Nov 16th 2009Box Office Results

Box Office Analysis Week 46

Audiences pay to see world end!

Looks like audiences were ready to see the world get mashed up by director Roland Emmerich again, as 2012 blasted into the top spot with $65M in its first three days of release alone. The film managed to make $225M worldwide in that same period, and had the 2nd highest opening for a “disaster movie” since Emmerich’s own THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW opened with $69M back in 2004 (see the full list of top “disaster movie” openings HERE — to note, Emmerich directed 4 of the top 5).

Last week’s #1 movie, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, also held up quite well this weekend, losing only 25% of its audience from last weekend, and crossing the $60M after only 10 days of release. Looks like this flick will ape Zemeckis’ previous mo-cap style X-Mas flick, THE POLAR EXPRESS and spread the love throughout the holiday season. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY also continued its storied success as it broke through the $100M mark.

But once again the big story of the weekend came from a smaller flick entitled PRECIOUS (I REFUSE TO ADD THE FILM’S STUPID SUBTITLE MENTIONING THE BOOK AND ITS AUTHOR). The film opened with a stupendous $100,000 per theater average last weekend, but couldn’t crack the top 10 because it was released in only 18 theaters. This weekend, the studio jacked that total up to 174 theaters (still an extremely low figure), and the film rose into the top 10 and a 4th place finish — with a still-impressive $35,000 per theater average (2012 had an average of $19,000 per theater).

Michael Jackson’s THIS IS IT finally seems to be losing some steam, dropping into 5th place after three weeks of release (although it managed to become the all-time top-grossing music documentary, passing the $65.3 million made by the MILEY CYRUS concert movie last year), while THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS managed to hold on to its 3rd place spot from last week, while adding another $6M to its total (the film has already made its budget back). The one other new release of the week, PIRATE RADIO, managed to scrape up about $3M and an 11th place finish.

The two films to drop out of the top 10 this week include WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE ($73M) and ASTRO BOY ($18M). Oh, BOONDOCK SAINTS 2 also managed to jump from 21st to 14th place this week, as the film added another 146 theaters to its theater count (now 251 theaters in all). The film has grossed close to $3M in three weeks of limited release.

…Download Australian & US Results Here