Big surprise, big shocker, right? Despite getting dreadful reviews, Seth Gordon’s follow-up to “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters,” the holidays comedy, “Four Christmases” starring Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon topped the Thanksgiving box-office weekend with a $31.6 million total. We thought of going to see it during the downtime, but then we figured, yeah, almost anything else, like relaxing at home would be better.
“Twilight” dropped off 62%, but still nabbed the #3 spot with a still-impressive $26.3 million putting its total box office gross so far at $119,688,000 after two weeks in theaters. Baz Luhrmann’s ambitious “Australia” opened up with $14.8 million to grab the #5 slot. It’s still a ways off from recouping its $130+million budget, though it’s 5-day total was $20 million which isn’t bad. “Quantum of Solace” was #4 and has raked in $142 million in North America so far. The James Bond flick has grossed $450 million worldwide making it the 8th highest grossing film of the year internationally and presumably that number will keep rising.
The big indie story of the box-office weekend was Gus Van Sant’s Harvey Milk biopic, “Milk” starring Sean Penn as the 1970s gay activist. Out in limited release, the film was only in 36 theaters with an average of about $52,000 per theater for five days and a total of $1.87 million. By contrast, “Four Christmases” posted a theater average of about $14,000 in more than 3,300 venues.
Box-Office Totals
1 – Four Christmases – $31,680,000
2 – Bolt – $26,596,000
3 – Twilight – $26,370,000
4 – Quantum of Solace – $19,500,000
5 – Australia – $14,815,000
6 – Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
7 – Transporter 3
8 – Role Models
9 – The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
10 – Milk
