Weekend Box-Office: December 10-12, 2010

WEEKEND BOX-OFFICE

Narnia.
The Tourist. Yawwwn… 

Despite the latest CHRONICLES
OF NARNIA flick opening in 1st place this past weekend, the
weekend as a whole was pretty disappointing with both NARNIA and
the movie opening in second place, THE TOURIST, scoring less than
anticipated numbers. With the latter film costing $100M to
produce, and the latest "adventures of the talking lion"
costing $155M to make, much was expected from both films, closer
to the $30-40M opening weekend range.

Coincidentally enough, both
movies got rocked by critics with NARNIA scoring only 50%
positive notices from critics according to Rotten Tomatoes,
while only 20%
of critics recommended the Depp/Jolie vehicle (this film
scored an average
of 4.5/10 on the MFC). As for NARNIA’s $25M opening, you might
think I’m out to lunch when I say that it was
"disappointing", but when you consider the film’s budget
and even more importantly, the franchise’s previous #1 openings,
you might think different. The original NARNIA flick opened with $65M
back in 2005 (ended with $291M), while its sequel opened with an
equally impressive $55M three years later (that said, that
film only ended up with $142M when all was said and done).

The film that scored the most
impressive placement in this week’s top 10 was Darren Aronofsky’s
BLACK SWAN, which entered the list in 6th spot, despite showing in
only 90 theaters!! (in contrast, the average number of theaters
for the rest of the top 10 films was about 2,900) Needless to say,
it also scored the highest average-per-theater amount, which was
close to $37,000 per theater (compared to about $7,000 per theater
for the NARNIA movie). There were no
other major surprises in the top 10 although Disney’s TANGLED
managed to cross the $100M mark, even though it dropped into third
place this weekend.

The two films to get booted
from the top 10 this week, both had disappointing theater runs,
but may find more interest on home video. The first film was
FASTER ($21M), which only had a $24M budget, so it probably won’t
lose money for the studio, but was still a pretty big
disappointment as the Rock tried to get back into the action
genre. The second film was THE NEXT THREE DAYS ($20M), which also
didn’t cost too much to make ($30M), but can’t bode well for
Russell Crowe’s appeal as a lead actor in upcoming films, as this
would be his 3rd thriller in a row that makes less than $40M at
the box-office (STATE OF PLAY – $37M, BODY OF LIES – $39M).
Granted, ROBIN HOOD did make over $100M last summer, but that
franchise already has a built-in audience, so I’m not sure how
much of that I would attribute to Crowe’s presence in the film.

Next weekend finally sees the
release of a film that we’ve been covering for over two years now
(since they first showed us a preview clip at Comic Con 2008) and
that is TRON:
LEGACY, which so far, is garnering decent word of mouth, more
so for its awesome visuals, than anything else, of course. The
greatly praised THE
FIGHTER will also be opening wider, so many more of you will
be able to go check that out, while James L. Brooks’ latest
entitled HOW
DO YOU KNOW looks a lot more like his last turd SPANGLISH than
any of his previous insightful dramedies (I’ve seen tons of clips
from this one and it just doesn’t look interesting, funny or
insightful). Oh and YOGI
F*CKIN’ BEAR is also being released for kids and stoners, I
assume. This week’s POLL asks you how much $$$ you think TRON:
LEGACY will bring in next weekend? VOTE
NOW!!!

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