Some box office hits are easy to predict, but every summer there are a couple of surprises, and this year that list includes John Tucker Must Die, whose robust debut returns were probably at least partially driven by these va-voomish bra-and-panty shots.



Produced for under $18 million, the movie opened on 2,500 screens and pulled in over $14 million last week, for a hearty $5,576 per screen gross. Heading into this weekend, it had already added another $10.5 million to its coffers, and now stands to be quite a tidy moneymaker for distributor 20th Century Fox, who’s also had another under-the-radar hit this summer session with The Devil Wears Prada, which has now crawled past $110 million in just over a month of release.

John Tucker Must Die centers on three ex-girlfriends (Ashanti, Sophia Bush and Arielle Kebbel) of the titular high school basketball stud and serial cheater (Desperate Housewives’ Jesse Metcalfe) who collaborate to turn the tables on their former beau by getting him to fall for the new girl in town (Brittany Snow) in order to watch him get his heart broken, so sure, it tapped into, in savvy fashion, a certain vein of female adolescent vengeance.

But who else thinks these pictures helped drive male attendance amongst the under-17 set? Though only rated PG-13 — for sexual content and language — the movie was heavily touted on Comedy Central for the past two weeks, with separate “his and hers” TV ads. Guess which these were a part of?

For her part, Snow (American Dreams, The Pacifier) has already been cast in the big screen musical re-do of Hairspray, but with the box office performance of John Tucker Must Die, look for a, ahem, further bump in profile. Scarlett Johansson may not be looking over her shoulder just yet, but surely the phone calls from the folks at Maxim have already begun.