It’s almost February and some really great movies are hitting store shelves this week for the first time and for the first time on Blu-ray. This week’s releases include This Is It, Surrogates, Whip It, Saw IV, the complete run of NBC’s canceled-too-soon Southland and the Blu-ray release of Wim Wenders’ classic Paris, Texas with Nastassja Kinski and Harry Dean Stanton. (pictured above).

Check out this week’s new releases:

Movies

Atonement ~ James McAvoy (Blu-ray)

Bright Star ~ Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw (Blu-ray and DVD)

Fame (1980) ~ Irene Cara (Blu-ray)

Give ‘Em Hell Malone ~ Doug Hutchison, Thomas Jane (Blu-ray and DVD)

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell ~ Matt Czuchry, Geoff Stults (Blu-ray and DVD)

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Roland Emmerich’s epic disaster flick 2012 easily destroyed the competition this weekend. Since there were no other wide new releases, 2012 handily made over $65 Million, which isn’t really all that impressive, but factor in the international box office take ($160 Million) and you get an opening weekend gross of $225 Million. Looks like the film will make back its budget (upwards of $200 Million) and then some. Playing on over 3,400 screens, the per-screen was just over $19,000.

Crowds are beginning to warm up to Disney’s A Christmas Carol, which took in $22.3 Million, and only dropped off  25% from opening weekend. This is a very good sign for the movie, indicating it will stick around a bit, particularly with Christmas coming up.

The Men Who Stared At Goats dropped an even 50%, for $6.2 Million and third place. Precious continues to be a big story. A small expansion put it in 174 theaters, for $6 Million. What’s astonishing is that the per-screen average was $35,000. Compare that to The Men Who Stare at Goats, which only had a per-screen average of $2,500. Precious will roll out a wider opening next weekend.

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Sure, technically Jim Carrey and company won the weekend with the 3D animated adventure A Christmas Carol, but the real reason everyone’s talking about this weekend’s box office is because of another movie’s totals.

Remember a few weeks ago when I was talking about how unbelievable it was that Paranormal Activity had a per screen average of $44,000? Well a little indie called Precious came in and mopped the floor with those totals. Precious played in just 18 theaters and grossed $1.8 million. Folks, that’s a $100,000 per screen average. To put that in perspective, if A Christmas Carol had the same per screen average, it would have grossed over $360 million (instead of $31 million).

This indicates a high degree of interest in the movie, and this weekend’s total will only add to that. Additionally, some people have been throwing around the “O” word, as in Oscar.  It received a standing ovation at Cannes, and an audience award at Sundance. It will slowly be rolling out over the next few weeks, and is definitely one to keep an eye on.

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The real story from the box office this weekend is the non-story of This Is It. Sure, it won the weekend with $21.3 million, but there were some crazy estimates thrown around last week. I know I wasn’t the only person entertaining the notion that this movie would open above $70 million, especially after seeing all the hysterics from frenzied fans on opening day and sold out venues.

So, I have been scratching my head trying to figure out why the movie was a relative dud here in the U.S. Worldwide, it was a smashing success and made over $100 million. Although, I heard more than one estimate say that it could open in the $200-250 million range, and it made less than half that.

Do you think that because Michael Jackson lived here in the States, and we were exposed to more of the controversial aspects of his life? Perhaps fans in Japan, Germany and Australia had a more pristine memory of the King of Pop. At any rate, I was pretty blown away by the movie’s fairly low numbers. This was supposed to be one of the biggest events of the year.

Paranormal Activity enjoyed Halloween weekend, and took in another $16.5 million. It only dropped 22% from last weekend. It stands at a cumulative total of $84.8 million and is all but guaranteed to pass $100 million during its domestic run.

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