Box Office: Toys Win Over the Grown Ups

Toy Story 3 had another stellar weekend at the box office and held off new releases Knight and Day, and Grown Ups.  It made over $59 Million over the weekend.  That is a drop of around 46%, but that is not unusual when a movie has a huge opening weekend.  The film still enjoyed a healthy $14,600 per/screen average.

Toy Story has now made $226.5 Million in its first 10 days in release.  It is on the fast track to becoming the number one animated movie at the box office this year (Shrek Forever After currently stands at $229 Million after five weeks.)  It’s also doing a bang up job abroad, earning another $100 Million overseas in the same time frame.  So far, it looks like Toy Story 3 will become one of the biggest films of the year.

Grown Ups may have taken a critical drubbing, but audiences didn’t seem to mind.  They snatched up a cool $40 Million in ticket sales, to make the movie the number two offering of the weekend. Love him or hate him, Adam Sandler is reliable at the box office.  This will be his tenth movie to open at above $34 Million.  There are not  many stars working today who can match those numbers.

The same cannot be said for Knight and Day, the Cameron Diaz/Tom Cruise spy caper/romantic comedy. The movie opened on Wednesday, but benefited very little from that early opening. Wednesday night the film earned a little over $3 Milion, a paltry sum for two former box office draws.

Over the weekend, the movie about $20 Million, and for its five day run it stands at $27 Million.  Not horrible, but a disappointment considering both stars previous track records. EW reports that the movie’s budget was around $150 Million.

For everyone screaming that Tom Cruise is no longer bankable, I’d like delicately point out that the same can be said for Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson, and many others from that era.  Nobody is opening movies like they used to.  It is hardly a case unique to Cruise. I think that audiences have just moved on to the next generation of action stars. Sad, but true.

The Karate Kid came in at fourth place.  It dropped 48%, making about $15 Million, for a cumulative gross of over $135 Million in 3 weeks. The A-Team continued to flounder, making $6 Million.  It does not look likely to earn back its $110 Million budget.

Outside the top five, it was all holdovers.  Most noteworthy was a 70% plummet in attendance for Jonah Hex.  I am not sure I have seen such a large drop since I have been writing this column. Jonah Hex has yet to make $10 Million, while it had a budget of $47M.

Next week is shaping up to be a battle of the sexes.  Twilight: Eclipse will square off against The Last Airbender. Stay tuned.

via: Time, EW, Box Office Mojo, and Yahoo Movies