Weekend Box Office (09-23-12): Four new releases cannibalize each other as The Master whiffs in wide release and Importance of Being A Wallflower explodes.

As always, for background and historical context for all the weekend's new movies, check out John Gosling's obscenely detailed weekend preview HERE.

It wasn't so much a 'something for everyone' weekend as it was 'multiple things for the same general audience' as four wide releases aimed at thrill-hungry moviegoers and/or adults debuted on the same day, creating a clear case of mutually assured destruction.  The top three movies are basically tied, but as always rank is irrelevant next to the actual hard numbers (why rank doesn't matter).  For the moment, the top debut of the weekend may be End of Watch, a 'found footage'-style LA cop drama, parlayed strong reviews into a solid $13 million opening, which is the second-biggest debut for Open Roads outside of The Grey ($20 million) back in January.  The $7 million film (purchased for $2 million) had a marketing and distribution cost of around $20 million, so even a $40 million final total will get this film in the black before home video.  It also proves that Jake Gyllenhaal  is a decent mid-range opener.  He's useful when the film you're selling doesn't cost $200 million ala Prince of Persia.  End of Watch is yet another installment in writer David Ayers's 'two volatile men in a car' sub-genre, which includes the likes of The Fast and the Furious, Training Day and Harsh Times (an underrated Christian Bale vehicle which he also directed).  He wrote but did not direct the the LA Riots-set cop melodrama Dark Blue while directing but not writing the frankly mediocre Keanu Reeves cop melodrama Street Kings.  Among films he directed, End of Watch should easily top the $26 million gross of Street Kings while it will be fifth (out of seven) if it can merely surpass the $9 million gross of Kurt Russell's Dark Blue. Fourth place is the $76 million-grossing Training Day, which is too far a bridge to cross at this point.

Weekend Box Office (10/30/11): Puss In Boots makes muted (for Dreamworks) number-one debut, while Timberlake/Seyfried's In Time and Depp's Rum Diary underwhelm.

 

Dreamworks seems to have paid a price for their risky release date, as Puss In Boots (review) debuted with a comparatively soft $34 million over the weekend.  We'll find out for sure on Monday if it broke the Halloween opening weekend record (Saw III grossed $33 million on this weekend in 2006), it's still a pretty disappointing number and well below the norm for major Dreamworks cartoons.  The studio has had a healthy run on the first weekend in November for the last several years (Megamind, Madagascar 2, Bee Movie, Flushed Away), but the decision was made recently to move the film back one weekend right into the heart of the kid-friendly holiday known as Halloween. As it stands for the $130 million production, the debut is the lowest opening for a Dreamworks cartoon since Flushed Away, which debuted with just $18.8 million in November 2006 (an Aardman Animations production, it nearly doubled its $64 million US gross overseas).  While a massive snowstorm on the East Coast likely kept moviegoers indoors on Saturday and possibly Sunday, the film's $9.6 million opening day was below par as well.  As it is, the film played 59% female and 55% over-25.  It also played to a 35% Hispanic audience, while 51% of the tickets were in 3D and 7% were in IMAX.  The comparative uptick in 3D sales makes sense, since it's some of the better 3D we've seen to date.

Weekend Box Office (10/23/11): Paranormal Activity 3 scores record October debut with $52.6 million (but it's not the top horror opening).

Despite what everyone else is reporting, Paranormal Activity 3 (review) did not set a record this weekend for the biggest opening for a horror film.  Lest we forget, Hannibal (review) opened with $58 million in February of 2001, which was actually the biggest R-rated opening ever at the time.  Anyway, Paramount's threequel/prequel will have to settle with merely being the second- biggest horror debut ever, the eighth-biggest R-rated opening, and the top October launch.  Tragic, I know. The $5 million film grossed a massive $54 million this weekend, which is a 29% jump from Paranormal Activity 2's $40.6 million opening this time last year.  The film had a massively front loaded weekend, the ninth-biggest on record, with a mere 2.02x weekend multiplier.  Still, that was better than the 2.01x weekend multiplier for Paranormal Activity 2 last year (the sixth-smallest such multiplier).  The picture played 53% under-25 and 54% female.  Considering the film pulled just in $1.7 million more at midnight, the $26 million opening day (around $6 million more than Paranormal Activity 2's $20.6 million Friday) and $12 million jump in total opening weekend compared to the last film, there is a clear growth in this series.

Weekend Box Office: (07/24/11): Captain America opens with $65m, Friends With Benefits opens to $19m, Harry Potter 7.2 drops 72% but dominates worldwide..

Captain America: The First Avenger (review) debuted at number one this weekend, earning a rock-solid $65.1 million.  The opening puts it just behind Thor ($65.7 million) for the second-biggest superhero debut of the year.  The film scored an A- from Cinemascore and had an okay 2.52x weekend multiplier.  It played 64% male and 57% over-25 (I don't have 3D stats yet).  I had hopes for a higher opening weekend after the $4 million midnight debut (bigger than any non-sequel this year), but in the end it played like every other super hero film this year.  On a personal note, I'm a little disappointed that the film didn't play better to women, as Hayley Atwell's Peggy Carter ranks as one of the best female lead/love interest characters in comic book movie history (IE - she's an authoritative ass-kicker whose general bad ass-ness is taken completely for granted and whose eventual romance with Steve Rogers actually has emotional weight).  Still the large over-25 percentage implies that the film is playing well to older audiences who were drawn in more by the period and the older actors (Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci, etc) than the comic book genre or character popularity.  Still those older audiences are being heavily targeted by Universal's campaign for Cowboys and Aliens (also based on a comic book, albeit a relatively cult one), which hopes to lasso non-geeks with the James Bond (Daniel Craig) teams with Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) gimmick.  Barring unexpected collapse, it should go toe-to-toe with Thor, which just crossed $180 million this weekend.  Overseas numbers are a bigger question (the movie doesn't expand much internationally for a couple weeks), as Paramount is emphasizing the international nature of Captain America's 'Howling Commandos' as well as the fact that the primary threat isn't nation-specific (IE - Red Skull is too crazy even for the Nazis!).  But for now, this is a dynamite debut for one of the summer's biggest question marks, fitting for a movie that turned out to be far better than most were expecting (and if you're that idiot who wants to assign the movie to a specific ideology, READ THIS first).  

Cheap but funny: Ben Churchill mashes up No Strings Attached, Friends With Benefits into a single trailer.

This may be cheap (I'm sure you can do this with any number of movies that happen to have a similar premise), but the result is a genuine hoot.  No Strings Attached was relatively okay, a C+ picture that merits a DVD rental and at least tried to have something worthwhile on its mind.  Here's hoping the seemingly bawdier Friends With Benefits at least reaches those heights.  The latter comes out July 22nd.

Scott Mendelson

Weekend Box Office (06/26/11): Cars 2 soars, Bad Teacher sets Diaz record, Green Lantern collapses.

To the surprise of no one, a Pixar picture topped the box office in its debut weekend, making it 12/12 since 1995.  Cars 2 (or as I like to call it: "Finally, a Pixar movie that won't make you violently sob in front of your children!") weathered some surprisingly savage reviews to still debut with $66.1 million over the weekend.  The opening is the fifth biggest in the studio's history, behind the $68.1 million debut of Up (it's at $109 million worldwide thus far).  The film had a low (for animation) 2.64x weekend multiplier (it opened with $25 million on Friday), but that means little more than that it was a sequel with a certain 'want-to-see' factor.  Heck, Toy Story 3 had a 2.6x weekend multiplier last year, causing me to (needlessly) wonder if the film was going to end up front-loaded overall.  Regardless, there has never been a Pixar movie to end up with less than 3.5x its opening weekend (Wall-E: $63m opening/$223m total).  So even if the critically trashed and more-or-less kid-targeted Cars 2 somehow sinks to a 'new low' of just 3.3x this weekend's number, it still ends up with $218 million.  If it merely does the 3.77x weekend-to-final number of Toy Story 3 ($110m/$415m), Cars 2 ends up with $249 million.

Bad Teacher gets a red-band trailer.

Cameron Diaz has always an obvious urge to play around in the R-rated comedy sandbox. The Sweetest Thing may not be a great movie, but it's a game attempt at fashioning a fem-driven comedy that was just as filthy and profane as the typical male road-trip farce. So it's good to see her returning to the raunch pool yet again. Director Jake Kasdan has an unfortunate habit of making fine films (Walk Hard, Zero Effect, The TV Set) that absolutely no one sees, so hopefully this could have his shot at mainstream exposure. As for the film itself, it looks pleasantly amusing, with the always winning conceit of a foul and relatively horrible adult being put in charge of kids. I'm sure the film will get some flack over Diaz's profane and generally unpleasant (and her desire to find a man to take care of her), but it's a little refreshing to see a mainstream comedy where the men are mainly saintly pieces of background scenery while the women get to be center-stage assholes. If this and Bridesmaids both become solid hits, we could (hopefully) see a more consistent output of female-driven comedies. And more importantly, they will be prevalent enough where we won't have to analyze every one of them within an inch of their lives in regards to their gender politics. Bad Teacher comes out June 24th. As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson