Box Office: Audiences Flock to ‘Couple’s Retreat’

Here’s your weekly Box Office report. Studio estimates are from Box Office Mojo. Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau should be feeling pretty good about themselves this Monday morning.  Their film Couples Retreat received a critical drumming, but still made $35M over the weekend.  The likability of the two stars helped the film overcome negative buzz, and with no new competition, it easily won the weekend.

Zombieland looks like it will be sticking around for a while.  It only dropped 39% from its opening weekend and made$15M, which is impressive for a horror movie. A month after its release, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is still in the top five, and made $12M. Toy Story and Toy Story 2 continue to pull in audiences, dropping just 38% from last week for $7.6.

The real story of the weekend is the phenomenal performance of Paranormal Activity.  The film only played on 160 theaters in the entire country, and made over $7M! To put that in perspective, Surrogates came in at #6 this weekend. It played on 2,992 screens and made $4.1 million for a per screen average of $1,375.  The per screen average for Paranormal Activity was $44, 163. That’s unheard of.

The movie broke the record for highest grossing movie playing in under 200 theaters. This is likely to be one of the biggest stories of the year, and I am actually working on a separate article about the marketing and distribution of Paranormal Activity, so look for it in the next few days.  It’s a fascinating story, and worthy of a lot more analysis than I can provide here. Suffice it to say that it is going to be fun watching what happens in upcoming weeks, when Paramount releases the movie wide.

The Invention of Lying dropped like a stone, and only made $3.3 million, bringing its  two week total to $12.3M. Whip It also failed to pick up any momentum and made just $2.8M.  Holdovers Capitalism: A Love Story ($2.7M) and Fame ($2.5) rounded out the top ten.

Next weekend should be interesting. Where the Wild Things Are, The Stepfather, and Law Abiding Citizen are all opening, and Paranormal Activity expands from limited to wide release.