Box Office 12/21/09: Cameron King Again
The prevailing critical opinion: clichéd, predictable – and really quite wonderful, either didn't matter, or worked in Avatar's favor and swept it to $77.02M at the weekend box office, beating even its own studio's estimates (see my review here). Heavy snow on the East Coast held it back from breaking too many records, but it stands as the highest grossing original work (not a sequel or a remake) in history, the second highest December release (just beaten by I Am Legend's still bewildering $77.20M), and the highest ever 3D release, earning $55M from 3,129 screens, beating Up's $35.4M by quite some margin. Of those 3D screens, 178 were IMAX, and the film earned $9.5M in those theaters for the second highest IMAX opening, behind Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen's $11.70M.
Overseas, Avatar brought in an additional $164.54M, bringing its worldwide total to $241.57M, the largest ever for an original work, but ninth overall – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince holds the record with $394M, and this year's The Twilight Saga: New Moon, at #6 with $274.9M, means that three of this year's releases are in the all-time Top 10.
At #2, Disney's The Princess and the Frog hopped down a predictable 50%, with $12.18M, for a running total of $44.71M, while The Blind Side continues to hold on with $10.02M for a running total of $164.72M, making it the most successful film of Sandra Bullock's career.
Did You See the Morgans failed to overcome the "Seen it all before, on TV" feeling exuded by its trailer and earned a meagre $6.61M at #4, a disappointment given its $58M budget. The Twilight Saga: New Moon, continues to descend, falling 45% with $4.40M, its US total now standing at $274.59M ($634.69M worldwide).
Invictus is at #6 with $4.20M, while A Christmas Carol fell 50% and 332 screens (including relinquishing all its IMAX locations to Avatar), bringing in $3.44M for a US total of $130.81M ($249.01M worldwide). The Top 10 is rounded out by Up in the Air ($3.21M), Brothers ($2.88M), and Old Dogs ($2.34M), while 2012 sits at #11, with $2.20M for the weekend, a US tally of $159.02M, and an astonishing worldwide total of $714.21M, making it the fourth biggest earner of the year, behind the Harry Potter ($929.40M), Ice Age ($883,70M), and Transformers ($835M) sequels.
Christmas weekend sees the opening of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, It's Complicated, and expansions for Up in the Air and Nine.
Box Office 11/16/09: End of the World Wins Big
To nobody's surprise, Roland Emmerich's $200M 2012 ruled the weekend box office. The disaster-meister's latest dollop of CGI destructo-porn raked in $65.2M, a little behind his biggest opener, the global cooling thriller The Day After Tomorrow ($68.7M in 2004), and also trailing last year's opening of Quantum of Solace on the same weekend ($67.5M).
A Christmas Carol held on well at #2, with only a 26% drop from its slightly disappointing opening, with $22.3M for a 10-day total of $63.27M. This year's other "little film that could" Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire pulled in a remarkable $5.87M on 174 screens ($33,762 per screen, which is good but not good enough to take the average-per-screen pole position) to take the #3 spot, while Men Who Stare at Goats battled poor reviews with another $5.86M, for a running total of $23.03M.
Michael Jackson's This Is It enters week three of its strictly limited two week run (do distributors have no shame?) with a 61% drop (perhaps audiences thought it was no longer playing) for $5.07M and a total of $67.19M. Widely derided, The Fourth Kind plummeted 62% to #6 with $4.60M, bringing its 10-day total to $20.44M (budget undisclosed). Both Couples Retreat (which cost an inexplicable $70M) and Paranormal Activity ($11–15,000 depending on who you believe) both crossed the $100M barrier this week, each pulling in around $4M for the weekend.
Law Abiding Citizen slipped one place to #9, with $3.79M and The Box (reportedly the recipient of some of the worst exit poll reviews in some time) just managed to stay inside the top 10 with $3.15M for a 10-day total of $13.17M. Richard Curtis's Pirate Radio managed a weak $2.90M in 882 theaters at #11, while Where the Wild Things Are is proving tenacious at #12, with $2.41M, making its total $73.44M in just over four weeks.
Fantastic Mr Fox (read my review here) opened small in just four theaters, but was by far the biggest winner on a per-screen basis, pulling in an average of $66,475, over twice the total of Precious. Expect this to do well with hipster parents over Thanksgiving.
This coming weekend sees the opening of tween juggernaut The Twilight Saga: New Moon; Spanish/English/US Pixar-wannabe Planet 51, a limited release (finally) for John Woo's Red Cliff (edited down to one 148-minute film from the original two-part epic); and Werner Herzog's ecstatically received festival favorite Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, with a back-on-form Nicolas Cage.
