Welcome back to another edition of Weekend Receipts, where we drag out a Volkswagen-sized abacus, and have an intern slide bowling-ball-sized beads back and forth, all in an effort to bring you the most accurate and up-to-date box office calculations possible. Today, Disney's frog-leg gumbo and Matt Damon in a pair thigh-baring rugby shorts prove to be two spicy dishes America just couldn't resist.
The Princess and the Frog gone done expanded 'self into a tidy lil' firs'-place, ooooohh-eeee! Or something. Disney's oppressively Creole-soaked return to hand-drawn animation added 3,400 screens and pulled down $7 million on Friday, comfortably outpacing The Blind Side, which tumbled to a still-impressive second ahead of the underachieving Invictus. Other Oscar-season darlings A Single Man and The Lovely Bones bowed to good if not dazzling numbers in limited release, each shaping up for per-screen-averages below $35,000 by the close of business Sunday. Yesterday's top 10 after the jump.
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Years from now, when cultural historians look back at some of human civilization's milestones of persistence, expect to find The Blind Side's week-three usurping of New Moon's box-office title among those hallowed ranks. The inspiring (if insipid) Sandra Bullock film handily knocked off its ab-tacular competition on a weak frame for movies as a whole, proving once and for all that with a little big-hearted moralizing and a whole lot of Clairol Nice 'N Easy Natural Medium Champagne Blonde hair color, all things are possible. Find out just how possible after the jump.
The Blind Side looks like it will finally make an end-run around New Moon this weekend, decisively taking the first place slot from the vampire drama in yesterday's box office. Meanwhile, Brothers landed in the number-three spot with more than some trackers were expecting (though still not a magnificent haul) while Everybody's Fine made its title seem like the state of highest denial. Full figures after the jump:
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As America recovers from quite possibly its most carb-loaded Thanksgiving ever (apocalypse angst = good for the boxed-stuffing industry), we turn now to the last person in the country not struggling to close his pants: New Moon breakout wolf Taylor Lautner. May his abs be a shining beacon to all of us mortal fatties. More on New Moon's second week of dominance -- and the little Sandra Bullock football movie that nearly toppled it -- after the jump.
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It was an interesting Thanksgiving frame at the box office -- and one that foretold a couple of benchmarks about to fall. The Blind Side managed to work its way up the number-one spot, and its impressive hold and family-friendly potential mean that Sandra Bullock might hit another career best just months after achieving it with The Proposal. Don't cry for number-two contender New Moon, though -- today, it should pass the entire $192.7 million domestic gross of the first Twilight. Instead, save your tears for The Fantastic Mr Fox, which expanded into over 2,000 theaters without much fanfare. The full results, after the jump:
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Great Moments in U.S. Girl History
· 1893: Colorado becomes the first state to grant women the right to vote
· 1960: Eleanor Roosevelt named chairwoman of JFK's Commission on the Status of Women
· 1963: Betty Friedan publishes The Feminine Mystique
· 1972: Congress passes the Equal Rights Amendment
· 2005: Stephenie Meyer publishes Twilight
· 2009: New Moon opens, grosses $140.7 million in three days
· 2010: The Oprah Winfrey Show airs its final broadcast
· 2012: "Daddy! No more pull-ups!"
The Dark Knight may have had a lot of things going for it, but it didn't have Taylor Lautner's abs. Aided by a cuh-cuh-crazy gross from midnight shows on Thursday, The Twilight Saga: New Moon absolutely decimated the previous opening day record of $67.2 million set by The Dark Knight, banking $72.7 million from less screens and less theaters. Can it break Knight's all-time opening weekend record, $158.4 million? To be continued...
Full figures, after the jump:
After a couple slow weeks at the box office, the Hollywood Industrial Complex belches back to life with a movie about the end of the world in which John Cusack is upstaged by Woody Harrelson and a chicken. Yes, it's business as usual at Weekend Receipts. Click on to see how that one, and the rest of the top five, fared.
Like a giant, runaway donut splatting a pedestrian fleeing unsuccessfully from the Grand Canyon-sized fissure where LAX used to be, 2012 has trampled the weekend box office. Roland Emmerich's shimmering love letter to mankind's inevitable and spectacular demise grossed $65 million domestically and an additional $160 million in foreign territories, giving it a grand total of $225 million for the weekend, and almost assuring it a spot in the top ten openings of all time. Come back later for our full box office report. [Variety]
Roland Emmerich has once again wrung a blockbuster out of the apocalypse, as 2012 blew out all projected estimates with a fantastic Friday gross over $23 million. That cast a pretty lengthy shadow over virtually all the weekend competition with the notable exception of Precious, which continued last week's dominating performance with $2 million on only 174 screens. That was good enough for third place right below Disney's A Christmas Carol, which slid a not-too-bad 37 percent off its opening weekend pace. George Clooney's Men Who Stare at Goats was not so lucky. Check out that and the rest after the jump.
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We met the Ghost of Box-Office Future on Friday, and yesterday brought the Ghost of Box-Office Present. Today, the Ghost of Box-Office Past pays a visit with a look back at Hollywood's weekend receipts. And unless you work at Disney, there's really no need to be scared.
After lugging a train around the country all year in an attempt to hype its expensive holiday investment, Disney was rewarded with a $8,960,000 Friday for its version of A Christmas Carol, which falls into the low end of expectations. (The studio has long-range plans for this one and inflated 3D prices will help, but it's a soft start). Meanwhile, The Fourth Kind managed to convince your mom that it was Paranormal Activity and wound up in second place, while The Men Who Stare at Goats and The Box opened merely OK in light of conservative expectations for both. Full figures after the jump:
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Happy Día de los Muertos, everybody. We now bid a fond farewell to the biggest and brightest luminary claimed by the infamous Summer of Death by leaving gifts of sugar skulls and rain forest butterflies at his box office altar. Sizzle on, Michael.
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Is This Is It's Friday haul of $7,900,000 a success? On the one hand, it's good enough for first place, but on the other, expectations for a higher gross were dramatically inflated. Many box office pundits are pointing out that This Is It will most likely trail the total gross of the Hannah Montana concert film -- an odd comparison to be sure, since the only overlap in their target audiences came from the adults who dropped their kids off at the mall for Hannah. How many 10-year-olds do you know who were super psyched for Michael Jackson's swan song? The full Friday numbers, after the jump:
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