Zombieland‘s earnings of $8.5 million yesterday means it’ll earn over $20 or $21 millon by Sunday night, and with this the weekend crown. An appropriate response for the best zombie comedy since Shaun of the Dead. (I actually liked it more than Shaun.) But what happened to Michael Moore‘s Capitalism: A Love Story?

More to the point, what happened to the supposed (or at least strongly suspected) simmering hinterland rage about the multi-billion-dollar bank bailouts and the stacked-deck economy favoring the super-rich, which I figured would translate into at least a moderate level of support for the film?

An underwhelming Capitalism debut means people are just sitting there in their living-room easy chairs, too bummed or numbed to get up and do (or at least watch) something. God, what a lazy and stubbornly conservative country this is…honestly! Burned every which way by a system taken over by cowboys and all they want is a zombie chuckle. Or they’d rather just sit there, naively faithful to the red-white-and-blue capitalist mythology (i.e., anybody can get rich as long as they have the moxie!) to the last, and just hold on and ride it out.

Capitalism‘s four-screen opening in New York and Los Angeles last weekend averaged $57 grand per house, but this weekend’s cross-country debut on 962 screens didn’t happen. Moore’s film did around $1.3 million yesterday with perhaps a shot at $4 million for the weekend, at best, along with a $4,000 average. I’d like to see a territorial breakdown, but the bottom line is that American rurals just aren’t goin’ for it. I told myself last weekend that Capitalism might open big with the non-Eloi because the over-30s seem to be angry and ready to show it. I guess not. I guess a lot of people would just rather watch zombies or…whatever, sit around at home and drink beer. To me this is doubly depressing. Capitalism‘s failure this weekend is also America’s.