Box Office Report: Little Hope for 'Lone Ranger' as 'Despicable Me 2' Soars

There will be no riding off into the sunset for The Lone Ranger, which continued to struggle on Independence Day, even as Despicable Me 2 smashed more records.

From Universal, Despicable 2 took in $24.5 million to score the second-best July Fourth gross behind box-office behemoth Transformers, which took in $29.1 million in 2007. The Lone Ranger grossed a grim $9.9 million for a two-day cume of just $19.5 million.

At this pace, Despicable 2 is headed for a five-day debut north of $130 million, and possibly north of $140 million in a major victory for Universal and animation partner Illumination Entertainment. The event pic cost a modest $76 million to produce.

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Lone Ranger -- headlined by Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer -- may only reach $55 million through Sunday, far from enough considering its hefty production budget of at least $250 million. The tentpole, directed by Gore Verbinski and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, is almost certain to pose a major financial problem for Disney unless it does extraordinary business overseas.

With Lone Ranger, Disney had hoped to whip up the same magic that Bruckheimer, Verbinski and Depp created with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. In this latest film, Depp applies his penchant for playing quirky characters to the role of Tonto (Depp says he is part Native American), while Hammer plays the Lone Ranger.

Hollywood will be be paying close attention to Lone Ranger's performance (at one point, it was almost scrapped entirely because of the budget). This past weekend, Sony's big-budget action tentpole White House Down, which cost $150 million to produce, flopped in its North American debut, grossing just $24.9 million.

Despicable 2 is easily walking away with the glory, both domestically and internationally, where it has already earned $75.8 million for an early worldwide total of $134.5 million through Thursday.

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It's also smashing a number of records. In North America, the movie also scored the second-highest Thursday gross in history behind Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($29.1 million). (That doesn't include films that opened on Thursday.) And on Wednesday, Universal's sequel scored the third-highest opening day for an animated feature behind Toy Story 3 and Shrek the Third (both those films opened on a Friday).

In the toon, Steve Carell returns to voice the role of Gru, master of the minions, while Kristen Wiig voices the role of Agent Lucy Wilde.

The third new entry of the July Fourth holiday frame is Summit Entertainment's stand-up comedy film Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain, which grossed a stellar $2.6 million on Thursday from 876 theaters for a two-day total of $7.4 million. Summit is hoping to provide counter-programming for African-American audiences as well as comedy fans. The film, from Codeblack Films and HartBeat Productions, was shot live at New York's Madison Square Garden.

Windows 8.1's little changes are a huge improvement

Windows 8.1 is available in 'preview' version for developers on Wednesday.

On paper, the list of changes that Microsoft made to Windows 8.1 don't seem all that major. No, the app tiles aren't gone. Yes, the Start button is back, but not exactly as you remember it.

But it isn't until you actually start using the latest version of Windows that you can appreciate the big benefits of little tweaks.

Start button: The return of the Start button to its rightful spot on the desktop taskbar is a perfect example.

The Start button's main function in Windows 8.1 is actually to call up the Start screen (the series of app tiles that Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) calls "Modern UI," which was introduced in Windows 8) -- not the labyrinth of nested menus that it used to hide. But when you're in desktop mode and you click the Start button, it won't take you completely out of the desktop. Instead, a semi-transparent version of the Modern UI will float on top of the desktop, allowing you to choose an app.

That feature also allows you to control how you organize the Start screen. You can quickly lump together all the icons for your desktop apps in the Modern UI and label them as such.

 

In other words, the new Start button brings back all the functionality of the Start button from Windows 7, but with the look and feel of the more modern Windows 8.1.

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Snap view: The biggest change in Windows 8.1 is the expansion of the "snap view" feature that enables multiple apps on the screen at the same time.

Windows 8.1 will let you run up to eight apps side by side -- up from just two in Windows 8. (That's provided you have two 2560x1600 resolution monitors. On a smaller device like the Surface, you can still only have two.)

Unlike Windows 8, which ran the second app in snap view as a more limited widget in a small strip of the screen, Windows 8.1 lets users decide how much space each app takes up on the screen -- half? a third? a quarter? Your call!

To make Windows 8.1 users feel less locked into a single app, snap view will automatically launch in certain situations. For example, if you're reading an email and you click on a link, you will no longer exit the email app and go into the browser. Instead, the screen will automatically split itself into two (if it isn't already), and Internet Explorer will pop up right next to your email app. You can even rearrange panes and drag and drop files between them as easily as you would two windows in desktop mode.

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App improvements: Microsoft has put in a lot of work into more tightly integrating its own services throughout Windows 8.1.

For example, if you search for a musician using the Bing search app, links and play buttons to that artist's songs and albums will be integrated into the results.

When you receive a Skype call and your computer is locked, you will be able to answer the call without having to first unlock your computer.

And most importantly, the SkyDrive cloud storage service will be more tightly woven into Windows 8.1. SkyDrive won't just make your cloud files look and feel native inside Windows, but it will also sync all your Windows and app settings on the fly, so that you don't have to reconfigure every Windows 8.1 device you use.

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Even littler things: It's not just tweaks to big conceptual ideas that make Windows 8.1 promising. Microsoft paid attention to little technical details as well.

When you have more than one monitor, for instance, Windows 8.1 will make sure you can independently adjust scaling for each one so that text, icons and other visual elements are optimally sized and proportioned on each display. (This was a major problem when using the Surface Pro with an external monitor.)

Another tiny fix that goes a long way is how the Start Screen organization process has been cleaned up. Being able to name groups of tiles gives the screen an added sense of order. Instead of pinning every newly installed app to the Start Screen, Windows 8.1 now just adds new apps to a larger list of apps one menu level below. That helps cut down on the chaos of the Start Screen, making it just about the apps that matter to the user.

And having the ability to move entire groups of tiles at once -- as opposed to one by one -- eliminates a tedious process of personalizing the Start Screen.

Wednesday's release is just a preview for software developers. The final version of Windows 8.1 won't be released to the public until the holiday season, and we'll probably see some other little things changed and a few extra tricks added.

No going back to the drawing board: Before Microsoft first pulled the cover off of Windows 8.1 last month, there were claims that negative feedback and poor sales of Windows 8 had forced the company to rethink its strategy and largely abandon its futuristic overhaul of Windows. That couldn't be further from the truth.

With Windows 8.1, Microsoft is slowly pushing us deeper into its Modern UI. Many of the new tweaks to Windows exist to make the Modern UI more enticing as the primary mode of computing.

Microsoft's execution of its PC/tablet hybrid operating system concept still isn't flawless, but its patience in adhering to its vision is commendable. By addressing some of Windows 8's more problematic aspects with subtle, iterative improvements, Microsoft is slowly transitioning its user base to this radical new mode of computing.

That not only makes Windows 8.1 a promising upgrade, but it may go a long way towards validating Microsoft's somewhat risky strategy.

Twitter: @sajilpl

Pretty Little Liars: Hanna's Mom Warns Her to Stop Spying

Is Ashley Marin telling the truth about being out of town the night detective Darren Wilden was murdered? In the June 25 episode of Pretty Little Liars, the single banker continues to raise eyebrows as her whereabouts come into question. After learning that her daughter Hanna found her muddied heels in the trash, she decides to address the situation.

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"I do not appreciate you spying on me," Ashley (Laura Leighton) tells her.

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"I was not spying," Hanna (Ashley Benson) retorts. "I just happened to look in the wastebasket." Given her daughter's propensity for getting into trouble, Ashley fires back, "You deliberately looked."

Ashley confronts her daughter Hanna in the June 25, 2013 episode of Pretty Little Liars.
Credit: ABC Family

Hanna accuses her mom of providing a false alibi, but as Ashley reminds her, "I do not have to account for myself to you."

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"Mom, I don't care about the stupid play, all right?" Hanna yells. "But why would you lie about it?" Ashley then pleads with her daughter to not "ask me any more questions." Just before she leaves Hanna's room, Ashley stops and says, "Hanna, if anyone asks you . . . don't lie. Just don't say anything."

Pretty Little Liars airs Tuesday, June 25, at 8 p.m. EST on ABC Family.

 

PC sales suck (a little less)

FORTUNE -- Dell Inc.'s special committee this morning published an investor presentation ahead of next month's shareholder vote on a $24.5 billion buyout offer from company founder Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake. Included were several requisite barbs at the personal computer market, and why shareholders would be smart to bail before things get even worse.

Here is one of the relevant pages from its presentation:



As you can see, most of the data is from research firm IDC, which made waves in April by reporting that global PC shipments fell 13.9% between Q1 2012 and Q1 2013 (seems Dell's special committee rounded that down, for some reason).

What got far less attention, however, was that IDC subsequently reported that the entire 2013 forecast was for only a 7.9% dip. Moreover, it projected a slight increase in shipments by 2017.

And we got something similar today from Gartner, which had reported an 11.2% Q1 decline. Now Gartner says that the overall 2013 drop should be 10.6%.

If IDC and Gartner are correct, then the downward trajectory of PC sales actually is flattening out a little bit. Not so much as to make Dell (DELL) scrap its server or services businesses and refocus on PCs, but also not the "If you thought this quarter was bad, wait until next quarter" mentality that the April numbers at first seemed to imply. Maybe that's one reason why Carl Icahn hasn't thrown in the towel yet...