It was an up weekend at the box office. The top twelve films at the box office raked in $124 million – up about $20 million from prior year. The good news is that the money went to the right people. Juno, Legend, and Atonement all cracked the top ten, plus Alvin fell to 4th and AvP: R got destroyed. All in all, I’d say it was a pleasant weekend.
#1 movie predicted correctly: 8 Week In A Row
It stands at $231m worldwide which means you can look for National Treasure III: The One About the Aliens come 2010.
Result: 20.2 million (My rank: #1, $2.9m off)
2. I Am Legend
In more happy news this topped $350m this weekend and Matheson signed the rights over for a sequel. Sure, why not? As long as they are going to ignore the source material once, why not make up some random nastiness for a sequel?
Result: 16.3 million (My rank: #2, $2.2m off)
3. Juno
There has been plenty of bickering re: Juno this past week and make no mistake, the film is overrated. However, I’m happy it’s making decent coin because you’d still rather see 100 of these than most of the terrible movies that come down the pike.
Result: 16.2 million (My rank: #4, $4.8m off)
This had the deepest drop in the top ten… odd because there weren’t any new kid’s movies out. Why did people turn on it this week? As usual, it’s a damn mystery.
Result: 16.0 million (My rank: #2, $1.2m off)
I wonder, do they consider this a success? It was the only wide opening this weekend and they didn’t have any marketing dollars behind it. But fifth place is fifth place I think. It’s not like you can come out with commercials heralding how great you did off of fifth place.
Result: 13.5 million (My rank: #7, $7.3m off)
Back on track! No, only kidding, this correct placement was clearly just happenstance.
Result: 8.1 million (My rank: #6, $1.4m off)
When is the last solid romantic comedy you saw? It feels like it’s been forever.
Result: 8.0 million (My rank: #5, $.3m off)
They didn’t hire any name actors (no, Brian Cox isn’t a name) but the CGI must have cost a few bucks. As the movie stands at 32.3m worldwide it looks they still have a ton of work to do before a profit is turned.
Result: 6.3 million (My rank: #8, $1.2m off)
This was the bloodiest musical ever. Though, by the marketing, you wouldn’t have known that. Budget was $50m, they’ve banked around $20m in profit which means there better be one hell of a special edition DVD coming out at some point.
Result: 5.4 million (My rank: #9, $0.4m off)
10. Atonement
Nice. In Thursday’s column I mentioned my hopes that it would jump up and grab the tenth spot and it did. See you later Avp: R, you won’t be missed.
Result: 5.1 million (My rank: Not Ranked)
