Huh. It seems as though the box office had a better weekend than projected. It was double what went down last week and $43m over last year’s comparable weekend. Essentially it was quite a time for Hollywood’s accountants. Let’s break it down!
#1 movie predicted correctly: Five Weeks In A Row
1. I Am Legend
How about that? I’m reminded of 300 in March – another movie that a huge amount of people wanted to see. Word of mouth should work out here too, so long as you haven’t read the book… which means 95% of the people in the world will be just fine with this effort.
Result: 76.5 million (My rank: #1, $36.9m off)
Holy moly. I have no idea what to do with this. No one in the world had this making over $30m, not even Jason Lee’s fan club. I can only assume that the lack of a good children’s titles in December spurred this one to great heights.
Result: 45.0 million (My rank: #2, $31.8m off)
Compass again gets smacked. The perfect storm of poor press and poor word of mouth has crushed all hope here.
Result: 9.0 million (My rank: #3, $3.4m off)
4. Enchanted
It looks as though I nailed this exactly. Bingo! How’s that feel? Good, especially given the few hundred million I was off on the top two slots.
Result: 6.0 million (My rank: #4, $0m off)
I said it would make $3.1m, it made $3.1m. Unfortunately The Perfect Holiday was a much bigger bust than even I thought it would be. Still, good to see No Country crack the top five.
Result: 3.09 million (My rank: #6, $0m off)
There really isn’t anything to say about this title. No one cares. Anywhere. So let’s just move on.
Result: 2.9 million (My rank: #5, $1.7m off)
7. Fred Claus
Number six, seven, and eight are all Christmas titles. They should have joined forces to form one giant Christmas movie. They would have made $7m this weekend with that sort of cooperation.
Result: 2.3 million (My rank: #7, $0.6m off)
I want to point out that my top eight finished in the top eight because of what’s about to happen. Also, I’m hoping to distract you from the dollar amounts.
Result: 2.3 million (My rank: #8, $0.5m off)
9. Atonement
Atonement made $15k per theater! It’s not that I’m not happy about that, I am, but I didn’t imagine a film with 117 theaters had a shot at the top ten. By comparison Fred Claus had 2750. My friend saw it and gave it a B-. I told him to leave the grading to the experts.
Result: 1.8 million (My rank: #, $m off)
10. August Rush
Good old August Rush. It just barely nipped Juno (and its $36k per theater) for the tenth slot. Hopefully when the actuals come out it will drop from the top ten. It’s a sucky movie.
Result: 1.7 million (My rank: #10, $0.3m off)
