America, is this where we really are as a society?
This movie can make more money in a weekend than I have been able to raise for the returning United States service members in more than three years. Monica and I have been working on this program for about 3 years now and you want to know how much we have received? Well, I will tell you, it is a measly Seventy-five thousand dollars. We need about one million dollars all told to get this program up and running for the American soldier, after which it will become self-sustaining. But we cannot even get the American public to get out of the self induced fog they live in to do something real.
I keep hearing how important it is to set this program up but I cannot do it alone, I need some help from some of the people who keep telling me what a hero I am to have made such an honorable stand. I am at the point of saying the hell with it all because I cannot provide very well for my family now a result of my actions let alone get this program going to help service members. Because, in America we can get 218.8 million for the dumbest cartoon to ever be created but we can’t get a grass roots program established to help the soldiers who are coming back from Iraq with a leg or an arm blown off, or maybe a piece of their skull is missing from an IED explosion.We see the very substandard care the service members get from the government and we get all up in arms for a very short moment and then we go to the Simpson’s movie. Or we watch Lindsay Lohan or Brittany Spears have an alcoholic moment and we forget about the wounded soldiers coming home to this……….
The Simpsons Movie, Box office performance;The film took $29.1 million on its opening day in the United States , the eighteenth highest grossing opening day, and third highest non-sequel opening. It grossed a combined total of $74 million in its opening weekend, taking it to the top of the box office, and making it the fifth highest opening weekend for a July release ever, and highest July opening for a non-sequel, thus outperforming the expectation of $40 million that Fox had for the release. It set several American box office records, including the record for highest grossing opening weekend for a non-CG animated film, surpassing The Lion King; the record for highest grossing opening weekend for a film based on a television series, surpassing Mission Impossible II; and overall it had the third highest grossing opening weekend for an animated film, behind Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third. It opened at the top of the international box office taking $96 million from seventy-one overseas territories, including $27.8 million in the United Kingdom, Fox's second highest opening ever in the country. It helped break the record for the highest weekend attendance to British cinemas, with 5.5 million overall seeing a film that weekend with 2.6 million seeing The Simpsons Movie. In Australia , it grossed $13.2 million, the biggest opening for an animated film and third largest opening weekend in the country. The film has a current worldwide gross of $218.8 million.
So, as you set in the nice, cool movie theatre, sipping your $4.50 soda and munching on your $5.00 popcorn I want you to think about a young man or woman just back from the war, who is missing an arm or a leg or maybe part of their skull, for just a second………and then get back to your movie.
