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.
Michael Jackson’s This Is It added another $5.1 Million to its domestic total of $67.2 Million. Holdovers The Fourth Kind, Couple’s Retreat, Paranormal Activity and Law Abiding Citizen all continue to hover in the top ten.
There was some bad news for Richard Kelly and Warner Brothers, because The Box sank like a stone this week, picking up a paltry $3.1 Million. Attendance was down almost 60% from opening weekend, and its cumulative total is only $13 Million after two weeks of wide release. If you still want to catch The Box, you should do so quickly, because it is not going to be around long.
Looking forward to next week, The Blind Side, starring Sandra Bullock, will face off against the vampires and werewolves of New Moon. Also opening will be Planet 51.
*Preliminary estimates are from boxofficeguru.com
