After a year's absence, this column is back by popular demand to examine the weekend's box-office results and talk about films and their financial fates again - more than a few films last year I wanted to comment on but didn't get the chance. Now I can again, bwahahahaha!!!! Three new major releases this weekend - one did better than expected, the other two sank without trace, and others held on to show a good half-life.
First lets get to the winner - "Hostel", and I bet you any money Eli Roth's probably the happiest man in Hollywood right now. The first weekend of the year was always thought to be a dead slot, but last year changed that when Michael Keaton-led spooky thriller "White Noise" was the first in a series of $20+ million openings for PG-13 horror/supernatural movies over the next 2-3 months. The opening for "Hostel" this week goes to show rating doesn't really matter, a decent looking, well promoted horror film on that weekend will sell (and get pretty decent reviews too).
The weekend also showed a crap looking, lowly promoted horror film won't just not sell - it'll dive. Uwe Boll's vampire fantasy "Bloodrayne" got one positive major critical review (from one guy who said you had to be drunk to enjoy it), but no-one cared - the flick didn't crack the Top 15 and took a paltry $1.2 million for the weekend, disastrous. Not far ahead was Fox's lacklustre comedy "Grandma's Boy" which looks set to vanish overnight as well.
Of the older films "Narnia" is still holding ground better than "King Kong", but both are expected to finish up snuggly in the $200 million range (with Narnia approaching $300M by run's end). Not doing so well were some limited release expansions - both "Munich" and "Casanova" went wide this weekend, but neither connected well with audiences and both now looking likely to be considered financial flops ("Munich" in fact could be amongst Spielberg's lowest earners).
On the limited release front "Brokeback Mountain" continues plowing forward with $11,905 per theatre taking from 483 screens, pushing it into the top ten despite being on only a fraction of the screens that all the others are screening on. The steady rollout of the flick is continuing, expected to jump to 600 screens by this Friday, and 800 by next Friday. Woody Allen's "Match Point" also did well in first expansion ($9,243 per screen average from 304 screens), "Cache" continues doing stellar business with $14,425 per screen on its five playdates and not far behind his "Transamerica" with its $9,553 per screen take from half a dozen screens.
