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SUNDAY AM: North American numbers show this weekend at the box office was a dogfight. Disney’s Beverly Hills Chihuahua made it No. 1 two weeks in a row by beating all four opening movies. It ended the weekend with an estimated $17.5M thanks to Friday’s $4.5 million haul and Saturday’s $7.6 million from crowded kiddie matinees and adults unaccompanied by children, and Sunday’s projected $5.4 million in 3,215 theaters. With a -40% hold from a week ago, the four-quadrant family fare’s new cume is now $53M, showing that moviegoers sure love those yappy rat dogs.
But the surprise No. 2 movie was Screen Gems/Sony’s low-cost horror flick Quarantine which scared up $5.4 million Friday and $5.5 million Saturday from 2,461 theaters for a $14.2M weekend gross. And the studio brought in the pic for just $12M. Sony also kept the marketing costs downs: it told me it limited the terrifying TV ads to only 15-second spots: “Not only does it save money,” one insider told me, “but people can’t take much more.” The opening weekend demographics showed 52%/48% male and female, and 41%/59% under 21 years old and over 21.
Now for the real news: Hollywood was talking about Warner Bros’ disastrous debut of its war-on-terror spy thriller Body of Lies. True, competitors sensed weak pre-weekend wannasee — but no one expected the pic to underperform this badly. “Maybe it should be retitled Body Bags?” one rival studio exec emailed me Saturday night. That’s because its FSS total is only $13.1 million, not the $20M that the studio expected, after taking in just $4.4 million Friday and $5.2 million Saturday from 2,710 dates. Which is bad news for the studio that didn’t have a financial partner on the film. “Warner’s Body Of Lies now rivals Warner’s Speed Racer for the crown of biggest trainwrecks of the year,” one mogul gloated. “This is their second $100+ budget film to open under $20 million.” How humiliating that Oscar-touted talent like Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe (who gained 50 pounds for the role) and Ridley Scott were dogged at the box office and wound up only #3. Even though Warner Bros had been spending big marketing money since late August/early September trying to make Body Of Lies into an event movie. “You could smell their desperation,” one studio marketing rival emailed me. But audiences ran the other way, which is what happens when the script, though based on a book, doesn’t measure up.
Two holdovers hung on. The 4th place DreamWorks/Paramount’s Eagle Eye starring Shia LeBoeuf made $3.2 million Friday and $4.7 million Saturday from 3,614 theaters for an $11M weekend and fresh $70.5M cume. And 5th place Sony’s Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist took in $2.2 million Friday and $2.7 million Saturday from 2,421 runs for a $6.5M weekend and new cume of $20.8M.
Universal’s football tear-jerker The Express, a biopic about the first Afro-American Heisman Trophy winner Ernie Davis, opened only No. 6 with $1.5 million Friday and $1. million Saturday from 2,808 theaters for what was a very disappointing $4.7M weekend. The studio screened it for three months to “genuine thunderous applause,” a source told me — showing once again that test screenings are meaningless. But its gross was only 2/3′s what Uni hoped it would earn. It remains to be seen if the pic has legs.
Warner Bros’ mature romance Nights in Rodanthe came in #7 with an FSS of $4.6 million and fresh $32.3M cume. In 8th place, Warner Bros’ Appaloosa took in $3.3 million from 1,290 plays for a new cume of $20.8M. Also The Duchess from Paramount Vantage starring Keira Knightley finished its 4th weekend in 9th place with $3.3 million and a new cume of $5.6M.
Finally, Fox Walden’s costly newcomer City Of Ember starring Bill Murray and distributed by 20th did so poorly — $970K Friday and $1.2 million Saturday from 2,022 runs for only a $3.2M weekend — that it only placed #10. This was supposed to start a new family film franchise based on a children’s book. But instead Fox Walden had a meltdown after fully financing and producing this bomb.
In other movies of interest, a low-cost holdover, Provident/Samual Goldwyn’s faith-based firefighter saga Fireproof, finished its 3rd weekend with $3 million and a new cume of $16.7M for 11th place.
Also, for the 2nd straight week, Bill Maher’s liberal spoof Religulous from Lionsgate thrashed David Zucker’s conservative satire An American Carol from Vivendi Entertainment even though the Maher movie was playing in just a 1/3 as many theaters as Zucker’s pic (568 vs 1,621). The final numbers were $2.2M to $1.5M.
Overall, the weekend total was right at $105M, which is up 5.76% from last year’s $99.2M. With a hefty Columbus Day Monday still to come, the theatrical box office appears not only recession-proof but depression-proof.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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The fact of the matter is that Body of Lies is not that good of a film. With the caliber of people involved, I was expecting an 8 and got a 6.5 instead. It’s disappointing, the reviews have been terrible, so people have stayed away. I don’t understand why Hollywood keeps cranking out War on Terror films when they repeatedly tank at the box office.
Story is King. This town is not interested in good screenplays. How many new writers with thoughtful, well-crafted scripts have been discovered in the past year? Zero. It’s not that they’re not being written, it’s that the barrier to entry is ridiculous. The next great screenwriter is not taking classes at USC, he or she is working the graveyard shift somewhere in Missouri. Good screenplays turn into good movies which result in profits. Find writers with voices.
Americans are tired of Hollywood bashing this country, that’s why movies like “Body of Lies” bombed.
Leonardo Dicaprio is hugely overrated. As an actor, he has virtually zero credibility in any role. Were it not for being a teen hearthrob in Titanic and possibly Gilbert Grape, he has done little to bring anything to the table since.
Another irrelevant self-important Hollywood never-been.
I’m not going to see “Body of Lies” because I’ve had enough of liberal Hollywood’s Iraq propaganda films. I suspect that many others feel the same way.
The Age of Hollywood is dead. There are no movies, there are no directors, there are no stars. I cannot even recall the last good movie I have seen. The last good movie “fragment” I saw was the last 25 minutes of Deathproof. Beyond that, there is nothing other than left wing political movies and remakes of Asian films. Hollywood is void of creativity. They are deranged and unhinged. I am no longer interested in anything that they do.
Hollywood, and especially vocal people like Decaprio, have made going to the movies more about the political agenda in “showbiz” than the movies themselves…IOW they are now not just actors in a role, they are politics.
The smartest thing that old Hollywood did was keep their politics to themselves. I’m just fed up with people spouting off who have no business telling the world what to think — nor the media that allows it to be dissimilated.
I, for one, will NOT pay a nickel to support these people and hope they all end up having to work for a living, without an audience to spew to.
Half of them are barely able to run their own lives.
DiCaprio may be a good actor but he’s not good enough to make me go to the box office on his account.
United Artists was right not to go ahead with Oliver Stone’s Pinkville. In this current climate, audiences just don’t want to see movies about war and its aftereffects. Has there been one Iraq movie that has turned a profit at the box office?
I go to the movies at least once or twice a week, and had never heard of City of Ember, until it was listed at the theater.
Holly wood sucks. All crap. Go see American Carol, at least there are some laughs.
This Movie?.. No. No DiCaprio for me..
Crowe?.. Yes. Very good acting track record.
DiCaprio?.. No. He’s a Politician. Not an Actor.
Leonardo DiCaprio is an okay actor. Not great. His personality onscreen strikes me as secondhand, New York-Strasberg school acting. I don’t know, some of the film “stars” (lord…does that feel odd to type in these days of real heroes and real villians saving real lives/ causing real devastation) from the 90′s, trying to prolong their careers with “serious” roles, only a select few of them manage to make you remember the performance you saw. “The Aviator” for me was the one role where I felt the adult DiCaprio approached something like great acting.
Besides this, “This Boys Life” is still for me, the only role where a then, very young, and relatively unknown, Dicaprio, really acted. I suppose there are various reasons for this.
Leo Decapprio is an awful actor, Tim.
My humble opinion
People are sick of Hollywood ‘stars’ using their fame to dictate their politics.
Hollywood and films are supposed to take us away from reality and be entertained, not preached to.
When they start sticking to what they are being paid to do instead of using their fame as a soap box to dictate, they lose an audience.
Stupid Hollywood does not get it. “Body of Lies” is a waste of time and money and political sewage from socialistic American hating ‘bollywood” level movie actors and directors. Most of the garbage being generated in ‘holly-bollywood’ is not worth paying to see and this is one of those stinkers for sure.
Glad they are flopping and failing. Real entertainment is hard to find and this poor movie is a 4 star stinker that needs to hit the tank and be flushed quickly.
Oh course Decapprio movie opened down. What don’t you get? We are sick of these Hollyweirdoes and their elite socialist agenda and political views.
The vast majority of these radical left “actors” can go F themselves.
Actually, I think a part of the problem is that a larger part of the viewing public that would have in the past gone and seen a film like Body of Lies and other high billed dramas would simply rather stay at home and wait for DVD. I go to the movies maybe 2-3 times a year at most now, and it has to be a huge movie event. Just about everything else, Oscar contenders included, I simply wait. Theater costs are too high, seats too uncomfortable, inconvenient.
Well, I went to see appaloosa yesterday and loved it. Body of lies looks like another Hollywood lefty revisionist history piece of trash so I will skip that one. Even though I do like Russ Crowe. I saw the trailer to W, looks to be a sort of SNL comedy. I did not know that Stone made those kinds of comedies. Looks like another movie I will skip.
DiCaprio, what a putz! Maybe when he learns to keep his mouth shut & just make movies will people come out & pay. He has fallen in line with all of the other tree huggin/global warming left wing hollywood actors.
This is what happens when actors like Dicaprio mouth off and show their left wing liberal side. We don’t want to hear their BS and far left views. This turns the people off and I don’t go to movies anymore to support anti-American actors. Look at Sean Pean,the last movie he made was a total flop, the movie where he played Huey Long two or three years ago. His movie making career is done. Look at Tim Robbins, and George Clooney, their last movies flopped too. Poetic justice.
The people commenting on “Body of Lies” obviously have yet to see the film. I went to an early screening, and based on the previews expected to see another anti-Iraq war piece. I was wrong. The film is set in Jordan and is about covert ops against an al Qaeda cell. The film posits a great question: How does an intelligence agency that relies heavily on technology track down a group that doesn’t use it? More importantly, who can you trust? The lines between good and evil are never blurred, we know al Qaeda are the bad guys. It’s a matter of trust between the CIA operatives themselves, and Jordanian intelligence which gives the movie its dynamic. If you think it’s another piece of liberal hollywood propaganda, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. You can’t judge the film on it’s title (or it’s trailer for that matter).
I agree with Emily. When actors start acting like politicians they lose their audience.
They should stick to acting and not mouthing off.
Make a film that shows the truth about American soldiers, that they are good idealistic people, and you will make money. Unfortunately the lies Hollywood likes to tell still sell very well overseas, and damage the image of the US badly, but what actor ever gave a damn about that? I simply refuse to pay to see Hollywood’s products.
Don’t count Quarantine, out just yet. The promo’s looked interesting. And it’s October time, which means horror flicks usually get a boost. So anything is possible…
The problem with Body of Lies, is that it looks boring from the previews. I wasn’t interested in seeing it, I don’t do war movies, never have never will. Most people want to get lost in their movies, forget reality for a while. Body of Lies, isn’t gonna do that for them. Especially with the way things are going in the economy.
Leonardo DiCaprio- Is an okay actor, nothing great about him. He can carry the right film, but he really is no Matt Damon (who I believe has come a long way)
There are very few real “Stars” left in Hollywood, ones that can really act and make you go wow. Especially those on TV right now, they just normally read from the lines, and you never get a feel for the characters.
Which is why I like Supernatural, Jensen Ackles is one of the most underrated actors on TV. He makes you feel for the character Dean Winchester, he makes you laugh, cry and just go wow. He speaks without speaking, his facial expressions says it all. (Now that is an actor)