WeekendBoxOffice Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Occasionally you'll hear a movie branded as "criticproof," which I take to be a derisive term implying that the masses will flock even though the movie in question is garbage If there's an entire genre that may now get described as "criticproof" it's the disaster movie. No amount of bad reviews could keep people away from watching Roland Emmerich destroy the world anew in 2012, which made $65 million domestically and $225 million worldwide. The domestic numbers are comparable to The Day After Tomorrow which, among other things, ran 40 minutes shorter. The foreign numbers are even stronger. Those who've seen the movie shouldn't be surprised. Think of it what you will (it's probably my favorite Emmerich film, which is not saying a lot), but it's pretty incomparable as special effects spectacle.

2012 had the box office pretty well to itself this weekend. Its only new competition in even semi-wide release was Pirate Radio, which largely flopped despite the enthusiastic pimping of the Love Actually connection -- under $3 million on 880 screens. Faring better was Precious, which expanded to just under 200 screens and earned $6 million. With Precious and Paranormal Activity, this is proving to be a good season for slow roll-out platform releases; Precious seems to be doing a nice job of building awards buzz, too.

As expected, A Christmas Carol turned out to be durable, still running way ahead of The Polar Express, and looking to get a bump from the Thanksgiving holiday in a couple weeks. Look for this one to stick around the top 5 for a little while. On the other hand, the reign of 2012 meant big hits for the holdover genre films, including The Fourth Kind, The Box, and Paranormal Activity.

The box office chart after the jump.

I was considering a title pun on Richard Kelly getting Box-ed out -- which works on multiple levels!! -- but I couldn't pull the trigger. That, though, is my main concern this weekend, to be honest: I am heartbroken (though not surprised) that Kelly's wonderful, hugely ambitious sci-fi flick couldn't get a foothold at the box office. People at my Thursday night screening thought they had seen one of the worst movies ever, which I guess is what happens when you're led to expect harmless PG-13 horror and get something so radically different. I also suspect that Donnie Darko would have been similarly received had it opened on 2,600 screens instead of building its cult cred in mini-release and on DVD.

Anyway, The Boxearned $7.9 million -- not a total disaster for a $25 million movie, but not exactly a resume-builder for Kelly to the extent he has commercial ambitions. It was roundly defeated by the rest of the weekend's newcomers, most notably A Christmas Carol, which took first place with $31 million. That may not seem like a lot, but note that Zemeckis's The Polar Express opened to even less on its way to $180 million. I predict that A Christmas Carol, which looks wonderful on IMAX 3-D, will hold up well.

The weekend's other big winner was Precious, which Lionsgate pushed to an impressive $100,000 per-screen average on 18 screens. Even accounting for the very limited release, that's pretty strong; Brokeback Mountain-like numbers ($80-90 million) are probably within reach.

More, and the weekend top 10, after the jump.

All the hand-wringing over whether or not Where the Wild Things Are is "for children," or "kid-tested, mother-approved," or whatever, turned out to be mostly academic: the kids didn't go. And the movie cleaned up anyway. According to figures cited by this David Germain piece in the AP, parents with kids made up only 27% of the $32.5 million Wild Things earned this weekend. The prevalence of adults (who I gather grew up on the book, unlike the current generation of tykes) probably bodes well, or at least better, for the box office staying power of the divisive, challenging film.

Gerard Butler's Law Abiding Citizen opened to $21.3 million in second place -- the highest ever opening gross for young distributor Overture. That may have been at the expense of Screen Gems' The Stepfather, the unscreened, bloodless PG-13 horror remake that debuted in fifth place with $12.3 million. That's still not bad given the total lack of expensive name-brand talent involved.

Paranormal Activity continued its slow roll-out charge, adding 600 screens (760 total) and adding $20 million to its gross. (That's around $26,000 per screen.) How much the idiotic "we-won't-open-in-your-city-unless-you-go-online-and-DEMAND-it" shtick had to do with this is debatable. (Would the movie have made even more had Paramount just held the film back and then put it into wide release this weekend?) But the "breakout hit" label is difficult to resist at this point. Good job everybody.

Down at number 21, the omnibus New York, I Love You goes on the probably-should-have-kept-it-in-the-arthouses category. Its predecessor-of-sorts, Paris Je T'aime, expanded to around 200 screens rather than starting there, and did considerably better than New York will, foreign language handicap and all.

The full top 10 after the jump.

A slow-roll platform release is a high-risk strategy, but Paramount has really hit on something with Paranormal Activity. The movie expanded from 30 to 160 screens this weekend, accompanied by good reviews and hype that Paramount marketers almost killed themselves building on the internet, and was greeted with a $44,000 per-screen average, amounting to a fairly eye-popping $7 million weekend. It wouldn't have worked if the movie weren't pretty good, and the momentum is sure to fade as the movie expands further, but still: kudos all around. It would have been easy to dump this little gem into a few theaters and let it die (see: The Midnight Meat Train.)

The weekend's only new wide release, Couples Retreat, capitalized on its cast and bright-colored marketing to the tune of $35 million -- a strong October bow, and par for the course for Vince Vaughn, who can open a rom-com like nobody's business. Chris Rock's documentary Good Hair opened at 186 screens and lurks down at number 14 with just over a million bucks. I must admit it's hard to come up with a good analogy to a doc about black women's hair directed by a superstar comedian, box-office-wise. Maybe Dave Chappelle's Block Party? ($6.2 million on 1200 screens, with a similar per-screen average.)

The holdovers did respectably, with the possible exception of The Invention of Lying. Ricky Gervais's subversive comedy took a 52% hit, though it will still end up beating Gervais's last stateside star vehicle, Ghost Town. Zombieland, this fall's little horror comedy that could, held up quite well in second place, approaching $50 million after two weeks. And I wonder if Disney will hold true to its promise to pull the 3-D Toy Story double feature out of theaters after this week; the movies are still doing well, dropping less than 40% and pulling in $7.7 million in their second re-release weekend.

The full top 10 after the jump.

Weren't we seeking flashy, content-free teaser trailers for Fame, like, a year ago? Or nine months out at least? That's the sort of marketing generally reserved for event blockbusters, not movies that get dumped into theaters in late September en route to a $10 million opening and -- most likely -- a final gross in the vicinity of $25 -30 million. What happened? Given the bad reviews, perhaps MGM/Sony realized with a few months to go that they didn't have an awards contender or likely crowd favorite on their hands.

On the other hand, I don't know what excuse Disney has for Surrogates, a perfectly serviceable, extremely commercial sci-fi actioner starring Bruce Willis and directed by T3's Jonathan Mostow. Willis actionally doesn't have the greatest track record in opening non-franchise releases, but $15 million for a movie like this is awfully weak; here is an instance where hiding a movie from critics arguably hurt. Overture's Pandorum, also hidden from reviewers, was a less surprising flop, with $4.4 million dollars for the weekend.

Taking top honors for the second weekend in a row was Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs , which held up very well; it probably helped that it was really the only family film in the market for the second weekend in a row. The Informant! which did not make big waves last weekend, also held pretty well; it won't do Ocean's business, but should end up as Soderbergh's highest-grossing non-Ocean's film (the current titleholder is Out of Sight with $37 million).

The full top 10 after the jump.

Ho-hum, another Tyler Perry movie, another first place opening. The man is a franchise unto himself, obviously, and it's somewhat heartening that this -- his seventh film in four years -- is his consensus best; maybe Lionsgate will actually screen his next one (coming in April, natch) for critics. I Can Do Bad All By Myself didn't put up the numbers that Madea Goes to Jail did earlier this year (despite the apparent presence of Madea -- I wonder if her name in the title is what makes the difference), but $24 million was more than enough for first place on a low-key weekend.

Interesting that first second and third place this week went to films by Lionsgate, Focus and the Weinstein Co., respectively. Second place went to Focus's 9, which opened on Wednesday to mixed reviews and around $15 million for the five days; the distributor aimed low, with a 1600 screen release, and the film did probably as well as it could have, despite that spectacular trailer. Inglourious Basterds, still holding up pretty well, took third and crossed the $100 million mark.

Further down the list we see a weird glut of late-summer horror: Whiteout and Sorority Row opened against each other, just a couple weeks after The Final Destination and Halloween II opened against each other. Both of this week's openers wound up with about $5 million to show for it; given that neither is a brand name or particularly distinctive, they probably didn't lose much. Halloween II sank out of the top 10, while The Final Destination hung around and is now the top-grossing movie in the franchise with $58 million.

The top ten films after the jump.

As pleased as I am at the box office success of Quentin Tarantino's ambitious, pretty terrific Inglourious Basterds, I wonder how many of the folks who saw it this weekend knew what they were getting into. Its clever, funny marketing campaign aside, the movie is two and a half hours of mostly talking, mostly in foreign languages. Movies that fit that description do not have $37.6 million opening weekends. We should know by next weekend whether or not people were duped (and I should say that it's not clear -- the movie is plenty exciting despite, or perhaps in part because of, all the gabbing). For the moment, Inglourious Basterds, "artfully" misspelled title and all, is easily Quentin Tarantino's biggest opening.

Robert Rodriguez, Tarantino's occasional partner in crime, also had a movie opening this weekend -- the kiddie 3-D adventure Shorts. With $6.6 million, Shorts actually wound up being a personal worst for Rodriguez, who has never had a movie open in wide release to weaker numbers. (The similarly low-profile The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl did roughly twice the business.) And the non-descript, poorly reviewed Post Grad joins a growing list of late-summer total non-starters, with $2.8 million on 2000 screens.

Julie & Julia continues to perform well for Sony. Aside from holding up nicely in general, it's doing well during the workweek -- and, after three weeks, is at three times its opening weekend gross. The Ugly Truth has also acquitted itself, now having surpassed Katherine Heigl's previous effort as a leading lady, 27 Dresses.

The full top 10 after the jump.

Sometimes you need neither big-name actors nor a ginormous budget -- just a cool high concept and some nifty advertising that knows how to get the pitch across. The sci-fi-action-allegory District 9 knocked G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra off its short-lived perch with a $37 million weekend. Word-of-mouth appears to be strong, so this one has a chance to make something of itself in a market that will grow less crowded over the next few weeks. G.I. Joe fell just under 60%, which was as expected; it's roughly at $100 million after two weeks.

The weekend's other high-profile newcomer was The Time Traveler's Wife, which grossed $19 million, beating out the last time-traveling romance to hit theaters, the Keanu Reeves/Sandra Bullock weepie The Lake House. (That one opened to $13 million but held up well thereafter). Then there were a few relative dumps: Jeremy Piven's The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard landed in 6th place with $5.4 million; Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo wound up in 9th place with $3.5 million (about par for the course for a US Miyazaki release); and the pretty damn good Bandslam turned into one of the year's biggest flops, grossing $2.3 million on over $2000 screens. Figures that the rare attempt to appeal to the Disney Channel demographic without force-feeding it Disney Channel garbage does absolutely no business.

Among non-G.I. Joe holdovers, Julie & Julia did reasonably well, which makes sense given the extent to which it's targeting older audiences not likely to run out to the theater on opening weekend. And Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, creeping toward $300 million domestic, is now assured second place in the franchise.

The full top 13 (!) after the jump.

Attempting to market Funny People as a typical Adam Sandler comedy was quixotic, and as another laugh riot from the Apatow factory only marginally less so. Still, the combination of Sandler and Apatow (and, probably, Rogen) was enough to get the off-kilter, two-and-a-half-hour dramedy off to a $23 million start -- not one for the record books, but hey, not too far off the opening numbers for Apatow's Knocked Up and Sandler's Bedtime Stories. There are shades of M. Night Shyamalan in Judd Apatow, in the way that he appears to be moving from blockbuster crowdpleasers to more personal, slightly odd films that not everyone "gets."

Aliens in the Attic, hidden from critics and not really sold as any sort of event, unsurprisingly ended up with a middling $7.8 million -- a minor opening for a minor flick. The independently-distributed horror film The Collector, from some of the folks behind the Saw franchise, debuted in 11th place and $3.6 million; not great either, but probably above expectations, and perhaps an indication of how many ticket buyers are willing to see a horror movie, any horror movie, on a given weekend. (500) Days of Summer continues to do very well in limited release, with the highest per-screen average in the top 20. Next week, when the film expands to over 1000 screens, will be the real test.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince found its footing a bit in its third weekend after last week's big tumble; it won't wind up atop the franchise, but may make a run for second place. And I was glad to see Orphan hold up at least semi-respectably after a weak start. That's one summer movie that deserves better than it got.

The weekend's top 12 after the jump.

Sometimes -- more often than I'd care to admit -- I'm wrong about just how the weekend's box office will play out. But I'm rarely gobsmacked like I am this week. I expected G-Force to be part of the Disney live action also rans -- at best, I thought it would put up Race to Witch Mountain-type numbers; maybe $24 million. And I thought that it would handily be beaten by the well-liked Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, coming off a franchise record opening.

That is not how the estimates have it. As of Sunday, the guinea pig spy movie is ahead of Half-Blood Prince by just over $2 million: $32.2 to Potter's $30. Potter tumbled over 60% from its opening -- actually not the biggest drop-off in series history, which honor belongs, strangely, to Prisoner of Azkaban. Though I wouldn't shed any tears for the folks at Warner Bros., what with the film's worldwide gross breaking $600 million, the drop is a bit of a disappointment for the well-reviewed sixth film. G-Force, I guess, is a triumph for talking CGI animals and 3D.