Out this week were two quality films in Juno and Atonement. On top of that you have the big budget fantasy epic from New Line The Golden Compass, which cost the studio $180 million to make and probably close to a bajillion dollars to market. Unfortunately for New Line the headline at Fantasy Moguls doesn’t bode well for a sequel or the film itself, “GOLDEN COMPASS is a disaster w/$9M Friday & $27M 3-day.”
Yup, our very own Laremy Legel predicted the film would come in at #1 with upwards of $44 million, but it seems the film is going to fall flat and those hoping for a feature adaptation of “The Subtle Knife” or “The Amber Spyglass” are going to have to cry yourselves to sleep tonight as the fate of those two films relied on the success of this first one and $27 million opening weekend isn’t going to cut it. This only places the film about $4 million more than Eragon managed on its opening weekend and while Eragon managed a worldwide total of $249 million not a peep has been uttered about the originally anticipated sequels. Compass may do just as well overseas; we will have to wait and see if that changes anything.
Enchanted is still holding strong at #2 with an estimated $2.9 million on its way to an expected $10.5 for the weekend and Beowulf is expected to crack $75 million once the weekend is said and done.
Atonement, a movie I donated money to this weekend seeing it for a second time, is not expected to crack the top ten in its limited opening release of only 32 theaters taking in $225,000 on Friday and expected to come in around 13th place with $742,474 for the 3-day weekend. And Juno and her lowly 7 theaters has faired extremely well with $125,000 on Friday and an anticipated 3-day take of $309,904.
The only other movie worthy of talking about is the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men which pulled in just over $1 million on Friday and is expected to rake in approximately $3.6 million for the weekend and a ninth place finish.
If any of you folks are looking for an even more limited and elusive film to watch keep an eye out for The Diving Bell & the Butterfly, it is sure to be an Oscar nominee and well worth the watch, but being in only 3 theaters so far is going to hurt the chances of many of you seeing it, which is just a shame. The fact that anyone can go out and see Hitman right now and get progressively dumber throughout its 90 minute runtime as opposed to seeing The Diving Bell & the Butterfly, Juno, Atonement or No Country for Old Men is a sad state of affairs.
Stay tuned as Laremy will breakdown the complete top ten Sunday afternoon.
