Two months ago, we looked out on the upcoming slate of film releases and boldly declared that 2009 would be the Year of the Werewolf, with hairy-faced Lycans finally putting an end to the box-office hegemony of vampires — but that was way before Paul Blart: Mall Cop made $39 million over four days this weekend.
Even though the coming weeks and months will bring wolf-starring movies like Underworld 3, The Wolf Man, and First Howl, we’ll also see April’s Observe and Report, in which Seth Rogen plays a racist mall security guard, and the new, just-announced-today Fox sitcomWalorsky, which follows “the exploits of an ex-cop who now patrols a shopping mall in Buffalo, NY” (Fox claims to have picked up the show prior to Blart’s baffling MLK Day success). So who’ll hop on this trend next? We bet Clint Eastwood is kicking himself for not thinking to play a racist mall cop before Seth Rogen. And you know the Coen brothers are already imagining all the silly haircuts they could give George Clooney for their mall-cop movie. Also, if Stephenie Meyer could somehow be persuaded to write a mall-cop-vampire-werewolf love quadrangle into the next Twilight novel, we’re reasonably sure it would save the economy.
Earlier: Are Werewolves the New Vampires?
Paul Blart: Mall Cop Not Your Only Mall-Cop Movie Option in 2009
