Well, ok, that’s quite the misleading headline, no? Some people cared. More than ten. Less than twenty. Needless to say, “
A Christmas Carol” was not the knockout punch Disney was expecting, its numbers coming in way below the $40 million predictions, but
this is still
Robert Zemeckis‘ biggest mo-cap opener to date. His other holiday bonanza “
The Polar Express” did $23 million in its opening frame and went on to do $180 by playing throughout the holiday season, so can “Christmas Carol,” with its soul-defeating ugliness and ludicrous pratfalls, do the same? “Carol” has serious IMAX competition with “
Avatar” in a couple of months, so there’s a strong possibility it will follow the path of “
Beowulf,” which opened at a similar time period to $27 and died before hitting $90. Because nothing says The Holidays like a naked
Ray Winstone bursting out of a sea serpent’s eyeball.
Sony continues to spin “This Is It” into more of an international play. The Jackson doc clocks in at a little under $60 million this weekend, with an extra $100 coming from international audiences with a morbid hunger for the death leftovers from a long-faded pop star. Man, “Death Leftovers” would have been a great title for this movie. All told, Sony’s fine with this performance, but it might be an iPod Shuffle and not an iPod Nano in the stockings for employees this Christmas/Kwanzaa/Arbor Day. Opening to third was “The Men Who Stare At Goats,” which did respectable numbers, though in a less-crowded weekend, this could have generated hit potential. Newbie distributors Overture Films recently hit hard with “Law Abiding Citizen” and if this has legs (or even if it doesn’t, since the gross nearly tripled the fee Overture paid for the project), that’s two hits in two months for the frosh studio. Yay frosh. Do a keg stand.
Universal has to regret letting “The Fourth Kind” out so soon after “Paranormal Activity.” Films like this, with unexplained real-life phenomena and low-key casts and marketing can sometimes open to near-$20 numbers, a la “White Noise,” but “Kind” will have to settle for a short play ceiling of about $40 mil overall. Not bad, considering the budget and the shaky star appeal of Milla Jovovich, but they could have sold this better. “Paranormal Activity” finishes the weekend at #5 within spitting distance of $100, and within such proximity of “Fourth Kind,” it could conceivably lap the film since word of mouth is on the film’s side. With “Paranormal Activity” cresting $100 million with plenty more to go, could we see a new wave of horror films where almost nothing happens onscreen? We can call it the Horror No-Wave movement. M. Night Shyamalan is on line two.
At #6 is newbie “
The Box,” which failed to connect with anyone
— reportedly Cinemascore audiences gave it an F. We hesitate to wonder what scores they gave “
Southland Tales.” In fact, we’ll bet “
Donnie Darko” would have gotten F’s all across the board, too, and that movie seems to be well-liked. The message in all this? Maybe “The Box” doesn’t suck as much cock as its box office would lead you to believe. Though “Darko” does have a
Seth Rogen cameo, so it’s probably at least a D for some people right there. This surely grounds
James Marsden‘s plea for stardom, while it’s another underperformer for
Cameron Diaz. Now that we think about it, considering this weekend, Milla Jovovich and Cameron Diaz should switch spots on the list of on-demand actresses in Hollywood. “The Box” would look far more interesting with Ol’ Crazyeyes Jovovich.
In #7, posting a preposterously stupid hold of (are we reading this right? WE ARE) 99.5% is “Couples Retreat,” which is due to cross $100 million by mid-week, proving that $100 isn’t what it used to be. “Retreat” plays to all four quadrants, as they say, so the legs it’s shown are a result of undemanding audiences saying, “Oh, screw it, go for the romantic comedy with the funny people on the beach.” Sadly, this means the advertisements, which made a point of strategically either placing the black characters far off in the distance or eliminating them altogether, were a success. What’s the difference between Matthew McConaughey and Vince Vaughn again? Oh yeah, one surfs. “Law Abiding Citizen” also posted a small drop in getting to $60 while “Where The Wild Things Are” hangs tough at $69 mil. with hopes for clocking in at $80, and looking more and more that broad-skewing commercials for the DVD with Tone Loc singing are the way to go to recoup.
In limited release, “Precious: Based On The Picture Book ‘Speshul’ By Sapphire” had a strong opening weekend in eighteen locations. The flick somehow pulled in $100k per screen, leagues better than the next best per-screen average in the lineup and taking in $1.8 million. People foolishly counted out the massive promotional power of Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, forming some sort of freakish money-making Voltron in getting this movie out to the audience it needs to reach. Lionsgate‘s expansion from this point should be aggressive, and with the film’s power, we’ll likely see it in 2000 more screens in a couple of weeks. Could be another “Crash” for Lionsgate, in more ways than one, if what we hear is true about the movie.
1. A Christmas Carol- $31 million
2. Pop Autopsy- $14 million ($57 mil.)
3. The Men Who Stare At Goats- $13.3 million
4. The Fourth Kind- $12.5 million
5. Paranormal Activity- $8.6 million ($97 mil.)
6. The Box- $7.8 million
7. Couples Retreat- $6.4 million ($96 mil.)
8. Law Abiding Citizen- $6.1 million ($61 mil.)
9. Where The Wild Things Are- $4.2 million ($69 mil.)
10. Astroboy- $2.6 million ($15 mil.)
