The Top
Last week’s winner, the Shrek spinoff Puss In Boots, held incredibly strong at the box office this weekend to dominate for the second weekend in a row. It saw only a 3% dropoff and added another $33 million to its total.
While a 3% dropoff is wildly impressive, the first Shrek movie actually saw a .3% increase in its second weekend. The other three Shreks saw declines of at least 33% in their second weekends, but those were all summer releases, and hard to truly compare to an early fall performance.
To be more fair, Megamind saw a 36% dropoff in its second weekend. In 2008, Madagascar 2 saw a 44% drop in weekend two. Both of those opened this weekend, as opposed to Puss’s Halloween weekend. They also each opened much stronger.
Puss In Boot’s opening was among the worst for a Dreamworks animated release, but it’s righted the ship with its strong second weekend showing and won’t go down as a complete failure. It will, however, make future family releases think twice before opening on Halloween weekend.
If all this talk about Puss has got you in the mood to watch a movie with the word ‘Boots’ in the title, I suggest you watch 2006’s Kinky Boots. It stars Joel Edgerton, who you probably didn’t see in Warrior and The Thing over the past few months, and the always amazing Chiwotel Ejiofor as a drag queen hell bent on saving Edgerton’s boot factory. Kinky Boots has a lot more dresses than Puss In Boots, but way less kitty.
Speaking of Puss, why is it that so many girls hate the word ‘moist’?The Rest
Tower Heist was able to avoid the recent rash of bombs by movies loaded with star power, as the Ben Stiller/Eddie Murphy heist comedy took second place with $24 million. It was on par with recent Ben Stiller comedies, which usually open in the $25-28 million range, but still didn’t open as strong as movies where Eddie Murphy wears a fat suit.
For Eddie Murphy, it’s been family movies, Dreamgirls and the train wreck that was Meet Dave since 2003, so it’s nice to see him return to something more along the line of his great movies from earlier in his career. Striking Meet Dave from the record, his last adult aimed comedy was I, Spy in 2002. It opened to just under $13 million. Earlier that year he saw a $15 million opening with Showtime. If you forget that The Adventures Of Pluto Nash came out between those two and bombed with a $2 million opening, then 2002 was a great year for Eddie Murphy making comedies.
Sorry to go off on an Eddie Murphy tangent there, I just really miss Eddie Murphy. Aside from the Beverly Hills Cop series, I think The Golden Child is my favorite Eddie Murphy movie. I also think Metro and Bowfinger are both extremely underrated.
In third place with $12.9 milllion was A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas. That’s slightly behind Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay’s $15 million in 2008, but more than double what the original earned on the way to White Castle in 2004.Paranormal Activity 3 fell another 54% and added another $8 million to its total. It currently sits at $95 million, and should cross the $100 million mark this week, and may possibly surpass the $107 million the original Paranormal Activity earned in 2009.
Action star Justin Timberlake’s In Time came In Fourth with $7.5 million. It sits at $24 million after two weeks.
The stupid Footloose remake only dropped 19% from last week and came in sixth with $4.4 million. By next week, it will have doubled its $24 million budget. The original Footloose featured John Lithgow, who starred with Denzel Washington in Ricochet in 1991. Ricochet was a pretty awesome movie and didn’t involve any illegal dancing.
Real Steel continues to robot fight as it brought in another $3.4 million to take seventh. It will surpass its $80 million budget through the week, but entering the holiday season it seems unlikely it will make it to $100 million.
Johnny Depp staggered into eighth place as The Rum Diary only earned another $2.9 million and barely sits at $10 million after two weeks. It’s his weakest performing wide release since that movie in 1999 where his wife got all pissed about him going into space, The Astronaut’s Wife.This is reaching a bit, but back in 2000 I “accidentally” stole a copy of The Astronaut’s Wife from my local video rental place along with a copy of Mumford. Mumford is a fantastic movie that I feel like only 10 people in the history of the world have seen.
Back to Johnny Depp, do you think there’s anybody on the planet that when you ask what their favorite Johnny Depp movie is and they with no hesitation and not jokingly answer Nick Of Time? That’d be a pretty weird answer and I’d definitely have to ask them to repeat it. I also don’t think I’d believe them after they said it a second time. I’d probably just end the conversation.
A whole ton of handsome round out the top 10 as the dreamboat combo of Ryan Gosling and George Clooney came in ninth with The Ides Of March and Brad Pitt is right behind them holding strong with Moneyball as it crossed the $70 million mark.
The Worst
Its not a failure of epic proportions or anything, and really isn’t surprising, but The Three Musketeers is fading out of theaters fast and won’t even reach a third of its $75 million budget before it’s out of theaters.
But instead of focusing on that, let’s look ahead for a second. Jack And Jill opens this weekend, and I beg of you, please, please, please America. Please let me write about that movie in this section next week. I swear to Christ almighty, if that movie opens in first place, I don’t even know what I’ll do, but it probably won’t be pretty. Please. Do not see Jack And Jill.
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DO NOT GO SEE JACK AND JILL PLEASE!! Also, Immortals opens and will try to make a pretty big impression with a super wide release. PLEASE DO NOT GO SEE JACK AND JILL!!!
