Weekend Box-Office: February 19-21, 2010

WEEKEND BOX-OFFICE

Scorsese
beats ’em all…!!!

The Scorsese/DiCaprio money-train keeps on
chugging along as their 4th collaboration together, SHUTTER
ISLAND, scores them their best opening yet, with $40M and a 1st
place finish! Scorsese’s previous biggest opening was THE DEPARTED
back in 2006 with $27M, which also starred DiCaprio. Leo’s
previous biggie was $30M for CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, back in 2002,
for another awesome director named Steven Spielberg. Maybe you’ve
heard of him? (we miss you, Steven!) SHUTTER ISLAND was supposed
to be released last October for Oscar consideration, but the
studio moved it to February of this year instead, and it seems to
have paid off. The film apparently cost about $75 to make.

Despite not finishing in the top 10, Roman
Polanski’s THE GHOST WRITER finished in 28th place with $179,000,
but that was in only 4 theaters, giving it one of the
largest per-theater averages of the entire weekend ($45,000). In
contrast, SHUTTER ISLAND had a per-theater average of about
$13,000. It will be interesting to see how that film fares when
released in more theaters.

As for last week’s 3 big releases, it seems as
though PERCY JACKSON might have the greatest legs, as it only lost
51% of its audience from last weekend, while VALENTINE’S DAY
dropped a massive 70% with THE WOLFMAN right behind it with a 69%
drop. With a budget of close to $150M, the WOLFMAN has managed
only $50M so far, and doesn’t appear to be a success at this
point. VALENTINE’S DAY, on the other hand, only cost about $50M
and has already made a profit, with its total closing in on the
$90M mark.

Of course, we couldn’t discuss the box-office
figures without talking about AVATAR again, as the film moved back
up from 4th to 3rd place (and almost 2nd) with another $16M
added to its mounting total. The film is currently sitting at
$687M domestically and $2.4B worldwide (and unless you’ve been
living under a rock, the biggest movie of all-time!). The
rest of the top 10 didn’t have anything special going on, and the
one film to drop out of the ten spot this week was WHEN IN ROME,
while hovering around the $29M mark overall.

Next week sees the big-budget debut of
writer/director Kevin Smith, famous for indie flicks which he’d
written himself like CLERKS, DOGMA, CHASING AMY and ZACK AND MIRI
MAKE A PORNO, as he helms a buddy-cop movie entitled COP
OUT starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan. The other film
opening next week is THE
CRAZIES starring Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell and Courtney
Love (joke!). But more importantly, how much $$$ do you think
Kevin Smith’s COP OUT will make during its entire theatrical run? VOTE
HERE!!!

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