Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs held on to the #1 spot this weekend, beating out new science fiction genre releases, but the one number we're really interested in is a no-show.
Cloudy dropped just 19% to take $24.60M for a two week total of $60.03M, against a budget of $100M. The poorly reviewed Surrogates, directed by Jonathon Mostow (Breakdown, Terminator 3), written by the team of Michael Ferris, and John D Brancato (Terminator 3, Terminator: Salvation), from Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele's graphic novel, and starring Bruce Willis, pulled in a disappointing (for an $80M movie) $15M to take second place, ahead of the Fame remake.
The Informant! also held well (down 34% with $6.91M, for a total of $20.99M, on a $22M budget), while Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself dropped another 52% to the #5 spot with $4.75M, leaving Pandorum as this week's real disappointment at #6, with $4.40M. Helmed by Christian Alvert, who previously directed the weighty serial killer drama Antobodies/Antijkörper (2005), the film suffers from a ho-hum plot (script by Travis Molloy), and one of the worst tag lines of all time, but has some effective moments and would work well in a direct-to-DVD, low expectation environment, but fails to live up to its $40M budget and the presence of Dennis Quaid and the always interesting Ben Foster (30 Day of Night, 3:10 to Yuma).
At #8, Jennifer's Body failed to revive in week two, dropping 49%, with $3.6M for a running total of $12.30M, still short of its $16M budget. 9 was also down $49% in week three, taking $2.83M, for a total of $27.10M, while Tarantino's Basterds now stands at $114.46M after six weeks, having taken another $2.72M.
The Final Destination ($1.38M/$64.60M), Sorority Row ($1.11M/$10.74M), District 9 ($1.089M/$113.52M), GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra ($682,000/$147.40M), Gamer ($520,000/$20.11M), The Time Traveler's Wife ($495,000/$61.68M), and Whiteout ($430,000/$9.83) all continued their downward trend, but the surprise was the no-show of Paranormal Activity, which according to Variety pulled in $80,000 from 24 late-night showings in 12 cities. This should have placed it around #24, ahead of Star Trek's $65,000 ($257.70M in its 21st week), but the film failed to show, presumably because these were single screening and don't count as a full release. Expect it to go wider next week and start pulling in real numbers – Paramount should bear in mind that the audience they're aiming to attract through Twitter and Facebook can smell a lack of authenticity from a mile off, and just release this before the backlash kicks in.
UPDATE: At 6:28pm an email was sent from the Paranormal Activity Website stating that, thanks to the sold-out weekend screenings, Paramount has agreed to expand the movie to 20 new cities, including Chicago, LA, Miami, New York, and San Francisco. Deatails on venue and showtimes will be released tomorrow.
Full list of cities is as follows: Atlanta, GA; Chicago, IL, Dallas, TX; Washington DC/Baltimore, MD; Denver, CO; Detroit, MI; Houston, TX; Los Angeles, CA; Las Vegas, NV; Miami, FL; Minneapolis, MN; New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA; Phoenix, AZ; Sacramento, CA; San Antonio, TX; San Diego, CA; San Francisco, CA; San Jose, CA; Tampa, FL.
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