FALL BLOCKBUSTER SEASON IS OFF…
Quarantine, Body of Lies Finish 2nd and 3rd, both taking in roughly 15 million…
Quarantine Goes into the Green in its 1st weekend, Making Back its entire budget marketing and filming budget
Read the rest after the jump…
Body of Lies Proves Iraq themed movies May be going out of fashion…(with two huge names, tons of marketing…what happened?)
Oct. 12 (Bloomberg) — Walt Disney Co.’s comedy “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” repeated as the top film in U.S. and Canadian theaters for a second weekend, earning $17.5 million and beating out the debuts of a horror film and spy drama.
“Quarantine” from Sony Corp.’s Screen Gem’s unit was second with $14.2 million, box-office tracker Media By Numbers LLC said. Time Warner Inc.’s “Body of Lies” earned $13.1 million to take third place. “Chihuahua” pushed Disney’s Buena Vista studio earnings this year to $696.1 million through Oct. 9. It trails Time Warner’s Warner Bros., which has made $1.49 billion, according to Box Office Mojo LLC. Disney’s last No. 1 film was the June release of “WALL-E,” the animated film about a robot left behind after humans flee Earth. “Chihuahua” is “a reflection of the mood in the country,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Encino, California-based Media By Numbers. “It’s been an intense week in terms of personal finances and uncertainty and `Chihuahua’ allowed people to have fun and not think about the trouble.”
Strong Second Place Finish
Reuters – While family films, family spy thrillers, teen angst and horror thrives this fall,`Body of Lies’ ’sort of’ bombs…What Happened??
The new terrorism thriller “Body of Lies” failed to take the top spot at the weekend box office in North America, an apparent victim of moviegoers’ preference for escapist fare amid global financial turmoil.
`Nick & Nora’
Fourth place’s “Eagle Eye” stars Shia LaBeouf as a man forced into a deadly political conspiracy. The movie, which made $11 million, is from Viacom Inc.’s DreamWorks SKG and Paramount units and was produced by Steven Spielberg. It fell from second place last week. In fifth place was Sony’s “Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist” with $6.5 million in receipts. The movie stars Michael Cera and Kat Dennings as strangers who join to search for a secret concert by their favorite band.
Rounding out the top 10 in sixth through 10th place, respectively, were: Universal Pictures’ “The Express,” starring Dennis Quaid and Rob Brown, with $4.7 million; Time Warner’s “Nights in Rodanthe” with $4.6 million; “Appaloosa,” with Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris with $3.34 million; Viacom Inc.’s “The Duchess,” with $3.32 million; and “City of Ember” from News Corp.’s Fox Walden unit with $3.2 million. Receipts for the top 12 movies rose 4.2 percent to $87.4 million from the year-ago period, Encino, California-based Media By Numbers said. For the year, box-office sales total $7.38 billion, down less than 1 percent from a year earlier. Year-to- date attendance is down 3.9 percent. The following table has figures provided by studios to Media By Numbers. The amounts are based on gross ticket sales from Oct. 3, yesterday and estimates for today.
Fellman said the film’s grim subject matter may have deterred moviegoers looking for more uplifting material as world leaders race to head off the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. This explains the strong hold for “Beverly Hills Chihuahua,” one of the few comedies in theaters It did not help that other Iraq war-related movies, such as “Rendition,” “Redacted,” “Stop-Loss” and “In the Valley of Elah,” have also bombed at the box office.
Fellman said the film cost $70 million to make, but rival studios said it might have cost twice as much, given the hefty paydays for DiCaprio, Crowe, and Scott, not to mention the cost of shooting multiple explosions on its Morocco set.
As an aside, “Body of Lies” underperformed the $22 million debut of “Poseidon,” the 2006 Warner Bros. bomb that Crowe’s character sardonically references in the movie. Crowe recently said that Warner Bros. edited out an extended riff on the maritime disaster.
The Warner Bros. film, starring Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio as CIA agents battling a terrorist organization in the Middle East, had to settle for the No. 3 slot with $13.1 million, according to studio estimates issued on Sunday. “I’m a bit disappointed,” said Dan Fellman, the studio’s domestic distribution president. “It was too good for the gross it recorded.” DiCaprio stars as an Arabic-speaking field agent who teams up with Jordanian spies to uncover a dangerous terrorist operation. Crowe plays his boss back in the United States. The movie was directed by British filmmaker Sir Ridley Scott, who previously steered Crowe to an Oscar with “Gladiator.”
Oct. 12 (Bloomberg) — Walt Disney Co.’s comedy “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” repeated as the top film in U.S. and Canadian theaters for a second weekend, earning $17.5 million and beating out the debuts of a horror film and spy drama.
