The three openers all performed more or less within expectations. All three targeted vastly different demographics and all three had relatively massive advertising budgets (Is something wrong with Esther? I hadn't heard). The big news is that the influx of three major releases caused holdovers both successful (Her Sister's Keeper, Ice Age 3) and struggling (Bruno, Public Enemies) to hemorrhage screens. The largely unwritten story is that one of the reasons movies often don't have legs anymore is that only the most successful and newest releases can avoid shedding previous screens as the next weekend's batch of new releases zooms on in each Friday. Anyway, onto the numbers...
The number one film of the weekend was G-Force, yet another entry in the 'Jerry Bruckheimer makes an action movie for kids' sub-genre. Fortunately (due to the large budget) it opened closer to National Treasure than Kangaroo Jack with $32.2 million. Obviously, if not for the added 3D ticket prices, this guinea pigs save the world epic would have ended up number two or three for the weekend. But as 3D becomes more and more a general movie going experience, we'll continually see a pattern of inflated opening weekends followed by a massive tumble when said 3D theaters go to the next three-dimensional kids flick.
This didn't open anywhere near the top-end 3D animated features (Up is the current 3D opening weekend and overall box office champ with $68 million and $284 million), but it was right in line with the $29 million opening weekend of Beverly Hills Chihuahua from last fall. Expect to see a Night of the Lepus remake with hamsters, gerbils, and guinea pigs in the next couple years. Now that's something I'd see in 3D ("There's a heard of killer hamsters heading this way... right at YOU!").
Since Disney has more or less given up on trying to get Up to $300 million, they can spend all their energies getting this costly (allegedly $150 million+) kids flick to the magic $100 million mark.Second place goes to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. As somewhat expected, the heavily frontloaded Potter picture took a 61% plunge in weekend two. It ended the second weekend with $30 million, with a snazzy new $221 million twelve-day total (it's international total is already at $627 million - .
It's currently running about $14 million ahead of Order of the Pheonix. To be fair, anecdotal evidence suggests that many Potter fans are waiting until the IMAX engagements (starting this Wednesday) before seeing the film again. And unless the IMAX premiere has any affect on next weekend, expect to see this sixth chapter start to slightly fall behind the fifth chapter very soon (it's already making less day-to-day). On the other hand, if the accidentally delayed IMAX release succeeds in boosting the third-weekend box office take by any significant amount, could we see a new release strategy of delaying the IMAX premiere by a week or two? It would all-but guarantee at least two viewings for the die-hard fans and would provide an incentive for the casual geek to sample the film yet again. It's a scary thought, as I really don't have the time to see movies in theaters twice these days.