Box Office October 3-5: Eight Films Go Wide, Four Flop

Published on Oct 7th, 2008
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Written by Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

Eight films opened in wide release this weekend and, as expected, not all of them made much of a dent. In fact, thanks to the overcrowding, half of them outright flopped.

At the top of the pile were Beverly Hills Chihuahua, which connected with family audiences and scored $29.3 million — even better than Eagle Eye last week — and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, which came in third with a solid but not great $11.3 million. The well-reviewed film might benefit from good word-of-mouth, but is sitting pretty regardless — the production budget was a scant $9 million.

Two films expanded from limited release with encouraging results. Ed Harris’s Western Appaloosa scored $5.1 million from 1,045 theaters for a solid $4,833 per-theater average, while Bill Maher’s Religulous made $3.4 million from only 502 theaters for a $6,792 average.

Then there were the flops: the rather bizarre An American Carol, which had a Michael Moore-type filmmaker in the Scrooge role of A Christmas Carol, flopped with $3.7 million (about the same as Religulous, yes, but it was in three times as many theaters). But it can at least brag about beating higher-profile competitors: Greg Kinnear’s Flash of Genius made only $2.3 million, the heavily advertised Blindness was ignored with $1.95 million, and How to Lose Friends and Alienate People was just embarrassing with $1.4 million — landing it in ninteenth place. After this and Run Fatboy Run, let’s all admit that everybody jumped the gun on the whole “Simon Pegg is a breakout star!” thing.

The top ten official totals, in millions:

 

Among holdovers, both Eagle Eye and Nights in Rodanthe are performing up to expectations; the former might even approach the $100 million mark. Last week’s surprise success story Fireproof also held up well; niche movies tend to drop sharply in their second weekend, but perhaps thanks to the curiosity factor it fell only 41%.

In limited release, The Duchess continues to do quite well as it takes its time to expand, while Rachel Getting Married rode a wave of buzz over Anne Hathaway’s performance to $293,369 from only 9 theaters for a terrific $32,597 average.

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