely assume that poor movie performance can still be blamed on poor movies.
'Iron Man' Blasts Off [Box Office Mojo]