Box Office 9/21/09: Cloudy's Fine, Jennifer's Shoddy.
The success of an animated movie with a $100M budget, based on a well-loved childrens’ book, would not normally be a surprise, but in a week when all eyes where on Megan Fox, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs kind of snuck under the fence. The adaptation of Judi Barrett’s book, drops the charming illustration style of (former) husband Ron, in favor of generic-looking CGI, typical of Sony’s animation division (Open Season, 2006; Surf’s Up, 2007), but critical reaction was favorable and the weekend box office take of $30.30M in 3,119 theaters, with about half the take coming from those equipped with 3-D, and a little over $2.5M from 127 IMAX venues, strengthens their reputation.
Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant followed up in distant second place at $10.46M, Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself fell an expected 58% to come in third with $9.87M, and nobody will be shocked that the Jennifer Aniston rom-com Love Happens tanked at $8.05M (meaning, presumably, that there won't be a sequel entitled Shit Actually).
No doubt heads would be rolling at Fox Atomic if they hadn't already closed the division down, so the hand-wringing over the dismal $6.86M take of the ubiquitous Jennifer's Body will be left to the pundits, who will no doubt, as with Halloween II, conveniently overlook the trim budget (just $16M here), and declare this the end of Megan Fox and Diablo Cody. Irritated though we might be by all those pop-up Flash ads getting on the way of our Web experience, we should take a moment to grieve the failure of a genre film that is neither a remake, nor a sequel, nor is it based on a teen or graphic novel, or computer game, and pray this doesn't lead to a further rash of dismal remakes.
At #6, 9 drops 48% on an additional 399 screens, to take $5.56M, for a two week total of $22.92M, and at #7 Inglourious Basterds hits $110.11, with a weekend take of $3.81M, making it the highest grossing of Tarantino's movies, and also the one with the largest overseas earnings.
Last week's rom-com flop All About Steve took $3.4M at #8, leaving Sorority Row in the #9 position, with a predictable second week drop of 50% and a weekend take of $2.5M on a running gross of $8.9M – still well short of its $12.5M budget. The Final Destination, which is – God help us - looking so far like the horror hit of the fall, took $2.39M, for a total of $62.40M at #10, while Whiteout was obliterated at #11, with $2.13M, and a total of $8.55M – it's $35M budget now looking like a cert for a tax right-off.
Of the stragglers, District 9 is at #13, with $1.91M for the weekend and $111.68M total; Gamer took $1.41M for $18.99M after three weeks; GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra took $1.37M, bringing its seven week total to $146.19M; The Time Traveler's Wife still managed over $1M for a $60.82M total, not bad on a $29M budget; and Halloween II halved its screen count, and saw weekend earning of $751,894, for a total of $31.47M against its $15 budget.
Box Office 9/14/09: Party Over for Horror Remakes?
Tyler Perry regularly takes the #1 spot for a new release, thanks to a focused approach on doing what he does best – warm comedies aimed at an African/American family audience. No surprise, then that Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself ruled this weekend, with a $24M take. What is disappointing is the poor performance of the week's two big genre movies (even if one of them only looks like a horror film).
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. At #2, Shane Acker's 9, his 79-minute expansion of an 11-minute Oscar-nominated short from 2005, did reasonable business for an animation skewed toward an older audience. Having opened on 09/09/09, the film's five day gross netts out at $15.26M, good for a film with a $24M budget, and — despite mixed reviews (great visuals, weak, hole-filled script) — we can only praise Focus Features for bringing a more off-beat view to the animation field, following this, and their release earlier this year of Coraline.
Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds keeps its grimy mitts on the #3 spot, with a weekend take of $6.5M, for a total of $104.3M ($203M worldwide) — no doubt leading to audible sighs of relief at Weinstein headquarters (budget is $70M), after their recent round of layoffs.
At #5 (following the dismal All About Steve at #4), The Final Destination shows that 3-D is here to stay, with a weekend take of $5.5M, and a three week gross of $58.26MUS/$90.76M worldwide on a $40M budget. All the more disappointing then, that the two new releases, Sorority Row (a remake of 1983's House on Sorority Row) and Whiteout (from Greg Rucka's 1998 comic book) could only make number six and seven respectively. Summit Entertainment will be concerned, but not overly gloomy, as Row’s take of $5.27M is an okay start on a $12.5M budget, however Dark Castle's Whiteout cost $35M, and seems unlikely to recoup that with a first weekend take of $5.1M. Distributor Warner Bros., marketed this murder mystery as a horror film, but if they were hoping for a similar result to 2007’s snowbound graphic novel adaptation, 30 Days of Night, they will be doubly disappointed to recall that it took $15.95M on an October 19th opening, for a final global take of $75.3M from a $30M budget.
Having safely crossed the $100M barrier over a week ago, District 9 sits at #8 as one of the biggest hits of the years, with a weekend gross of $3.6M and a running US total of $108.5M. Following Julie & Julia at #9, Gamer slumps a shocking 65% to #10, in its second week, with $3.15M, and a total of $16.1M (budget unknown).
With GI Joe still raking it in at #11, with $2.52M (total $144.42M US/$288.49M worldwide — still a ways to go to justify that $175M budget, given that the production company usually ends up with around half the box office take), and The Time Traveler's Wife at #12 with $2.32M ($59M US total, on a $39M budget), Rob Zombie's Halloween II sits suitably at #13, with a weekend take of $2.3M, and a total of $30.3M – given that this has yet to open abroad, and the budget was a mere $15M, this is far from being the flop most Zombie-haters would like us to believe.
