It's not often that you get to see two horror movies come out on the same weekend. That indicates that neither studio was all that threatened by the other's presence, which is probably the right way to think. Halloween 2 and The Final Destination are vastly different movies despite falling into the same category. One is a slasher made for the hardcore audience, while FD could probably be considered more of a dark comedy at this point. Sure it's gross, but cartoony in it's absurd violence. Whatever. If you're a horror fan you probably had a ton of fun this weekend.
1. The Final Destination- $28.3M
With a start like this, is there any doubt that this won't be the final destination afterall? The 4th film in the franchise scored it's highest opening weekend ever, aided by the higher ticket prices for the 1,600 3-D screens it was showing at across the country. Still, for a relatively low budget franchise with no recognizable faces(the biggest star is Mykelti "Bubba Gump" Williamson) this has to be a welcome sign as to the health of the franchise, especially considering it was going head-to-head with another film of a similar type.
2. Inglorious Basterds- $20M/$73.8M
Tarantino's war/spaghetti western dropped a passable 47%, wedging it's way between the two horror films this week. Overseas the film has pulled in an additional $59M, making this already one of Tarantino's most successful films.
3. Halloween II- $17.4M
Rob Zombie's "completion of his epic vision" for Michael Meyers kinda got it's butt kicked by another aging franchise this week, but that had to be expected somewhat. Halloween basically follows up immediately from the previous film and gives us pretty much exactly the same thing we got the first time around. Some would think that means the box office should be at or near that of the last film, which brought in $26M it's first weekend. But Final Destination kinda screws that up by offering something atleast marginally different. What I expect is that those people who didn't see this film yet will see it by next weekend, and Halloween 2 will remain relatively unscathed for one more week. Then it'll quickly plummet out of the Top 10.
4. District 9- $10.7M/$90.8M
Seriously, Reuters? District 9 is not a horror film, ok? It does not belong in the same category as Halloween and Final Destination. Ugh. The sci-fi hit only slipped 41% this week, and at this point has more than tripled it's production cost. Amazing.
5. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra- $8M/$132M
6. Julie & Julia- $7.4M/$71M
As predicted, Julie & Julia is going to be servin' up marvelous meals for many more weeks, dropping a measley 16% this week, the best of any film in the top 10.
7. The Time Traveler's Wife- $6.75M/$48.2M
I can't believe I still haven't seen this. Slackin'.
8. Shorts- $4.87M/$13.6M
Perhaps I spoke too soon last week because this was a better than expected second week for Robert Rodriguez's next kiddie vehicle. I mean, it's still a flop and a borderline disaster, but I expected it to be well out of the top 10 by now.
9. Taking Woodstock- $3.75M
Looks like there ain't a lot o' love for a bunch of dirty hippies. Despite my love of Ang Lee's films, I knew this wasn't going to be a major box office success as his name simply has no drawing power. The subject matter wasn't really gonna put asses in seats, either. So I was surprised by the amount of screens this was being shown at, but I'm not surprised by the disappointing outcome.
10. G Force- $2.85M/$112M
Buh..bye.
500 Days of Summer continues it's run as the biggest indie hit of the summer, pulling in another $2M and bringing it's total to $25M. It should be more, people. It's still playing at most theatres so do yourself a favor and check it out.
Patton Oswalt's dark dramatic turn in Big Fan debuted in only 2 sites this past weekend, scoring an estimated $26,000. The film expands slowly over the next couple of weeks.
The biggest per site average of the weekend goes to the Vogue documentary, The September Issue, which hauled in an estimaed $240,000 in only 6(!!) theatres. Holy crap. Of course these were probably all in Los Angeles and were attended by rich folks who are in the movie but who cares? That's a helluva number.
