Box Office: ‘Narnia’ and ‘The Tourist’ Get a Cold Reception

It was a pretty bland weekend at the box office considering that two big studio releases opened.  Despite the built in audience for Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and the mega-watt star power of Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp in The Tourist, neither of the films managed to make much of a splash.  Both came in under the low end of their respective projected estimates.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader won the weekend with a relatively low take of  $24.5M.  This is far below the other films in the franchise. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe made $65.6M in its opening weekend, and Prince Caspian made $55M in the same time frame.

The film has a reported budget between $140 and $150M, which seems rather daunting to recoup at this point.  Fortunately, the film fared better overseas, grossing over $67M, bringing its total to $81M.

The Tourist was troubled by bad reviews, but many still thought the film would benefit from its star power. However,  the film made a measly $17M.  Disney’s Tangled only dropped around 33%, earning an additional $14.6M for third place. The film has now made $115M to date.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows dropped almost 50%, making $8.5M.  Its four week total stands at $257M, good enough for placing number six on the highest grossing films of 2010.  Unstoppable was the number five movie this weekend.  Playing on over 2,900 screens, the film grossed about $3.75M.

Compare that to Black Swan, which is still in limited release.  The film played on only 90 screens, yet grossed almost as much as Unstoppable.  It earned $3.3M, and goes into wider  release next weekend.

The Fighter also made a splash.  The film opened on only four screens, but earned $80,000 per screen.  That bodes well for when the film expands next weekend.

via [Entertainment Weekly, Box Office Mojo]