Weekend Box-Office: January 8-10, 2010

WEEKEND BOX-OFFICE

The #1 movie of 2009 is…Avatar!!!

It didn’t take long for the “king of the world” to dethrone the man who likes to make movies that go “Boom!” a whole lot, as AVATAR became the #1 movie of 2009 in only its 4th week of release, beating out the previous #1 film directed by Michael Bay, TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, which had grossed $402M (James Cameron’s movie is currently at $429M).

AVATAR has also made about $906M overseas, which sets its total at $1.34 BILLION overall, which makes it the 2nd highest grossing movie of all-time behind Cameron’s other film, TITANIC, which made $1.8 BILLION back in 1997-98. After only 24 days of release, AVATAR is also the 7th highest grossing domestic movie of all-time, although only another $30M will place it in 3rd place on that list, behind only TITANIC at $600M and THE DARK KNIGHT at $533M. Oh, and it also just broke the record for the highest 4th weekend ever with $49M, smashing the previous record set by TITANIC as well, with only $29M. Wow. Wow. And wow.

Surprisingly though, it’s not only AVATAR that is doing really well at the box-office these days. Both SHERLOCK HOLMES and the ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS “SQUEAKQUEL” have also been generating mucho dollars since their respective releases on Christmas Day, as the former has made $165M in just 16 days of release, while the latter has made $178M in that same time period. In fact, AVATAR, SHERLOCK and ALVIN 2 have been the numbers 1-2-3 movies for the past three weekends.

That said, the 3 new releases that came out this past weekend didn’t fare too badly either (this will be the 8th week in a row that ticket sales have improved versus the same time last year!) as the Ethan Hawke vampire movie, DAYBREAKERS, managed a solid opening with $15M in 4th place (the film only cost $20M to make) and Amy Adams’ rom-com LEAP YEAR opened in 6th place with about $9M bucks. I guess Michael Cera’s YOUTH IN REVOLT was the “loser” out of the bunch, but even then, it opened in 9th place with about $7M, which is actually pretty good for a film that opened in 50% less theaters than the movies at the top of the charts, and only cost about $15M to produce.

Sandra Bullock and THE BLIND SIDE kept on chugging along though, recently turning Bullock’s film into the #1 female-led movie ever made, as her $30M production surpassed the $220M mark at the box-office. The three films that got bounced from the top 10 this week include NINE ($17M), INVICTUS ($34M) and DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE MORGANS? ($28M). Guess not enough people heard about the Morgans, eh?

Next week sees the release of 3 new movies including the wide release of Peter Jackson’s THE LOVELY BONES which has been plagued with so-so reviews so far, Jackie Chan’s latest goofy movie entitled THE SPY NEXT DOOR (does the Rock show up in this one as well….sigh) and my pick of the week, THE BOOK OF ELI, featuring Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman and Mila Kunis after the end of the world. Nice.

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