Box Office 12/15/09: Frog Leaps to #1
Another quiet pre-Avatar weekend at the box office was lead by the wide release of Disney's return to traditional animation The Princess and the Frog, which grossed $24.20M in 3,434 theaters against a budget of $105M. The Blind Side continues to do remarkable business, with $15M for a total of $149.81M after four weeks.
Clint Eastwood's Invictus lands at #3 with a modest $8.61M, but this Yorkshire-man's heart is glad to see a rugby-themed movie by a major director with major stars anywhere in the Top 10. The Twilight Saga: New Moon is down 48% at #4 bringing in another $7.96M for a staggering $267.32M total.
A Christmas Carol dropped just 12% on seasonal sentiment, earning $6.83M for a six week total of $124.42M. The rest of the chart mainly consists of films we've seen before, The Road continues to stumble along, adding seven theaters and $505,878 for a total of $4.01M, which must be a tiny fraction of its undisclosed budget and Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones debuts at #30 in three theaters to mostly negative reviews, with $116,616, winning the week's highest per-theater average with $38,872.
At #52 Transylmania drops 94% (and 889 theaters) earning $16,018, a miserable $136 per screen, for a 10 day total of $390,486, making to officially the least successful horror comedy ever to open in more than 1,000 theaters - earning a mere 10% of its nearest rivals, 1993's My Boyfriend's Back and 1988's Critters 2: The Main Course.
This coming weekend see the opening of James Cameron's Avatar and some other films very few people will see.
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).
