On The Road To Awards Season? Kerouac Book Finally Makes It … 
Michael Bay’s Name Pushed Paramount To Settle Injured … 
Several More New Series In Recasting Mode; Returning Ones … 
‘G.I. Joe: Retaliation’ Moving To March 2013 To … 
Directors Fortnight Says It Must “Police … 
‘Chronicle’ Helmer Josh Trank Takes On … 
Big Media Chiefs Tell Cable Operators To Speed Up ‘TV … 
Will ‘Pan Am’ Take Flight With Amazon? 
EMMYS: Showtime Launches Free Weekend Promotion Targeting … 
TOLDJA! ICM Management Buyout Complete 
RATINGS RAT RACE: ‘Dancing With The Stars’, … 
An Olympian Effort: NBCUni Plans 5,535 Hours Of Coverage … 
Netflix Exec Denies It’s Responsible For Nickelodeon … 
DESPERATE: HuffPo & Oprah Team Up Now 
Hot Trailer: ‘The Great Gatsby’ 
How Did Women Pilot Writers Fare For 2012? 
Disney Quits Snow White Film ‘Order Of The … 
Cannes Planning Surprise Screening Of Non-Fest Films; … 
Investors Unfriend Facebook As SEC Investigates IPO … 
Cash Windfalls For WME Agents, Assistants 
A&E IndieFilms Sets ‘Happy Valley,’ … 
SATURDAY PM/SUNDAY AM: Here are updated weekend box office figures from my sources. But the real story is that, for months now, Hollywood studios have been waging war behind the scenes to book North American 3D theaters for runs starting March 26th and continuing through Easter Sunday on April 4th. Yes, there are more 3D theaters than ever. But the recession slowed down the growth of 3D screens just as Hollywood picked up the pace for 3D films.
For instance, Warner Bros’ Clash Of The Titans was supposed to open this weekend in 2D. Instead, it’s opening next weekend in 3D, putting it on a collision course with Disney’s Alice in Wonderland 3D, still playing strong, and this weekend’s newcomer How To Train Your Dragon 3D from DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Paramount, and even Avatar is still in cinemas. “It’s unprecedented to have 3 wide release 3D films in 5 weeks. So everyone is fighting for their share,” one studio mogul observed to me. “It’s nasty. There’s just one too many 3D films in the marketplace,” another exec said to me. Paramount and Disney really went mano a mano for this weekend’s 3D plays, and Dragon ended up with 2,178 3D locations, including 185 IMAX theaters, or about the same number that Disney had opening Alice four weekends ago when it was only up against Avatar. That’s miraculous. In turn, Warner Bros, despite fighting hard, will end up with several hundred less 3D screens for Titans over Easter.
Here’s the Top 10 (numbers will be refined Sunday morning):
1. How To Train Your Dragon 3D (Dreamworks Animation/Paramount) NEW [4,055 Theaters]
Friday $12.2M, Saturday $17.6M, Weekend $43.3M
Even rival studios readily acknowledge that DreamWorks Animation’s Jeffrey Katzenberg had one of his best films in years coming out this weekend. “It’s exciting, adventurous, emotional,” one competitor gushed. “But it’s been tracking badly.” That’s because the pic lacked comedy, unlike DA’s previous hits Kung Fu Panda and Monsters v Aliens. (Those often annoying wisecracks written into so many DA movies are real crowd pleasers.)
So Dragon finished its opening weekend with a $16M drop from Monsters v Aliens which debuted the same time last year. This, even though both pics commanded higher 3D ticket prices, and Paramount distributed Dragon to more 3D theaters. (Dragon‘s studios kept wanting to compare the pic not to its own MvA but to Sony’s 3D Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, which opened with $30M in September also to great reviews. It’s the box office game of managing expectations.) Still, with 97% positive reviews and an “A” Cinemascore, moviegoers liked the product, which heads into 2 weeks of school holidays and should play to good multiples.
2. Alice In Wonderland 3D (Disney) Week 4 [3,384 Theaters]
Friday $4.9M, Saturday $7.4M, Weekend $17.2M, Cume $293.1M
The culprit hurting Dragon is clearly Tim Burton’s Alice since it’s still playing in 75% of its 3D theaters and still showing box office strength even after its 4th weekend in release. Its total estimated international gross to date is now $363M for a worldwide total of $656M so far.
3. Hot Tub Time Machine (MGM/UA) NEW [2,754 Theaters]
Friday $4.8M, Saturday $5.2M, Weekend $13.6M
Right now this comedy from beleaguered MGM, which is on the auction block, is hanging on to #3 even though it underperformed. Hollywood expected the John Cusack starrer to open to at least $20M. Nope. Even though 30 Rock even wrote the pic into last week’s episode. (Tina Fey’s character pretends to be headed to a Truffaut retrospective only to be seen buying tickets to Hot Tub Time Machine – which is one of the best or worst titled movies in recent Hollywood history. You tell me which.) Though the pic didn’t cost much, near-bankrupt MGM did get permission from creditors to earmark $45M for P&A expense, but I’m assured the studio didn’t spend all that. Still, I wonder if it was a mistake to focus only on advertising the pic to men and not to women.
4. The Bounty Hunter (Relativity/Sony) Week 2 [3,074 Theaters]
Friday $4.1M, Saturday $5.3M, Weekend $12.4M (-40%), Cume $38.8M
The Jennifer Aniston-Gerard Butler starrer may be a lame movie, but it’s showing some legs. On the other hand, there’s almost nothing else aimed at women in the marketplace.
5. Diary Of A Wimpy Kid (Fox) Week 2 [3,083 Theaters]
Friday $2.8M, Saturday $4.2M, Weekend $10M (-55%), Cume $35.7M
There’s a lot of kid-oriented product in the marketplace now.
6. She’s Out Of My League (Paramount) Week 3 [2,432 Theaters]
Friday $1.1M, Saturday $1.3M, Weekend $3.5M, Cume $25.6M
7. Green Zone (Universal) Week 3 [2,564 Theaters]
Friday $1M, Saturday $1.4M, Weekend $3.3M, Cume $30.4M
8. Shutter Island (Paramount) Week 6 [2,123 Theaters]
Friday $951K, Saturday $1.3M, Weekend $3.1M, Cume $120.6M
9. Repo Men (Relativity/Universal) Week 2 [2,519 Theaters]
Friday $932K, Saturday $1.1M, Weekend $3M (-50%), Cume $11.3M
10. Our Family Wedding (Fox Searchlight) Week 3 [1,132 Theaters]
Friday $650K, Saturday $975K, Weekend $2.2M, Cume $16.7M
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
Loading ...
dragon is toothless at boxoffice
clash will crush
dragon days are numbered
HTTM will gain on Saturday night by word-of-mouth. A really fun movie.
terrible for dragon after all those 20% price hikes for 3-d this weeknend, i guess the 3-d fad is fading fast
Hot Tub team should be fired. I don’t care how much money you put into marketing when your core audience is watching NCAA games or on Spring Break ( like 1M college kids are this weekend) your movie isn’t going to open.
The core audience for this is really 30-50 year olds who experienced the 80s. However, there is definitely too much raunchiness aimed to bring in 17-25 year olds. I am a 37 year old female who loves the 80s and John Cusack. Outside of the gratuitous sex and crude humor, I liked the movie. I went in knowing not to expect anything but silliness.
surprised that Dragon’s weekend estimate is so low. don’t know how it’s screening in other areas but it has overtaken all but one of the 3D screens around here, knocking out Avatar and leaving Alice to only one 3D theater.
Based on your estimates, HTTM should be #4 behind The Bounty Hunter.
And the Green Zone continues to plummet, its 3-week total 33% lower than the ‘embarassing’ Bounty after 2 weeks, and it will likely drop out of the top 10 next week. An unmitigated disaster, but it wasn’t posted about here at all. Does Nikki have a financial interest in it or something? Very conspicuous by its absence.
And why does it plummet and Hurt Locker succeeded? Because HL was not a country bashing star agenda movie. It celebrated courage and all the baggage that goes with it in war. Green Zone was more PC bullshit. I hated Bush and bot h his war but give me a break on the preaching Matt.
A Best Pic winner that makes less than 20 mil in the states and have of that overseas is hardly a success. After an expensive Oscar Campaign those Best Pic statues might be the most expensive action figures ever purchased.
it really just says that you will not be blamed for horrific failures as long as Hwood still likes you…Damon must have good karma because virtually anyone else would be tarred and feathered for such a disastrous outing…it’s a way bigger bomb than ishtar but good intentions saves it from ridicule
Hurt Locker success? Awards wise yes, financial wise NO! Only 15 Million worldwide for a best picture? Hurt Locker has Summit Entertainment to thank for that!
doesn’t sound like good numbers for a 3D movie at all
Too bad you’re not going beyond the top ten to examine the second-weekend limited-run estimates on THE RUNAWAYS or the opening numbers for CHLOE.
The Runaways was at least an awesome movie. They kept the P and A very low ( i didn’t see billboards or buses at all-a couple tv spots but that’s about it) i read the budget was under $10 mil. The budget seems low enough. The feedback seems to be on the level of a classic in the making. one that will at least be talked about and viewed for years to come.
doesn’t seem like it was ever destined to be a blockbuster in theaters (the R rating and subject matter make that clear), but it does seem like a winner in the end. it will have legs for a long, long time.
How is the bounty hunter looking good? It cost over 65 with marketing. Another Neil Moritz bomb. How that producer keeps making movies at Sony is baffling. Sony is in trouble anyway.
You didn’t take in the Overseas B.O into the final tally which is going to add up to 100M. That is for sure since Jen and Gerard has good track records on overseas cum.
You must be a moron for forgetting that.
In my neck of the woods, Dragon was in 3D and 2D. I saw the first matinee in #D even though I hated Avatar in 3D. It rocked! Dragon was everything that Avatar was not.
It had a fully fleshed out solid and heartening story, and the dragon riding scenes were amazing. I am not remotely a fan of 3D but I am going back. I’m thinking I’ll watch it in 3D again, but again, hoping the novelty has worn off, I’ll probably go back to watch it in 2D to compare. I think that 3D could take away from characterisation, so I am going to check.
It was totally bizarre to see old guys, guys with their toys sitting in the audience; I guess they want to see the tech. I am a mature female who loves animation (like Pixar) especially now because the stories and characters are represented less in a plastic way and because first rate animation forgoes a lot of the plastic looking actors out there who cannot emote if their lives depended on it. But then, I’m a huge Chuck Jones fan.
Alice looked like crap to me in big screen previews. Dragon, on the other hand, is a gem in the best tradition of storytelling. Classic.
I thought Hot Tub would do better – I saw it – wanted to love it. It was okay. Wished it was good… or at least better than it was.
I’m sorry The Bounty Hunter STINKS…. I mean B.A.D. Get real people.
“HOT TUB TIME MACHINE” should have gone straight to DVD. Where are all the plants comparing it to “THE HANGOVER,” now? (“HANGOVER” opened to $45 million, almost beating “UP”) None of these losers are Todd Phillips.
Here’s a thought? Did all the negative news about the major circuits all raising their prices this weekend affect Dragon’s BO. Think about it. It had every IMAX screen at an average of $17 a head for adults and $14 for children and then all those 3D screens at an average of about $14 for adults and $11 for children. And you are telling me that all Paramount could come up with this was $44 million? This picture is a disaster and could be a sign of the public telling theaters F–K YOU. (Until CLASH opens next week) And this is after a year which broke box office records. But this is how stupid, greedy and naive exhibitors are… And it also means you will start seeing a bigger margin between the box office hits & flops because people are not going to gamble at higher ticket prices.
Saw “Remember Me” this week. Had to travel 40 miles to see the movie. It was not released in our town of 60,000 people (probably more). Haven’t even seen where “The Runaways” was even released in LR. They would have made much more money if released again in smaller towns. Think about it. Not all people can drive this far to see a movie. We did get “New Moon” and “Twilight”
The Runaways opens wide on April 9th I believe.
Will someone please pull the plug on MGM. The execs over there are awful, they have no good projects, and don’t understand why they would think Time Machine would make any money especially with a lame cast, awful script… It’s basically the idiots from New Line went over to MGM and are continuing buying awful projects from their friends and making them. At least Richard Brenner’s projects made money at New Line which is why he got promoted and stayed, and the other idiots were expendable and left and now making the same awful projects at MGM now. It will take a new group of execs and a number of years for MGM to come out of the rubble… They have nothing good in development – why would anyone save them. The one property they have – Bond – they don’t touch, it runs itself by Barbara Broccoli. They’re not even allowed to read the script. Get Bond out of there, and close the shop.
Axe to grind much?
Bad as in it was expected to blow the roofs off with $60-75 million.
I was shocked at the huge, nearly empty theater I saw it in for a 3:45 showing.
I think the supposed liberal slant of Hollywood is starting to have an impact. “Dragon” was labeled a ‘pacifist’ film by conservatives. The only thing I can think of that put such a dent in what I thought was an EXCELLENT film is the NCAA BB tourney.
But if it’s the liberal slant of films and their liberal makers that’s hurting, then why did people flock to see the uber-liberal, French-resident Depp in “Wonderland?”
Go figure.
Oh shut up. Go peddle politics elsewhere. No one but the Drudge Brigade is intent on bringing politics to every corner of American life. There’s a time and a place for partisan whining. Hint hint: it ain’t the multiplex.
Are you a crashing bore at parties, too? Go figure.
agreed
Bullshit. Drudge is wevejnly matched at least with Media Matters. You’re the one with the axe to grind, a——.
That snickering sound he hear is James “The Man” Cameron reacting to the idiots on the Dragon hype bandwagon who won’t shut up about how much better this silly toddler cartoon allegedly is than Avatar. 44 million opening? Wow, at this rate, it might to go on to pull in a whopping eighth of Avatar’s total domestic gross, not to mention a minuscule fraction of its cumulative worldwide gross.
Why don’t you go people grow up and check out some more mature fare? Dragon was designed to entertain unsophisticated two-year-olds. At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I’ll still presume that its massive hype was fueled largely by blogger hipsters with a growth-fear complex. The worth of dumb kids’ cartoons is blown wildly out of proportion in this day and age by people who are afraid of fully entering adulthood. Pixar has fashioned an entire empire around the exploitation of this fear.
boy your post is a classic example of whats wrong with cameron fans. so, not making as much money as avatar means that any other movie simply cant be better? why even look at it that way? its childish. calling other film fans “idiots” is very childish and bully play-ground mentality.
there are a variety of movies out there to enjoy. Dragon being one and Avatar being another. film critics and fans arent always right. why make it an “us” against “them” discussion? thats why every new 3D movie that comes out after avatar will be rabidly promoted by its own fans as “better than avatar”. its a backlash due to avatar fans voicing so loudly their own “high” and “mighty” and “pure” movie mentality by comparing avatar as the next best thing to heaven, and all other movies avatar competed against as “2D movie rubbish” or “as 3D wannabes”.
i have to admit, the anti-avatar comeuppance has been sooner than I even thought. but the rabid & zealous avatar fans only have themselves to blame. they/you reap what they/you sow.
cheers
You sound like the biggest asshole listening to the sound of your own voice or in this case looking at your own righting. Just because “AVATURD” made a boat load of money doesnt mean shit. The movie sucked ass man. You know what though so did “TITANICRAP”. Money dosent mean everything. Every time i see one of these ridiculous post from the likes of people like yourself it just increases my anticipation for the likes of INCEPTION and TRON LEGACY…seal up all the hot air leaking out the bullshitters Camerons closet.
How to Train your Dragon I think will have some legs. It’s gotten really good reviews and good word of mouth. HTTM is going to evaporate next week, but should hopefully break even.
How To Train Your Dragon is the movie of the year so far. It is better than anything that has come out this year. It is way better than Alice and the 3D is incredible way better than Avatar and the score is just plain brilliant! This was a great birthday present for myself. Go see it now!
Ha TBH is actually doing pretty good, I guess word of mouth wasn’t so bad as predicted by the critics. LMAO Why can’t you admit you were wrong Nikki???? And how about a “HOW EMBARRASSING” thread for Wimpy’s dropping so bad.
Hot tub machine underperformed at the BO. Why not make a big deal about that? After all this film had “HUGE” buzz and great reviews.
Lets see how this does next weekend with word of mouth and the storm that is The clash of the Titans.
Dragon is way better than Avatar and will have legs — it’s that good. I think it’s a mistake to have this logjam of 3D movies especially one after another — you can’t expect families to shell out this much money on 3D, they are probably gonna be selective on which ones to watch in 3D and which to watch in 2D.
But 45 million is still nothing to sneeze at.
I watched ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ at an advance screening about 3 weeks ago: It’s a dumb comedy, very sloppily made, chopped with a hacksaw, and the funnier moments were seen in its trailer. More or less the reason why the movie didn’t perform. It’s simply not another ‘Hangover’; nowhere in the same league. I was rooting for it when I walked into the screening but afterwards people agreed the movie just wasn’t special enough. A shame.. Because with better execution it could have been one of the better comedies of this year.
the problem with HTTM is as follows: no hot guy in the film to get females interested (cusack, who i love is past his sell through date), no one under the age of 40 would get most of the gags. aside from cusack, all the other dudes in the film are fat with a capital phat and unattractive.
Interesting take. I’m not sure how much of the Hangover’s initial BO was women but you might be right. I was surprised at the middling crowd when I went to see it Friday night. I had a good time, but I think the film could have been much better.
Like a said in another thread, it was more Harold and Kumar than the Hangover. Had they made it for 15 mil eveyone would have been happy. If it really cost 50 mil the producers must have some money socked away in foreign bank accounts cause it wasn’t up on the screen.