Box Office 12/08/09: Transylmania Lack Bite
Very little excitement for genre fans this week as we all hold our collective breath for the Avatar juggernaut (tickets go on sale today). The Blind Side continues to rise and takes the #1 spot with $20.04M, while The Twilight Saga: New Moon comes in at #2 with $15.42M, down 64% after adding 84 theaters - but with a US running total of $255.36M and a global take of an additional $243M, nobody's worried.
Jim Sheridan's Brothers opened at #3 with $9.52M, while A Christmas Carol dropped 467 theaters and 50% with $7.76M for a combined US tally of $115.24M (foreign totals are unavailable, but it took the #1 spot and £1.67M/$2.71M in the UK after five weeks). Old Dogs took $6.89M at #5, closely followed by 2012 with $6.77M (worldwide total of $600.25M).
Armored opened with a weak $6.51M, although its $20M budget can probably handle that. Ninja Assassin also failed to impress in its second weekend, dropping 62% from a poor opening with $5.06M ($29.82M total against a $40M budget). Planet 51 is at #9, down 57% with $3.85M (a total of $34.05M, marking the halfway point to its $70M budget). Robert De Niro failed to find an audience with Everybody's Fine at #10, pulling in only $3.85M in 2,133 theaters.
At #11 Fantastic Mr Fox looks unlikely to take hold as a family holiday hit, down $58% with $2.91M, for a disappointing $14.08M after 10 days on wide release. Meanwhile at #15 The Road dropped 57%, despite expanding to 126 screens, adding $749,535 for a 10-day total of $3.19M.
This week's biggest flop however is Transylmania, which debuted in 1,007 theaters, managing a paltry $262 per screen for a total of $263,941. This makes it the worst ever opening for a film playing in more than 1,000 cinemas and hopefully, after this and Stan Helsing, we'll see a hiatus for the unfunny horror spoof – the distributors of UK flop Lesbian Vampire Killers are presumably not looking forward to the holidays, as this opens in the US on 12/29.
Friday sees the following openings: Disney's The Princess and the Frog, Clint Eastwood's Rugby-themed, post-apartheid Invictus, Peter Jackson's eagerly awaited The Lovely Bones, fashion designer Tom Ford's directorial debut A Single Man, and the latest from Broken Lizard, The Slammin' Salmon.
Box Office 11/30/09: Moon Sinks, Carol Sings
An inauspicious opening for Viggo Mortensen in The Road, at this week's #10
The astonishing performance of The Twilight Saga: New Moon came to something of a halt over the Thanksgiving weekend, recording the largest dollar decline on record for a film in its second weekend. Of course, all things being equal it still won the holiday, with $42.90M for a 10 day total of $230.90M, becoming the most successful vampire film ever released.
Sports-themed heart-tugger The Blind Side added 30 theaters and $40.11M, for a 10 day total of $100.23M (not bad for an investment of $29M), while 2012 sank 33.2% after adding 36 theaters, bringing in $17.65M for a not too disastrous $138.45M in its third week of release. At #4, Travolta and Williams showed no new tricks and Old Dogs launched with $16.89M ($24.22M for the full five days), while A Christmas Carol dropped 565 theaters but increased by 28.4%, pulling in $15.75M for a total of $104.92M - it has a hold on the IMAX screens until December 18th when James Cameron's Avatar will no doubt leave all other films weeping in its wake.
At #6, Ninja Assassin opened with $13.31M ($21.19 in five days), followed by Planet 51, which held on well, down just 16.8% with $10.21M, but a running total of $28.48 is still a long way shy of its $70M budget. Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, declined steeply with $7.08 at #8 and this week's big disappointment is Fantastic Mr Fox at #9, which added 2,029 theaters, but only managed to pull in $6.95M for a total of $10,024.
At #10, The Road debuted on 111 screens, but post-apocalyptic art-house didn't strike a holiday chord and it could only scare up $1.50M ($1.97M over five days), though it did have the highest per-screen average ($13,534) of films playing over 100 theaters.
Disney's return to old-school animation, The Princess and the Frog opened in two theaters and received the highest per screen rating, with $393,095, for a total of $786,190 and the #18 slot.
This coming weekend sees a dearth of genre releases, with heist thriller Armored, from Vacancy (and upcoming Predators) director Nimród Antal, Jim Sheridan's drama Brothers, Robert DeNiro family holiday film Everybody's Fine, Jason Reitman's eagerly awaited Up in the Air, and the final screenplay of Waitress writer Adrienne Shelley, Serious Moonlight. The sole genre release is horror 'comedy' Transylmania from National Lampoon's Hillenbrand brothers, which arrives just in time to appear on the year's Top 10 lists.
Keep an eye on the UK also, as The Descent: Part 2 opens against Paranormal Activity in its second week (it took £3.59M/$5.98M this weekend) and New Moon in its third (total so far of £20.32M/$33.80M).
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.
Box Office 11/9/09: Christmas Starts Slow
Halloween has come and gone, the holiday lights are appearing in the retail capitals of the world and Robert Zemeckis has another fantastically expensive motion capture animation, designed to entertain us with the volume turned up to 11. $30.05M is on the low side for this kind of thing but, given that A Christmas Carol was released a full seven weeks before the Big Day, it has at least a fighting chance of reaching its $200M budget.
Historically, where Christmas movies are concerned, only the Tim Allen Santa Clause movies open this early, and Carol just bested 2002's The Santa Clause 2, which opened on November 6th (but cost a relatively modest $65M) and was beaten out by How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) which opened on 11/17 with $55M, Elf (2003), which opened 11/7 with $31.11M, and (depressingly) Four Christmases (2008), which opened 11/26/08 with $31.06M.
At #2, Michael Jackson's This Is It is down 43% with $13.15M while The Men Who Stare at Goats opened with $12.70 at #3. The Fourth Kind is at #4 with $12.23, desperately hoping to soak up some of that Paranormal Activity money (budget undisclosed, but Milla Jovovich's trailer was doubtless more than PA's entire cost). At #5 Paranormal Activity itself comes close to crossing the $100M mark with $8.27M, for a running total of $97.10M - 'nuff said, I'm out of superlatives (see my review here).
Richard Kelly's The Box is at #6 with a disappointing – given its 2,635 theater release – $7.57M (though the budget was a lean $25M). Couples Retreat and Law Abiding Citizen hold on at positions seven and eight, and at #9, in spite of its detractors, Where the Wild Things Are is doing okay with $4.17M for a four week total of $69.70M, more than can be said for Astro Boy, which has failed to find a significant audience, bringing in $2.62M for a three week total of just $15.11M.
Saw VI sunk 61%, with $2.03M and a three week total of $26.25M, placing it easily in profit against its $11M budget, albeit as the least successful of the Saw series. Oscar hopeful Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, did remarkably well at #12, bringing in $1.87M in just 18 theaters.
Next weekend sees the launch of marketing juggernaut 2012, Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox (review here) on limited release, and also Richard Curtis's thankfully renamed The Boat That Rocked, which will be know in the US as Pirate Radio.
