Sometimes it simply pays to be a good film as Ben Affleck’s Argo has shown after opening #2 two weeks ago with $19.4 million, falling behind Paranomal Activity 4 last weekend, and is now on top this weekend with $12.3 million. Last weekend it suffered a small 15.5% drop and this weekend it’s not much worse with a drop of only 33%. The sure-fire Best Picture contender has now tallied over $60 million and with both audience and critical support it will be a hard one not to consider for the big prize come February.
In third is Warner Bros. with Cloud Atlas, a film that was going to have a hard time at the box-office given it’s heady material, six inter-connecting stories and nearly three hour running time. Budgeted at $100 million, WB picked up North American rights for $20 million and backed it with a rather hefty marketing push. They decided to only put it in 2,008 theaters this weekend, which isn’t much, and it managed a rather meager $9.4 million and a “C” CinemaScore from audiences. Unfortunately, it looks like this one will be found by most on Blu-ray and DVD, but those that did see it in theaters should be happy they had the chance.
Looking at Thursday’s predictions for the first time, Laremy shot high on Cloud Atlas by $5 million, but in the reader predictions Arthur Carlson made it hard to get any closer with his spot on $9.4 million prediction. The majority of predictions on this one seemed to be in the $12-19 million range, going as high as $23.2 million. I wonder, what number would have had the majority of the media looking at the film as a success rather than the flop most will probably be calling it?
While Paranormal Activity 4 suffered the largest week-to-week drop, falling 70% from last weekend’s #1 perch, Silent Hill: Revelation 3D is just as big of a story after bringing in $3.5 million on Friday and only ending the weekend with an $8 million finish. Yikes. The first film opened with $20 million six years ago and was looked at as a film that just barely got by thanks to international dollars, why they decided a sequel six years later was worth it I will never know.
At least they kept costs down with a $20 million budget and I have to assume international will again pick it up and most likely make it profitable once all is said and done, but it ends up being a lot of marketing effort for very little return. I don’t expect the franchise will continue unless they go the direct-to-video route, which might not be a bad idea.
Laremy shot for the moon with his predictions and bet the film would finish with $18.2 million and a #1 finish. Oops. The readers weren’t quite as confident as the RopeofSilicon Oracle, though there were a few $20+ million predictions, while folks like Austin G kept things in check with his $7.7 million prediction.
You have to go all the way down to #10 and further to find the weekend’s two other new releases, Fun Size and Chasing Mavericks.
First, Fun Size managed a whopping $4 million from 3,014 theaters and Chasing Mavericks could only manage $2.2 million from 2,002 theaters. I would say both of these films should take eyes off the Cloud Atlas performance when it comes to the “What the hell went wrong?” questions, but I’m sure the higher profile feature will steal most of the conversation.
In the predictions department, Laremy more than doubled up on both his Fun Size and Chasing Mavericks predictions, which is to say this is a weekend he’ll want to forget, though, to his credit, he wasn’t too far off on Argo. On the reader side of things, Bustray came closest on Fun Size, predicting $3.4 million while Chris Etrata nailed this Chasing Mavericks number at $2.2 million.
Next weekend sees several new releases, but among the wide releases we’ll be looking at films such as Flight, The Man with the Iron Fists and Wreck-It Ralph to be the top earners. However, only Wreck-It Ralph is getting a true wide release in 3,600 theaters while the other two are looking at approximately 1,800 theaters each so I think the #1 film is going to be quite obvious just as much as it is growing increasingly obvious the box-office can only sustain one adult driven feature at a time… right now it’s Argo while films such as Cloud Atlas and Flight will have to hope for table scraps.
You can see next weekend’s full schedule here and this weekend’s top ten directly below with theater counts, budgets and per theater averages.
