Speed Racer flops on its opening weekend, ekeing out barely $20 million on more than 3500 screens. Nikki Finke gleefully jumps on the corpse here. A more sober AP story is here; Box Office Mojo’s weekend list is here.

The world Finke lives in can be slightly unhinged; but it must be noted her Sunday box office analyses are earlier and more comprehensive than anything else I’m aware of. It’s 2 p.m. PDT right now, and even Box Office Mojo doesn’t have a full analysis up. (Finke’s is time-stamped at 2 a.m.)

Isn’t this the purview of the LAT? The AP wire on latimes.com I link to above is warm beer; Finke’s piece is smarter, based on better knowledge, and brings up a number of important tangential issues. (The paper will be particularly embarrassed if Finke is right [see below] and What Happens in Vegas ends up passing Speed Racer for second place once the final figures for the weekend are released Monday.) In what new-media universe does the LAT get outclassed on a basic housekeeping coverage of a hometown industry like this?

As for the Speed Racer debacle, it seems as if the Wachowskis hung themselves with a too-long movie based on a too-little-beloved bit of kitsch. The wonderment I found in the animation wasn’t shared by other critics made restless by the two-hour-plus running time, not to mention the families at whom the thing was directed. I’ve seen figures from $120 million to $160 million listed as the film’s production budget; throw in marketing costs and Warners is dependent on the kindness of a whole lot of overseas strangers to get out of the way of a potential category 5 flop.

Update: The actuals for the weekend are in and Finke was right; Speed Racer is third with only $18.5 million. International receipts are in as well and are even worse, totaling $12.6 million. This is embarrassing for the papers that ran superficial wire copy rather than canny expert analysis.