Weekend Box Office (01/08/11): Devil Inside kicks off 2012 with $34m debut.

More often than not, especially when dealing with big numbers, opening weekends are about marketing, not the quality of the film.  So don't be too shocked when you hear that Paramount's The Devil Inside opened with $34.5 million this weekend.  Yes, the film is allegedly terrible.  Yes, audiences nationwide have allegedly been booing at the (allegedly atrocious) finale.  But sometimes it's about a popular genre, a solid trailer, and the good luck of following up a recent smash hit.  Exorcism and religious-themed movies have always been popular.  The simple reason is that, along with the usual horror junkies, they attract more religious/spiritual moviegoers that otherwise disdain horror pictures.  We've over/under $20 million openings from the likes of Stigmata (whose $18 million opening in September 1999 would equal about $28 million today), Exorcist: The Beginning ($18 million in August 2004), The Unborn ($19 million in January 2009), The Last Exorcism ($20 million in August 2010), and The Rite ($18 million last January).  The anamoly that The Devil Inside most resembles is the somewhat surprising $30 million debut of The Exorcism of Emily Rose back in late 2005.  But that film had both a PG-13 (like The Rite and The Last Exorcism) and a prestigious adult cast (Laura Linney, Tom Wilkinson, etc).  Heck, throw in the $22-24 million debuts of various supernatural horror films (White Noise, The Haunting In Connecticut, The Amityville Horror, etc) and you can see that, when adjusted for inflation and a few other factors, a $34.5 million debut for The Devil Inside is quite impressive (it is indeed the biggest debut for a religious horror picture) but not a complete surprise.