WEEKEND BOX OFFICE
The headline news for box office watchers this weekend is that it's the first to end the slump. Ticket totals had been averaging below the previous year's take most every weekend this year so far. The estimated $139 million haul is well above the same weekend last year which topped out at $119 million.
Rio was the unsurprising big winner at the US box office this weekend with a $40 million take, right on track with the estimates going into Friday. The tropical bird film earned another $53 million overseas. Add that to its initial $80 million already earned (it had been released in some international markets prior to its US debut) and the birds have managed to rack up an impressive $168 million so far. Not bad!
Meanwhile, Scream 4 was projected to do around $27 million but did not perform as well as expected. Coming in at just under $20 million, Scream 4 is going to struggle to even match the $89 million that its predecessor made in total. Interestingly, 46% of the attendees were over 25 years old making it an older-skewing audience than your average horror film. It seems many of those who turned out opening weekend were already fans of the series and perhaps it is not attracting new fans. To that point, some have wondered if the R-rating kept the traditional horror audience, young men, out of the theaters.
I continue to be surprised by the performance of Soul Surfer which rode its wave to $7.4 million besting even Hanna by a hair.
The Conspirator managed to crack the top ten and sneak its way to #9, which I did not expect. The per theater averages were $5,500 which is OK but not great. I think this one has legs though and should (maybe?) be able to make back its $25 million budget eventually. I think it sounds pretty nifty.
To wrap things up, we'll check in with Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 which pulled in $1.7 million. Will parts 2 and 3 ever get made? Who knows! The reviews were generally dismissive to outright pans, but enough Objectivists turned out for a per theater average of $5,608. Did anyone see this? If so, please let me know in the comments because I'm dying to know what you thought.