Why did The Karate Kid beat down The A-Team?

I recently made it to a screening of The A-Team, which was one of my favorite TV shows growing up, and was completely satisfied by the movie. It was everything I expected it to be and remained true to the TV show story and characters. It's a fun summer popcorn movie and I think a lot more people would be going out to enjoy it if they weren't already burned by the not fun Robin Hood and Prince of Persia. Neither of those had any sense of humor.

What's also funny? That it's been such a surprise The Karate Kid won the weekend hands down. While beloved by it's fans, like me, The A-Team ran in the mid-80s with so-so ratings. That means the largest portion of moviegoers weren't even born yet to watch the show. The Karate Kid's win comes down to demographics, and not anything to do with audiences more interested in a reboot over a TV series remake.

I'll leave you with a quote I recently read on David Bordwell's terrific blog:

The movies live on children from the ages of ten to nineteen, who go steadily and frequently and almost automatically to the pictures; from the age of twenty to twenty-five people still go, but less often; after thirty, the audience begins to vanish from the movie houses. Checks made by different researchers at different times and places turn up minor variations in percentages; but it works out that between the ages of thirty and fifty, more than half of the men and women in the Unites States, steady patrons of the movies in their earlier years, do not bother to see more than one picture a month; after fifty, more than half see virtually no pictures at all.

This is the ultimate, essential, overriding fact about the movies. . . . 

- Gilbert Seldes in his book The Great Audience (1950)

Something to keep that in mind next time you're sitting down to brainstorm ideas.