Box Office 11/23/09: New Moon Rises
The Twilight Saga: New Moon was unable to sustain its record breaking opening day ($72.7M) through the weekend, but still raked in an impressive $142.8M from a $50M budget. Not surprising, given that its predecessor is the highest-grossing vampire movie in history, with $384.99M worldwide – Van Helsing is second, God help us, with $300.25M. Opening simultaneously just about everywhere on the planet, its weekend global take (including US) was $274.93M.
Football tearjerker The Blind Side opened at #2 with $34.11M, while 2012 took an expected dive of 59% with $26.41M for a 10 day US total of $108.13M. At #4, the animated Planet 51 opened with a decent $12.28M and at #5 A Christmas Carol dropped 105 theaters and 45% with $12.27M, bringing a total of $79.83M as it enters its third week of release.
The rest of the chart holds little genre excitement as horror movies beat a post-Halloween retreat, The Fourth Kind limps along adding another $1.74M to its $23.35M haul, while Paranormal Activity (which debuts on DVD on December 29th) pulled in $1.40M for a nine week total of $106.08M.
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans opened at #22, with $245,398 in 27 theaters and Fantastic Mr Fox dropped 23.5% in its limited four theater run pulling in just $203,512, expect that to change this week as the film goes wide for Thanksgiving.
Red Cliff opened in two screens and earned $13,104, but like The House of the Devil (#84 with $3,927 on three screens) its money will more likely be earned from downloads – it's also available from amazon.com's Theatrical Rental program.
This week sees the opening of John Hillcoat's eagerly anticipated film of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, although this will also be a limited release (dammit!). James McTiegue's Ninja Assassin also debuts, along with Richard Linklater's Orson Welles and Me, John Travolta/Robin Williams vehicle Old Dogs and the drama The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.
New Red Cliff Poster, and the 300 Controversy
Not a genre movie, but who can resist John Woo’s return to Asia – and, if reviews and Chinese box office are to be believed, to form. New US poster art was released today for Red Cliff, Woo’s Han Dynasty epic, and it’s gorgeous – befitting the most expensive film ever made in China (at US$80M), and the most successful film ever released there, beating the record set by Titanic (the world take so far is in the region of US$240M).
It’s worth noting however, that the original Chinese poster was not so well received, thanks to some eagle eyed blogger spotting a distinctive similarity between a portion of it, and a scene from Zack Snyder's film 300. That story is told in full at observers.france24.com.
Red Cliff is released here in November, and the UK trailer can be viewed here, as ever, click on the images to see them in all their glory.
New US poster
The US “Coming Soon” poster
An alternate Chinese poster, with the offending tree now on the left hand side.
