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Full 2012-2013 TV Season Series Rankings 
SATURDAY PM/SUNDAY AM UPDATE: Oh, the glory of being the only new movie in the multiplex, even if it’s an unfunny laugher. Universal’s Couples Retreat opened to $12.3M Friday and +10% for $13.5M Saturday from 3,000 North American theaters for a $35.3M weekend. Wow, Vince Vaughn’s latest piece of dreck will make geniuses out of Universal’s newly installed chairpeople. “Reason? Movies always do business after the studio heads get fired,” one studio exec emailed me tonight. [Universal Pictures chairmen Marc Shmuger and David Linde were replaced by Adam Fogelson and Donna Langley this week.] Couples Retreat is a PG-13 “comedy” but I use that term loosely since even the studio thought it worse than mediocre. But that’s what happens when Vaughn cuts loose to star in, co-write, and produce a dumb idea that was an excuse to film in Bora Bora with pal Peter Billingsley as first-time director and other pal Jon Favreau as fellow writer and actor. Yet the pic did even better than Universal or its rivals thought possible. With only a “B” CinemaScore, it’s leading in interest and first choice among females over 25, followed by males over 25, and then females under 25. (They really like Vince’s about-to-be-40 bloat?)
But the real story this weekend is one I told you about last Sunday. (See my ‘Paranormal Activity’ Gets Freakishly Good Gross Playing Only After Midnight.) Remember The Blair Witch Project? Even rival studios are salivating over the box office potential of the Paramount pickup Paranormal Activity, which opened September 25th playing only midnight shows. But it did so well that Paramount expanded Friday, and the pic rewarded that confidence with a per screen average Friday of $15,875. That gives it $2.5M on Friday and $2.6M Saturday from a paltry 159 locations, or $7M for the weekend! “it’s pretty amazing,” a paramount exec tells me. “We assumed the film would perform like most genre movies and fall Friday to Saturday. Instead the movie looks like it will do more.” It’s now officially a pre-Halloween phenomenon. “Look out cuz there’s a freight train coming, and Paramount is going to make a TON of cash on this pickup. Cuz they ain’t spending anything on it, and who knows where the ceiling is!” one rival studio exec gushed to me. I’m told this #5 pic could make the most gross of any non-3D film on less than 200 screens. Limited releases not adjusted for inflation or ticket prices were 1986′s Platoon $3.7M on 174 screens, 2000′s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon $3.4M on 172 screens, and 2007′s No Country For Old Men $3.1M on 148 screens.
As for the rest of the Top 10, nothing but holdovers on a fall weekend oddly missing new titles. It’ll definitely be a $100+M weekend up, +8% from last year:
1. Couples Retreat (Universal) NEW [3,000] $12.3M Fri, $13.5M Sat, Wkd $35.3M
2. Zombieland (Sony) Week 2 [3,038] Wkd $15M, Cume $47.8M
3. Meatballs (Sony) Week 3 [2,992] Wkd $12M, Cume $96.2M
4. Toy Story 3D (Disney) Week 2 [1,752] Wkd $7.6M, Cume $22.6M
5. Paranormal Activity (Paramount) Week 3 [159] Wkd $7M, Cume $8.2M
6. Surrogates (Disney) Week 3 [2,992] Wkd $4.1M, Cume $32.5M
7. Invention Of Lying (Warner Bros) Week 2 [1,743] Wkd $3.3M, Cume 12.3M
8. Whip It (Fox Searchlight) Week 2 [1,738] Wkd $2.8M, Cume $8.7M
9. Capitalism: A Love Story (Overture) Week 3 [995] Wkd $2.7M, Cume $9M
10. Fame (MGM) Week 3 [3,110] Wkd $2.5M, Cume 20M
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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$28M weekend for “Couples Retreat”??
In the words of South Park’s Eric Cartman:
“Well, I’m out guys. If this is what’s cool now, I no longer have any connection to this world. I’m going to go home and kill myself. Goodbye friends”
I will second that with a “screw you guys. I’m going home”.
…You didn’t see the movie. It’s MILES BETTER than that AWFUL trailer.
The trailer was so bad I figured it would suck. My sis talked me into it, movie was good fun.
I would never see “Couples Retreat” but “Zombieland” was totally fun. Much, much better than I expected.
YES! A comedy wins! It may not be a great movie, but it’s fun. And we need fun now. Enough with crappy dramas that are poorly written with stupid premises. What’s up with all the hating on this movie? We all want comedies about real people, but nobody’s making them. You know what? Paul Blart made a lot of money because it made people laugh. I hope this does just as well.
Right on!~
goodforthem, people who are legit fans of good cinema don’t like low brow mindless films like couples retreat. Movies like that are poorly written, directed and acted. They prefer movies that are actually good. Zombieland is an example of a movie that is both funny and yet well made.
we not laffin with you…we laffin at you…
Intereseting results this weekend, but I knew CR would do well even with those awful reviews. TUT also got abysmal reviews, but stil did close to 30mill opening weekend and 90mill domestic. I expect the same kind of legs for this one, but the response looks to be alot harsher than the one for TUT. Also I’m glad to see Zombieland is still holding up well and PA is constantly climbing up the charts, but will it make 100M domestic should still be the question on everyone’s mind. Hell I’m rooting for both movies becuase it’s awesome to see two orginal horror flicks being successful instead of those efffing Saw movies.
SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! I was at the midnight screening at the Arclight Hollywood for PARANORMAL. The midnight screening sold out so they added a 12:15 and a 12:30, if I’m not mistaken. Each show sold out.
I saw the movie, and I have this to say: Paramount needs to enjoy it now, because this movie will not live to see next weekend’s sunrise.
The movie is so astonishingly bad, it can only be compared to a very boring, very unremarkable, very LONG YouTube video. You know those self-indulgent ones that people make, and expect you to waste 30 mins of your time watching them saying obvious (but apparently meant to be clever) things and walking around the house, shaky camera in tow, just to show you something you’ve seen a trillion times before.
And that’s.. pretty much the nicest thing that can be said about it (the other being that that actress carried the entire movie, until that I-can’t-believe-they-made-her-do-that ending).
I saw it in a sold-out theater, everyone of us psyched to see it and ready to piss our pants in fear and could go on and on about it the following morning at work.
No such thing. People would sort of choke out a laugh, then it would kind of die off when obviously nothing was going to come out of the scene. Repetitious, toneless, arc-less, truly astonishingly stale, stale, stale. And with an embarrassingly lame ending.
I just– I was absolutely speechless, much like the rest of the audience trickling out, at how much there was no payoff to speak of, and then we were leaving because the movie was over.
Let me tell you, were this movie straight-to-DVD, it wouldn’t remain on Blockbuster’s shelf. The store would have to toss it out because it just doesn’t qualify as a piece of filmed entertainment, and they’d simply need the shelf space.
I’m going to stake my completely unknown reputation on predicting that this movie will die a box office death so fast the industry might be scrambling to coin a phrase out of its title a week from now.
If it does gangbusters, I might be the one to die of shock.
Hype is hype, but in a post-Blair Witch and viral video world, this movie is 100% pure undiluted hype. And nothing more. Good luck to you, Oren Peli.
Yeah, but no one wants to report how bad Paranormal Activity is. It’s like what’s left of the entertainment press want to be part of selling the hype so they can brag about how they helped it out.
The first weekend Paramount doubled the gross on their estimates and no one said word one. But not to worry their will be payback for this – the next 10 films they try this with won’t get their print costs back.
I saw Paranormal Activity at a friend’s house a few months ago, not knowing anything about it and we we are really into the movie. It was very scary and the silence and home made feel of it really worked for us.
That said, I can see how he hype of this thing, and the experience of seeing it with hundreds of other people rather than with a handful, might create the reaction it did with Ella here.
I think if you can see it in the spirit it was intended, it is an effective movie. And more than anything, I am glad it shows Hollywood that people do want something new. I don’t remember a single transforming robot in the whole movie and that alone was refreshing.
how did you go to the midnight show, hate the movie, and the post at 12:23am?
Must have been the sped up version, right?
I went to the movie for the Thurs midnight showing, technically Friday, Oct. 9 at 12:01am. I posted the review THE FOLLOWING DAY, on Saturday Oct. 10th.
What really sucks about internet posting is being exposed to, and then having to do the thinking for idiots like you.
Sounds like an incognito Saw VI producer who’s trying to undermine the escalating buzz for something that could feasibly rule the Halloween weekend after reaching the height of its expansion.
I kind of find it hard to believe that everyone else in the auditorium was on your jaded wavelength of resistance. I think the disdain for the film that you seemed to have formulated well before seeing it clouded your memory recollection and led you to attest that it was hated in unison by all. I’m sure when you see movies you decide beforehand that you’re going to like, you come on here or in your dumb blog and provide testimony about how everyone in attendance gave it a standing ovation.
Not at all, to all your assumptions about me. I paid for and went to a midnight showing. I had work the following morning like everyone else, but I’m a rabid genre fan and would have paid for a 3am showing if that was all there was.
I will never hesitate to say if a movie was bad, and it was just a very bad movie. No preconceived notions going in. I hadn’t even seen a trailer, I wanted to be so surprised.
I decided beforehand I would probably like Public Enemies, and I loved it. No one else did, and in fact the audience seemed quite bored by it. No standing ovations. It tanked.
See? No jadedness, no wavelengths of resistance.
PARANORMAL was horrible, lame… my applause goes to the marketing genius behind this project. Rumor has it that Steven Spielberg sent it back in a trash bag…. marketing didn’t explain that he probably thought this was trash…. And I agree!!!
Prepare to die of shock then. The movie does more with it’s $15,000 budget than any major horror release I can remember of late, with well over 100 times the budget. It has a 92% rating among top critics on RottenTomatoes and the theater I was at last night was completely into it. People were screaming, jumping and left laughing at how scared they were. A total throwback to suspence created out of what you don’t see, letting your imagination do the work. I think it was well done, considering what it is, and will continue to do very well.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the movie that will finally topple the ‘Saw’ franchise: Paranormal Activity.
Hmmm…
Couples Retreat is a dogshit movie, and makes 28 million… maybe Uni marketing knows what they’re doing after all.
Yes. Couples Retreat blows. It blows major chunks.
But…if we take a closer look at recent Vince Vaughn movies versus tracking, the films tend to outperform (ignoring Fred Claus of course). Tracking totally underestimated The Break-Up, and no one expected Four Christmases to do what it did. So let’s just acknowledge the cold hard fact: middle America digs Vince Vaughn. It’s time to stop being a comedy snob about this guy. He’s basically a Midwestern Adam Sandler. If only he would let his ego get out of the way and make a good movie, he could have an amazing career; he’s actually a good actor, especially in films that he’s not hijacking by dint of being the writer and producer. He’s losing his mojo.
“Reason? Movies always do business after the studio heads get fired,”
Disagree. “Surrogates” bombed after Dick Cook was fired.
Couples Retreat definitely outperformed Funny People at my theater on Friday. $30 million is definitely not out of the question.
But when is Paranormal Activity going to get to NH? We already have I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell; why can’t we get something people actually want to see?
What’s the problem with Vince Vaughn? Not a member of the tribe like Jeremy “the Hack” Piven? Vaughn has talent, charm, and he’s appealing to Americans, not morons from the right or left coast.
Visit your site every day but the pundits and critics got this one wrong. The reason that Couples Retreat is doing well is that it’s not a bad movie. Unless there are two Couples Retreats playing out there this weekend, the movie we saw had the audience laughing, amusing scenes and a bit of a ring of truth for the older demo in the theater. As we left we passed a huge throng waiting to get in for the next showing. People in the exiting group were smiling and remarking how much they enjoyed the flick. The movie was far from perfect but the ensemble players were interesting and capable and it was a fun escape. Most people go to movies to be entertained. If they pickup a bit of truth in the process it’s a plus. With the understanding that Upstate New York is more than a stone’s throw from LA, there is a reason that much national corporate product testing goes on here to separate future winners from future dreck. The logic being that if it flies here it will fly anywhere. Word of mouth will bode well for this flick. The mavens missed on this one but those Vaughn fans who turned out on a cold Syracuse night seeking a bit of Fantasy Island style escape didn’t. Universal, Vince, Ralphie and D-Bob got it right.
We’re forgetting that Couples’ Retreat was the ONLY wide release this weekend. Zombieland, Cloudy/Meatballs, and Toy Story have all been out since at least last weekend. And a film like Zombieland will naturally skew towards the male audience. So that leaves a rather big gap of wide release space to Couples’ Retreat.
Ella,
You sound like a former studio exec (mid 40′s) who is out of touch with the teenage / college youtube generation that thrives on these types of movies who can’t be sold via expensive marketing campaigns.
Expect $30M+ (probably way more) from this movie then a drop after Halloween. It’s funny because this is THE movie college kids want to see not a movie a studio is forcing on them. Listen to the market
Simply true.
someone gets it. kids went to this movie because of the buzz on the internet not some expensive marketing campaign
Bob,
By making blanket assumptions that people in their “mid 40′s” are “out of touch,” you sound like (and probably are) a real nozzle. Everyone is attacking Ellen for stating the truth that Paranormal Activity is pretty bad. If she is a former or current executive or she is 19, 28, or 48 doesn’t really matter does it? It is just really douchy of you to try to lump her into some group to which you have fostered some weird and false sense of superiority. No amount of manufactured or real hype can change that Paranormal Activity kind of blows. Cloudy, Zombieland, Toy Story 1&2, etc. There are much better movies out there to see. Don’t beat up Ellen for pointing that out.
Paul
Hey Bob, if this isn’t the movie “a studio is forcing on them”… WHO IS PAYING THE TAB FOR ALL THOSE TV SPOTS?
You’re so f’in naive.
I agree with the hollywood reporter re PARA ACT: “Much of “Paranormal” is as exciting as the outtakes from a particularly dull episode of “Big Brother.”
–the outtakes from a dull reality show. That’s the movie I saw.
This is a clever studio – with a FANTASTIC WEB CAMPAIGN – releasing a totally inferior product.
28 million weekend (if that, in fact, holds up, which it won’t….) doesn’t even cover Universal’s P&A spend on the picture, which is north of 40 million…
And next week it drops like a rock.
Should have never been PG-13.
-RnsW
Good to see “Paranormal Activity” did well in very limited release. Facebook and Twitter are positively buzzing about this movie. Sorry, Ella, it will do well in the weeks to come (unless hype skyrockets it to “Slumdog” territory). PA was a unique horror film because it develops; rewarding patience and punishing the “Saw”/Rob Zombie’s “Halloween” crowd. Sure it owes itself to “Blair Witch,” but this movie delivers.
At times, PA had WTF!?!? moments that I do not want to spoil. People laughed uncomfortably at parts, but not toward the final 20 minutes. Consistent intensity hung around the atmosphere. Even though a few people walked out, my sold out Denver audience of teens and twenty-somethings enjoyed it and even applauded at the end.
Finally, I saw “Zombieland” earlier this week and shockingly loved it. Surprised how quickly that dropped second weekend.
Couples Retreat had a great looking trailer and a great idea. It’s like the Apatow syndrome – these actors aren’t bright enough for improv.
I always thought Vince Vaughn should slim down to Swingers weight, put on the goggles and play DC Comics’ Plastic-Man (not the Wachowski script neither). That could be a new opportunity for this now sort of rancid frat boy
couples retreat. it’s the team that brought us swingers. and the people who loved that movie turned up for this film.
Hey, ELLA. When YOU see a movie that YOU don’t like, at least have the honesty to admit that the looooong opinion you felt compelled to share with everyone is YOURS ALONE. By all accounts (from people who were at the same show as you) your version of the audience reaction does not match what actually happened. Across the board, the film is getting glowing notices from both fans and critics alike. Clearly you have some bone to pick with this film. Try to do that without creating a tall tale.
I’m really tired of these movies where fat obnoxious older men are married or sleeping with younger hot women. Vaughn and Favreau have jumped the shark and officially become disgusting dirty old men and so not funny. (And that’s a shame because I like Favreau)
I haven’t seen the film so no opinion about that but in fairness to Favreau, his movie wife Kristin Davis, who plays Jon Favreau’s wife, is more than 1.5 years older than him. Vaughn is probably at least a decade older than Akerman but I don’t think their pairing is all that unrealistic – good pal of mine who’s a bit older than VV just got married to a woman @13 years younger than him. We’re not talking Connery with Zeta-Jones age gaps here.
I wasn’t aware of Paranormal Activity till a friend told. This movie has a buzz and strong word of mouth going.
Weird, Couples Retreat hasn’t broken into the top ten trends on Twitter ever – first Number One friday movie to not to that in a long time. Zombieland and Paranormal Activity continue to trend.
That’s hilarious!
What’s “…in a long time” for Twitter trends – eight days?
Why is it hilarious? Twitter is the most effective tool studios have ever had for tracking (and manipulating) word of mouth. And they didn’t even invent it!
so much for objectivity. vince vaugh is hilarious, he has a following, so what if the movie stinks, worse movies have had bigger opening weekends. go see something else and let vince keep making movies, go watch wedding crashers, he’ll do it again. he is hilarious!
Look, I like Vince Vaughn and I actually liked Couples Retreat, but really I think some of the credit should go to Krsten Bell. after Sarah Marshall she became a big star too.
That was my thought. I considered seeing Couples Retreat (which is not my type of movie at all), simply for her.
But there’s no way I’m seeing a movie as bad as CR sounds. Even for Ms. Bell.
This really surprises me – only because I had not heard of one person that had any desire to see it – which is usually my gage. The marketing obviously worked but a one sheet where everyone looks miserable I figured was a terribl idea. Boy was I wrong. But at the end of the day, we haven’t had a comedy in awhile, no other new wide releases and the Vince Vaughn thing…but it’s not a movie anyone will give a shit about in a month. Although less in box office, I still think comedies like Role Models, Sarah Marshall, I Love You, Man and the early Judd stuff has a much larger impact in terms of movie-going experiences – even if this shit sandwich does 100 dmestic.