So here’s how it works: if you give any sort of analysis into the numbers being put up by “Avatar,” boosters of the film will get sand in their vaginas and call you a jerk for even beginning to question the dominance of the second highest grossing film of all time. So what can you say about its sixth straight weekend of being the number one movie in America? You can’t point to the fact that its only real competition was “Sherlock Holmes” over Christmas weekend, you can’t talk about how inflated the 3D numbers are, you can’t talk about how the film has done consistent numbers despite never registering a weekend like “X-Men Origins: Wolverine“‘s $85 million first period or how it’s about to pass “The Dark Knight” despite opening with less than half of what the Batman film did in its opening frame, and you ESPECIALLY can’t discuss how the film is a mediocre adventure picture with little potential of capturing the audience’s fancy in the manner of even “Titanic,” with no memorable characters, dialogue, or genuine romance to tether its inexplicable appeal to. So let’s say this: it made a lot of money, and it still makes a lot of money, zeitgeist be damned.
Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, the typically cheap Screen Gems can count on a solid return on their investment with “Legion.” The charitably stupid-looking angel-fight thriller that apparently borrows pretty liberally from “The Terminator” smashed-and-grabbed it’s way to $18 million, which helps a long way towards clearing its sub-$30 mil. budget. With this and the modestly-successful “Daybreakers,” early 2010 seems to be a promising time to release cheap horror films that don’t even bother being genuinely scary. “Book of Eli,” which was breathing down “Avatar”‘s back for one hot minute, slumped to #3, losing half its audience and beginning its slow descent down the charts before an inevitable quickie DVD release. Whatever the conversation is, “Eli” isn’t part of it.
Dwayne “The Artist Formerly Known As The Rock“ Johnson recorded a $22 and $24 debut for each of his last two family outings, but if you work in a genre three times, you become a brand name for said genre. Is Dwayne Johnson a kid film star, or do audiences suspect he’s an action guy only moonlighting in the genre? The mere presence of a Johnson (or a Schwarzenegger) in a kid’s film is an exercise in tired juxtaposition, so we’ll guess audiences have caught on to the latter, which is why “The Tooth Fairy” did such shallow numbers. Regardless, this was just another kids’ flick, and with the one-two punch of the animated “Planet 51,” it’s not going to do much damage to anyone’s reputation. “The Other Guys” and “Faster” are on the horizon for Johnson, so it does look like he will be returning to adult, or at least teenager, fare.
After two weekends, “The Lovely Bones” is poised to drop below the five week-old “Sherlock Holmes,” spelling the possible end of Peter Jackson‘s blank check era, which was sadly not as fun as it should have been while it lasted. The film had an increased television presence recently, but it didn’t motivate the “Twilight” audience to sample the story of a girl who finds bliss in the afterlife after being raped and murdered. Which is weird, because, considering “Twilight,” their moral priorities seem highly fucked in the first place, but whatever. “Sherlock,” meanwhile, has stubbornly kept pace with several of the new arrivals, and after a very small weekend drop, it could conceivably cross $200 by next weekend. “Book of Eli” is holding decently, but if “Sherlock” keeps playing, they’re going to have to sacrifice some screens. It’s likely “Sherlock” will be the one to drop out of sight, but if “Eli” takes a big tumble in week three, WB could let “Sherlock” play into February.
News wasn’t so good for the maiden voyage of CBS Films, debuting “Extraordinary Measures” at #6. The Harrison Ford tearjerker probably did as well as you could expect for a cheapie medical drama in January that probably isn’t very good, not helped by the fact that when people want to make a modern day “Lorenzo’s Oil,” they either A) put it on Lifetime, or B) Enlist a filmmaker with a better pedigree than Tom “What Happens In Vegas” Vaughan. We’re sure CBS Films thought the novelty of putting Indiana Jones alongside the dude from the “Mummy” movies would draw some audiences, but if you aren’t going to get them to settle into seats for what seems like any of a kagillion post-9/11 war films, its clear they aren’t interested in a film of this nature either. CBS also has the TV-ish “The Back-Up Plan” with Jennifer Lopez, “Twilight” bait tweener romance “Beastly” and the aforementioned action picture “Faster” – that’s one possible hit, one dicey proposition, and one bonafide bomb.
In meaningless milestones, “Alvin and the Chipmunks” (#8) crossed $200 while “It’s Complicated” (#9) will be over $100 by tomorrow. “The Blind Side” finally fell from the top ten, but it only dropped 19% with a total of $234 million, and if the awards heat (seriously?) increases, this sad excuse for a discussion on race relations could spring back onto the list. “Up In The Air” couldn’t generate any heat from its exposure during the glad-handling Golden Globe Awards, but it’s $69 million total isn’t anything to sneeze off, and it should continue to play in 1000 or so theaters until the Oscars. Both these films lapped “Leap Year” and “Daybreakers” despite both being more than a month older than those narrowly-aimed January releases, but those two should finish with a $30 million total.
In limited release, “To Save A Life” somehow snuck into 400+ theaters and pulled in a so-so $1.5 million. From what we can gather from the trailer, it’s a movie about how a white Christian high schooler ostracizes a black kid from the popular group, leading to a school shooting. He responds by deciding to befriend a random sampling of alienated minorities, their outsider status marked by wearing hoodies in public and prooooobably listening to “alternative” music. The film was released by Samuel Goldwyn Films, who didn’t have a film grossing over $10 million for twelve years until the Christian-themed “Fireproof” scored a respectable $33 mil. Might the company that brought us “The Squid And The Whale” and “Super Size Me” realize their future is in Christian-centric entertainment? With the indie market in shambles and Samuel Goldwyn reaping a certain kind of success (they also released the Christian-themed doc “Facing the Giants“) could they become a certain kind of specialty distributor?
“Crazy Heart” nearly doubled its screen count in the wake of the Golden Globes and averaged $15k per screen, the week’s best per-screen average, for a $1.4 million take. Someone in the comments section mentioned how we focus on per-screen average too much and that it was ridiculous to compare the week’s usual best per-screen winner (usually around “Crazy Heart”‘s tally) to whatever the number one movie is. To which we say: no shit, you nitwit. Do you see anyone here comparing “Crazy Heart” to “Avatar”? “Crazy Heart” has the earmarks of a low-key crowd-pleaser, but so did “The Wrestler” and Fox Searchlight was gun shy on semi-wide releases for both. “The Wrestler” might have been more marketable, but there’s no doubt “Crazy Heart” would play well to country music fans in the Midwest if it had a generous release pattern. Instead they debuted on the coasts and let the buzz trickle inwards to the heartland when it probably should’ve been the other way around, cheating the movie out of some box office heat in favor of having some jackhole at a snob publication who’s never listened to a country music song weigh in about the film’s intellectual values or some shit. Irrelevant, though, since the movie’s just not very interesting either way.
On the lower end of the spectrum, “The White Ribbon” celebrated its Best Foreign Film win at the Golden Globes by expanding and pulling in $123k on nineteen screens. The film will never play big, but the accolades are coming, and it’s playing strongly to its base, showing significant audience gains in its four weeks of release. “Ribbon” is likely to gain Oscar attention as well, meaning the picture, which stands at almost half-a-million, can become one of the bigger foreign film successes in recent memory, despite being a black and white, nearly three-hour story of a quiet Austrian village in the early twentieth century. In other limited release news, “The Girl On The Train” debuted on two screens with $20k. Support your local indie theater, folks.
The Top Ten, As Told By An Eight Year Old (Totals in parentheses)
1. Yay, Blue People In Trees! – $36 million ($553 mil.)
2. Angels With Guns! – $18.2 million
3. A Black Guy Reads From A Book! – $17 million ($62 mil.)
4. That Wrestler Hangs Out With Kids Again, Whatever, This Is Boring, Mommy! – $14.5 million
5. That Dead Girl Died But Mark Wahlberg Still Loves Her! – $8.8 million ($32 mil.)
6. That Detective Guy! – $7.1 million ($192 mil.)
7. Indiana Jones Is A Doctor! – $7 million
8. Alvin And The Chipmunks, Mommy Buy Me Toys! – $6.5 million ($204 mil.)
9. Old People Like Mommy And My Two Daddies! – $6.2 million ($99 mil.)
10. The Spy Next Door, The Theater’s Empty, Let’s Go See That, Mommy! – $4.8 million ($19 mil.)