Records and Milestones for the week of April 19
Posted by Ethan on Tuesday, April 20, 2010 in Box Office Updates • Weekend • (0) Comments • Permalink •
I originally wrote this article touting “How to Train Your Dragon”’s return to #1, but in the end, “Kick-Ass” won the weekend by a hair. Its $19.8M debut barely trumped “Dragon”’s $19.6M take. Only $4.4M separated the #1 film from the #5 film.
“Kick-Ass” had a solid debut, but didn’t meet the lofty expectations the industry thrust upon it this month. Like “Snakes on a Plane,” the film had tons of vocal online hype, but it couldn’t translate to the $30M debut some forecasters were predicting. They should have looked at its international performance; it’s banked a fair $2.2M from a smattering of European countries after three weeks. In the UK, it plunged 69% in its second weekend. Expect a similar drop-off on this side of the pond. Overhyped underperformer “Watchmen” plummeted 68% in week two. The bright side for Lionsgate is that it only spent between $15-25M on North American rights for the superhero film.
“How to Train Your Dragon” had a miniscule 21% decline – the smallest in the top ten for the third week running – putting its total at $158.3M. Box office prognosticators have been revising their final projections for this film ever since it opened softly, originally guessing $165M, then saying at least $200M, and now predicting $225M. It has a realistic chance of overtaking “Kung Fu Panda” as Dreamworks Animation’s highest-grossing non-“Shrek” title. With its perfect storm of strong reviews, word-of-mouth, and box office, can Dreamworks beat Pixar for the animated Oscar for the first time in nine years?
Like last weekend, the top ten only had an average drop-off of 37%. The light release schedule this month is letting films breathe. “Death at a Funeral” opened with $16.2M, identical to the debut of the last African-American homecoming ensemble “Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins.” It improved upon the per-theater average of the original “Death at a Funeral” by 34% and nearly doubled the final US gross ($8.6M). The comedy was unfazed by “Why Did I Get Married, Too?,” which, like all Tyler Perry films, plays to a very niche audience. “The Last Song” became Miley Cyrus’s third film in three years to break $50M. “Alice in Wonderland” is only $4M away from outgrossing “The Lion King” in unadjusted dollars to become Disney’s #3 film of all time. And “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” is finally putting up a fight. After a precipitous 54% second weekend tumble, the film has stabilized and dipped less than 30% these past two weeks.
In limited release news, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” continued to live up to its indie breakout status. It was up another 14%, its $4,151 per-theater average down a negligible 6%. “Tattoo”’s total sits at $3M with much more to come. “City Island” also had a wonderful fifth weekend. The film starring Andy Garcia and Juliana Marguiles shot up another 31%, and its $4,420 p.t.a. was even with last weekend. Demi Moore was not as fortunate as her new release “The Joneses” earned $509K from 193 theaters. However, that was a big improvement from her last film “Happy Tears,” which made $13K when it debuted in 15 theaters two months ago.
The foreign film Oscar winner “The Secret in Their Eyes” opened to $168K, with a p.t.a. of $16,787. That’s lower than the averages for Oscar competitors “A Prophet” and “The White Ribbon.” Finally, the highest per-theater average of the weekend went to “The City of Your Final Destination” ($24, 401 from one theater), James Ivory’s first film after the death of his partner Ismail Merchant.
-Philip Siegel