Vacation ($104,684,188)

Warner Bros/New Line has just announced that its reboot of Vacation starring Ed Helms as Clark Griswold’s grown-up son Rusty is moving off its October 9 release date and into the busy July 31 frame. That’s a fierce weekend: Vacation will go up against three other wide entries led by Paramount’s Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. Also bowing are Weinstein Co.’s Jake Gyllenhaal pugilist drama Southpaw and STX Entertainment’s thriller The Gift, which marks actor Joel Edgerton’s feature directorial debut.

So why the move to the crowded weekend? The first two films in the original franchise, 1983’s Vacation and 1985’s European Vacation, bowed in the final weekend of July. In addition, I hear the test scores for the Helms’ version of Vacation are great. There’s also ample room for a comedy on the schedule. It will have been a month since Universal’s Ted 2 bowed on June 26, with the only other competition for Vacation coming from the second weekend of the Adam Sandler-Kevin James starrer Pixels. 

Directed and written by John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein, Vacation follows Rusty as he surprises his wife (Christina Applegate) and his two sons with a trip back to his childhood haunt, the Walley World theme park.

joey con carne wrote:My favorite one is definitely the one where he takes the family to Wally World.

UltimateMarvel wrote:Follow up from the In The Heart of the Sea thread...

Chris was hilarious in this movie. His scenes were all pretty funny and so is the movie overall. As someone who's never watched the original movies, I enjoyed it a lot. The road trip sort of reminded me of We're the Millers too.