Knowing scored an easy win at the box office this weekend despite some bad reviews, banking $24.6 million. But the Paul Rudd/Jason Segel comedy pairing in I Love You, Man was no slouch either, making off with $17.8 million — just about on a par with Segel’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and negligibly lower than Rudd’s Role Models. (The would-be fans staying at home for the NCAA tournament make up more than the difference.)
In third was the Julia Roberts/Clive Owen caper Duplicity with $14 million. It played in the fewest theaters of all three newcomers, Clive Owen is fresh off his flop The International, and Julia Roberts hasn’t been America’s Sweetheart for quite some time. Considering all of that, the gross — which still managed to score higher than a $5K per-theater average — was solid in comparison to other mature-adult-skewing vehicles. Tony Gilroy’s last directorial effort, Michael Clayton, made only $10.4 million in its opening weekend.
The top ten official numbers, in millions of dollars (number in parenthesis is total gross):
- Knowing – 24.6
- I Love You, Man – 17.8
- Duplicity – 14.0
- Race to Witch Mountain – 12.8 (44.5)
- Watchmen – 6.8 (98.1)
- The Last House on the Left – 5.8 (23.9)
- Taken – 4.1 (133.1)
- Slumdog Millionaire – 2.7 (137.2)
- Madea Goes to Jail – 2.6 (87.3)
- Coraline – 2.1 (72.8)
Last week’s champion, Race to Witch Mountain, dropped by 48% — rather hard for a kid flick with no new competition. (That’ll change next weekend when Monsters vs. Aliens obliterates it.) Another also-ran, Watchmen, barely leveled out at all after last week’s massive drop, falling another 62%. With wide support lacking from critics, audiences, and even Watchmen fanboys, go ahead and label it a cautionary tale against the excesses of slavish loyalty to source material.
In limited release, Sunshine Cleaning successfully expanded to 64 theaters and grossed $671,618 for a still-potent per-theater average of $10K. It’s now made a hair under a million dollars and will continue to expand.
