SUNDAY AM: It's a dull pre-Oscar weekend at the North American box office with only two major releases are genres fighting each other for No. 2. There were better than expected grosses considering the East Coast was slapped with another harsh snowstorm. Otherwise, there's not much to say. Holdover Shutter Island, the Marty Scorsese/Leo DiCaprio psychological thriller from Paramount, will easily stay No. 1 again with just a 41% drop from a week ago. It made $6.7M Friday and $10.4M Saturday for a $22.2M weekend and estimated cume of $75M. Warner Bros' Bruce Willis/Tracy Morgan buddy comedy Cop Out (formerly entitled A Couple Of Dicks) opened Friday with $6.2M Friday and $7.8M Saturday for a $18.5M weekend which shows audiences are starved for laughs. Gee, you don't think director Kevin Smith's nationally blown-out-of-proportion fight with Southwest Airlines was a PR grab by this publicity hog, do you? It's the first film he helmed that he also didn't write. Overture's doomsday horror pic The Crazies co-financed by Participant Media and Imagenation Abu Dhabi debuted with $5.7M Friday and $6.4M Saturday for a $16M weekend due to heavy TV ad rotation. Fox's Avatar crossed $700M domestic. And Sony Pictures Classics platformedg the French language prisoner drama A Prophet in 9 NY and LA locations after it's won several awards and is Oscar nominated. Industry types all weekend emailed me from the theaters gushing how good this ... Read More »

Leonardo DiCaprio Still In Thriller Mode

SUNDAY AM UPDATE: Paramount's delay of Shutter Island's domestic release from 2009 to 2010, once widely questioned, now looks shrewdly strategic. Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone), the psychological and supernatural thriller made $14.1 million Friday and $17M Saturday from 2,991 theaters and $40.2M for its debut on a weekend it has all to itself. That's a big number for an R-rated film, that cost $100+M with large gross participations (but only $75 million net of the Massachusetts rebate). Explained one studio exec to me, "The delay only helped the movie with more time for the trailer to play and the ability to use the Super Bowl and Olympics to finish the campaign." Indeed, a MovieTickets poll named the Shutter Island traileras the big football game's 3rd most memorable.

This 4th film collaboration between Marty Scorsese and Leo DiCaprio is their highest grossing debut ever, bigger than 2002's Gangs Of New York, 2004's The Aviator, and 2006's The Departed (which posted their previous biggest opening ever of $26.8M). That pic was also Scorsese's best debut, now beaten by Shutter Island which will also be DiCaprio's biggest, besting the $30M of 2002's Steven Spielberg-directed Catch Me If You Can. But Shutter Island was the target of bad buzz following Paramount's abrupt decision to push the widely touted 2009 awards ... Read More »

SUNDAY PM: Once again, moviegoers showed that they wanted whatever Hollywood was giving them, no matter what critics were telling them about the 3 very different genre films that opened Friday through Monday. This turned into the highest grossing U.S. Presidents Weekend ever with a 4-day total estimated at $230 million, besting the previous record of $220M set last year. But this year's overall number was aided by the inclusion of Valentine's Day. And New Line/Warner Bros exploited all the love in the air by delivering the critically savaged but filmgoer pleasing movie Valentine's Day for the weekend's widest release of 3,665 theaters. Look, success like this doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out. Toby Emmerich et al came up with a formula of cramming more than a dozen stars into a film and keeping the budget below $50 million.

So these days, when most films can barely afford even 2 major stars, how did Valentine’s Day keep costs down for the cast including Julia Roberts, Jessica Alba, Bradley Cooper, Anne Hathaway, Patrick Dempsey, Taylor Lautner, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Topher Grace, Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah and Emma Roberts? Most worked for discounted quotes and some back-end because they were able to film their parts quickly and then leave for other projects. All those names made for an impressive trailer (the one-sheet is so crowded that only thumbnails of the stars in the shape of a heart was possible). So women were easily wooed to want to see this ... Read More »

SUNDAY AM UPDATE: So Avatar was done in by a chick flick no less! Despite the monster winter storm on the East Coast, Relativity's sappy military-themed love story Dear John opened to a much bigger than expected $13.8 million Friday and $12.4M Saturday (down only -10%) from 2,969 North American theaters. Which means the pic based on the Nicholas Sparks novel and distributed by Sony/Screen Gems, has broken Avatar's 7-week reign atop the domestic box office despite higher 3D ticket prices. G.I. Joe's Channing Tatum and Mamma Mia!'s Amanda Seyfried scored a $32.4M weekend compared to Avatar's 23.6M. "It's not only the dragon slayer, but by a lot," one Sony exec gushed to me. Dear John is also Screen Gems best ever debut and the biggest Super Bowl weekend opener, topping Hannah Montana's $31.1M. Females made up 84% of the opening weekend audience, while 64% of the moviegoers were under age 21.

Twentieth Century Fox's technopic took in $6.1M Friday (-18%, another amazing hold) and $11.3M Saturday for a $630M cume that's broken every highest grossing record in Hollywood and the world. Dear John's overperformance is due to several factors: A running time of only 102 minutes, which offset the higher ticket prices for Avatar which clocks in at 160 minutes. And some great field marketing by Jeff Blake and his team, including a premiere on the North Carolina base at Fort Bragg as well as promotions at 51 Army bases worldwide.

Meanwhile, Lionsgate's 3rd place From Paris With Love starring John Travolta and directed by Taken helmer Pierre Morel is very soft. The R-rated pic opened with only a $3 million debut Friday but did +33% better Saturday for $4.0M from 2,722 runs for an underperforming $8.1M weekend.

This also was the start of Crazy Heart's 8th week, but this marks the first fully national week of release. That's because the Fox Searchlight film scored a Best Actor Oscar nomination for Jeff Bridges, considered the shoo-in for that category. The pic expanded into 819 theatres and will likely expand further on February 12th into 1,000+ dates. As a result, Crazy Heart reached the Top 10 this weekend for the first time in its run. It's also having the strongest post-Oscar nod bounce.

Meanwhile, Summit Entertainment worked with exhibitors who wanted to run The Hurt Locker after it was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. This, in spite of the fact that the DVD has been selling quite well since January 12th. The weekend estimate was $123K (+439%) playing at 110 theaters (+72). Its North American cume to date is now $13.4M. 

Here's the Top 10 as of Sunday:

1. Dear John (Relativity/Sony) NEW [2,969 Theaters]
Friday $13.8M, Saturday $12.4M, Weekend $32.4M
2. Avatar (Fox) Week 8 [3,000 Theaters]
Friday $6.1M, Saturday $11.3M, Weekend $23.6M, Cume $630
3. From Paris With Love (Lionsgate) NEW [2,722 Theaters]
Friday $3.0M, Saturday $4.0M, Weekend $8.1M
4. Edge of Darkness (Alcon/Warner Bros) Week 2 [3,066 Theaters]
Friday $2.3M, Saturday $3.5M, Weekend $7M, Cume $29M
5. Tooth Fairy (Fox) Week 3 [3,218 Theaters]
Friday $1.6M, Saturday $3.5M, Weekend $6.5M, Cume $34.3M
6. When in Rome (Disney) Week 2 [2,456 Theaters]
Friday $2.0M, Saturday $2.5M, Weekend $5.5, Cume $20.8M
7. Book of Eli (Warner Bros) Week 4 [2,820 Theaters]
Friday $1.5M, Saturday $2.5M, Weekend $4.8M, Cume $82.1M
8. Crazy Heart (Fox Searchlight) Week 8 [819 Theaters]
Friday $1.07M, Saturday $1.9M, Weekend $3.6M, Cume $11.1M
9. Legion (Sony) Week 3 [2,339 Theaters]
Friday $1.06M, Saturday $1.7M, Weekend $3.4M, Cume $34.6M
10. Sherlock Holmes (Warner Bros) Week 7 [1,805 Theaters]
Friday $790K, Saturday $1.3M, Weekend $2.6M, Cume $201.5M Read More »

UPDATES Rupert Murdoch Pushing For 'Avatar 2'

In just 47 days of release, 20th Century Fox’s Avatar beat Titanic’s 12-year record with a total domestic take of $601,141,551, according to Hollywood.com. It achieved it on Oscar nominations day, February 2nd. This beats the $600,788,188 held by Titanic (though not adjusted for inflation or higher 3D ticket prices). Last week, Avatar crossed the $2 billion milestone in worldwide box office.

SATURDAY PM/SUNDAY AM: Now that 20th Century Fox's Avatar is the highest grossing movie of all time (not adjusted for inflation or higher 3D ticket prices), it passed the $2 billion mark in worldwide grosses and remained No. 1 at the weekend box office for the 7th straight week. Today, after just 45 days of release, James Cameron's sci-fi epic reached $2.039 billion. The pic's runaway success has answered all its critics, so there's not much more to say except, Wow! It made $7.5M Friday from 3,074 plays and $14M Saturday for another $30M weekend -- an amazing -14% hold despite a declining theater count. That's a new $594.2M domestic cume. The pic should pass Titanic's record of $600.8M this week. 

Here's the run-down of IMAX's 5th weekend of Avatar. The giant screen juggernaut generated another $6.0 mil domestically this weekend (-10%) on 179 screens; this represents approx 21% of the pictures overall domestic take. Hollywood.com reports IMAX's domestic cume for Avatar stands at $97M and will pass $100M this week. Overseas, IMAX generated $4.3M (-3%) on 83 screens. As of Sunday night, the IMAX international cume will be $56M. This puts the global total as of tonight at $153M. The only remaining questions are: Will Avatar make it 8 weeks in a row as #1? And will it win the Best Picture Oscar? Stay tuned.

Way more questions surrounded the Warner Bros-distributed Edge Of Darkness ... Read More »

SATURDAY PM/SUNDAY AM: Increasingly, the Avatar phenomenon of breaking box office record after box office record will have to carry an asterisk. Because the fact remains that higher 3D ticket prices (as much as $18 in some big U.S. cities) is causing James Cameron's big budget technopic to  cream the 2D competition. So I won't join in the hoopla associated with Avatar kicking Batman’s butt Saturday. Yes, it did speed past The Dark Knight's $533.3 million as the 2nd highest grossing film of all time at the domestic box office after just 37 days in release. And right now, Avatar's cume through Sunday is $552.7 million -- just shy of the No. 1 biggest grossing domestic film ever Titanic's $600.8M. However, when adjusted for ticket price inflation, Avatar is still only 26th on the all time biggest domestic list. Meanwhile, 20th Century Fox said Avatar is getting tantalizingly closer to Titanic's worldwide record as the top grossing film of all time: $1.841B to $1.842B set back in 1997. That includes the $1.288B from overseas. Seriously, given all these stats, box office is becoming just like a baseball scorecard. And here's another: playing in 2,897 North American theaters, Avatar racked up its 6th straight weekend as North America's No. 1 movie in theaters.

Sony Pictures's Screen Gems opened its modestly budgeted (pegged at $26M) supernatural action thriller Legion to 2,476 venues this weekend. Directed by Scott Stewart and starring Paul Bettany, the film had widespread word of mouth and a visually arresting ad campaign. That helped it do almost exactly what Sony hoped it would for the weekend -- $18.2M, good enough for 2nd place. And, although Hollywood predicted Fox's The Tooth Fairy would debut much bigger, the concensus is that its weekend of only $14.5M from 3,344 dates came down to Dwayne Johnson's inability on this PG kiddie pic to appeal to adults like he usually does. And that one-sheet? Yuck!

But the real story of the weekend has to be the total collapse of CBS Films' first output, Extraordinary Measures. This is despite an aggressive and expensive TV ad campaign for a pic no one in their right mind could think would make a dime. Only occasionally do I see Hollywood moguls this gleeful about the failure of one of their own. But almost every major studio pointed out to me that, on the even of the pic's release, it had zero positives on Rotten Tomatoes. (It wound up with only 26%) "CBS enters the business with a bust," one rival studio exec emailed me. "And the few people CBS got to show up were very old: 85% over age 35, including 62% over age 50." None of his peers and even pals thought CBS Inc chief Les Moonves should have ever started a vanity film division in the first place. There was resentment, jealousy, and in the end gloating galore after Friday's disastrous numbers came in. Even more so now for Extraordinary Measure's dismal $7M weekend in 2,549 runs. This is way worse for Moonves than the pic's stars Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser because Les, a former actor, spent the weeks leading up to the melodrama's release arrogantly boasting how personally involved he'd been tweaking the film -- like reordering the sequence of certain scenes and cutting others. Even the pic's marketing was treacly. Given his public humiliation, let's see if Moonves still intends to make 4 to 6 star-driven films a year costing up to $50 million apiece.

Top 10 For Friday and Saturday and weekend: Read More »

SUNDAY AM UPDATE: Twentieth Century Fox has just released fresh Avatar numbers based on the 3-day weekend:

International weekend = $125M
International cume = $1.115B
Domestic weekend = $41.3M
Domestic cume = $491.8M
Worldwide cume = $1.606B

SATURDAY PM/SUNDAY AM:  Alcon Entertainment's post-apocalyptic actioner with religious overtones The Book of Eli on Friday briefly interrupted the 28-day reign of Avatar. But by Saturday, everything was back to normal with James Cameron's big budget 3D technopic back at No. 1 for likely the entire Martin Luther King long weekend. (And who was the producer or co-producer of both giant-slayers Book Of Eli and Sherlock Holmes? Joel Silver. After 2 years of failure, he's on the comeback trail.)

Sources tell me the Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman starrer distributed by Warner Bros with a we-be-cool marketing campaign made $11.7 million Friday and $12 million Saturday for a 3-day weekend of $31.6M from 3,111 theaters. That probably adds up to $37M for the 4-day long weekend -- exactly what the studio expected after weeks of really strong tracking and crossover appeal. Once again, the spotlight is back on Alcon's Princeton duo funded by FedEx boss Fred Smith whose daughter Molly brought the guys The Blind Side. The rest is history -- and $240M domestic cume. Book of Eli is also a comeback for the Hughes brothers after a long absence from healthy box office grosses. Read More »

UPDATES 'Avatar' Now #2 All-Time Grossing Movie
UPDATES 'Avatar' Passes $1B Worldwide And $352M Domestic

SATURDAY PM/SUNDAY AM UPDATE: Guess what? Twentieth Century Fox's 3D Avatar is still #1 in North America and overseas. The studio says it took in $13.3M domestic Friday, down -48% from New Years Day, and $21.2M Saturday for a hefty $48.5M weekend that's only -29% down from last Fri-Sat-Sun. That's four #1s in a row for James Cameron's big budget technopic which hasn't happened at the box office since The Dark Knight in July 2008. Its domestic cume is now $429M, passing 2009's highest grossing pic Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen and its $402.1M. Hollywood.com says later this week Avatar will be first IMAX Hollywood feature to cross $100M in global receipts. The studio announced that Avatar made another $143M at the international box office this 4th weekend from 14,839 screens in 111 countries. That's up 4.5% from the 3rd weekend, raising its foreign cume now to $906.2M. Its worldwide cume is now $1.335 billion, 2nd only to that other Cameron epic Titanic's $1.843B (not adjusted for inflation or 3D's higher ticket prices). "It's kind of like Usain Bolt breezing in the quarterfinals of the Olympics 100M -- stretching out a lead but with no real competition," one Fox exec ... Read More »