Weekend Boxoffice #20

Five more movies openly fairly widely this weekend, on a total of over 9000 screens.

Always interesting to me is checking to see where these screens come from. Opening weekends are fine, but it's also key for a movie to hang around in theaters as long as possible. Theaters don't mind keeping movies around for months, if they are still doing okay, because a theater gets a higher percentage of the box office in those later weeks.

If a movie is shedding screens early, it's really tanking.

This weekend, Hannibal Rising is already losing 1407 screens (almost half its total) after just 2 weeks. Because I Said So and The Messengers are both losing over 500 each after 3 weeks. Epic Movie is dropping over 800 screens after 4 weeks; it only has about 500 screens left. Night at the Museum is losing 670 screens, about 1/3 of its total, though it is entering week 10, so that's very respectable. Blood and Chocolate drops 168 screens; now it is only playing on 8.

Most Oscar-nominated movies are already shedding screens, even though this is Oscar weekend. Dreamgirls is losing 444 screens, down to 593, despite being favored to win at least 3 awards.

Opening this weekend:

THE NUMBER 23 (2759 screens). I read this script a couple of years ago, and didn't think it worked at all. When I heard that Joel Schumacher was directing Jim Carrey in it, I hoped they fixed the problems, but apparently they didn't, because the L.A. Times gave it a terrible review today. They've been advertising the hell out of it, and people will likely turn out because it's Carrey and they are selling it as scary. Look for it to do about $17 million this weekend, then tank next weekend when word gets around.

RENO 911! MIAMI (2703 screens). Comedies will always do fairly well, but is anyone really excited about paying to see a feature length TV skit? People like to laugh, so maybe $9.4 million this weekend.

THE ASTRONAUT FARMER (2155 screens). This is actually getting decent reviews, but I've seen the commercial and I feel like I've seen the movie. Plus Billy Bob isn't much of a draw, unless he's playing Bad Santa. $7.8 million.

THE ABANDONED (1000 screens). Will lose a big chunk of its potential audience to The Number 23, though this is likely the scarier movie. Call it $3.8 million.

AMAZING GRACE (791 screens). I've seen the commercial for this, and I still have no idea what it's about. Which is good (commercials shouldn't ruin the movie) and bad (it would be nice if a commercial at least made a film look particularly interesting). It's getting solid reviews, but I can't see it making more than about $3.5 million.

Look for Ghost Rider to finish #1 again, though it'll drop at least 50%.