Weekend Box Office (09/18/11): What the massive opening of The Lion King 3D really means for 3D and the popularity of the theatrical experience.

In a slightly shocking result that has several notable meanings, Disney's 3D-converted re-release of The Lion King (essay) cruised into the number one spot over the weekend with a mighty $30.1 million.  Acting as both a two-week advertisement for the October 4th Blu Ray release and a test run for possibly reviving the old 'out of the vault and back into theaters' strategy of old, the film didn't just top the box office but very nearly set a record for the Mouse House.  In the realm of Disney cartoons that are NOT Pixar releases, The Lion King 3D is actually fifth on the opening weekend list, behind Tarzan ($34 million), Chicken Little ($40 million), The Lion King ($40.8 million), and Tangled ($48 million).  It is the fifth-biggest September opening in history and came within $600,000 of besting the $30.7 million domestic gross of Disney's Toy Story/Toy Story 2 double-feature 3D re-release October, 2009.  That re-release, which was both an advertisement for the Toy Story/Toy Story 2 Blu Ray releases as well as the upcoming Toy Story 3, opened with $12.4 million despite Disney offering two shows for the price of one (IE - half the show times in a given day).  So simply taking the Toy Story 3D opening weekend and doubling it gives you around $25 million, meaning that this weekend's result was not quite as unexpected as its being reported.

Weekend Box Office (09/11/11): Contagion easily tops, Warrior tragically fumbles, Creature hilariously tanks.

It was good news/bad news at the box office this weekend.  Two critically-acclaimed adult entries squared off and only only came out shining.  The winner for the weekend was Steven Soderbergh's Contagion (review), grossing $22.4 million from 3,222 screens.  The all-star pandemic thriller fits squarely into the realm of Soderbergh's 'commercial ventures'.  With the exception of Erin Brockovich (which was a Julia Roberts vehicle), Soderbergh alternates between artier and sometimes experimental fare of varying quality (Bubble, The Limey, King of the Hill - good!  The Girlfriend Experience, The Good German, Full Frontal - bad!) and all-star genre entries that are inherently populist and commercial even with their occasional artier sensibilities (Ocean's 11, Traffic, Out of Sight, etc).  But even his commercial ventures are generally aimed at adults with adult sensibilities, so the solid opening weekend is to be celebrated.  The well-reviewed film played mostly to the over-25 set, which means it has a chance at solid legs as the younger kids check it out over the next month. It earned a B- from Cinemascore, which is probably owed to the fact that it's genuinely unnerving in its plausibility (audiences claim to love horror but don't like to be actually disturbed or frightened) and artier than its trailer lets on. I haven't seen it yet as my son had a contagious infection over the weekend.  We considered taking him on Friday afternoon and hoping he would cough in all the right places for maximum comedy, but we thought better of it (we saw it Sunday evening instead).

Weekend Box Office (09/04/11): Adult films trash the cheap exploitation fare and dominate Labor Day weekend, as The Help and The Debt defeat Shark Night and Apollo 18.

Summer must be over, as grownups as seemingly returning to the marketplace.  In what was always going to be a light moviegoing holiday weekend, the low-key adult thriller (on 1,826 screens) defeated the more heavily advertised and wider-playing genre entries.  First of all, The Help once again topped the box office for the third weekend in a row ($19 million for its four-day holiday weekend, with a $14.6 million Fri-Sun total, actually rising 0.5% from last weekend).  I'm not sure what the record is for the most consecutive weekends at number one for a movie that did not debut in first place, but the crowd-pleasing period drama has to be high on the would-be list.  With $123 million in a month, the film now sits as the eighth-highest grossing drama of all-time released in the summer, a list that becomes even shorter when you discount war-themed action pictures (Saving Private Ryan, Pearl Harbor, Gladiator).  It is still outpacing Bridesmaids by a significant margin ($106 million after four weekends) and could very well flirt with $180 million if it can hold onto screens and fend off adult-skewing pictures (Warrior, Contagion, Moneyball) in the next month.

Review: Warrior (2011) takes well-worn sports-film tropes, adds engrossing drama, fine acting, terrific dialogue, and an uncommon intelligence.

Warrior
2011
139 minutes
rated PG-13

I cannot count how many times I have watched a sports-related drama and thought to myself "How much better would this movie be if the main opponent wasn't a two-dimensional villain?".  Whether adult-aimed Oscar bait (Cinderella Man) or family-friendly faith-based dramas (Soul Surfer), any number of underdog sports movies have dramatically shot themselves in the foot by feeling the need to make the opponent into a vicious, selfish, and occasionally murderous antagonist who 'must be taken down'.  There are exceptions (Akeelah and the Bee, Miracle), but the majority of sports films feel the need to pander to the audiences' baser instincts by not just making the big game about the triumph of our hero, but about the defeat of a genuine villain.  Writer/director Gavin O'Conner (who directed the aforementioned Miracle) finds a neat way out of this contrived set-up, and I'm a little shocked that no one thought of it before.  Instead of focusing on one underdog who must triumph in an athletic event, Warrior focuses on two would-be athletic opponents, giving them both equally valid reasons to want to succeed and refusing to give either of them the moral advantage.  This is just one of a handful of thoughtful choices that O'Conner makes in shaping Warrior into a top-notch entry in its respective genre and an all-around fine character drama.