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.
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