Weekend Box-Office: March 19-21, 2010 | Movie News

WEEKEND BOX-OFFICE

Depp + Burton + 3D = $570M worldwide

Despite 3 new movies hitting the cinematic airwaves this past weekend, it was Tim Burton's ALICE IN WONDERLAND which maintained the top spot for the third week in a row, while at the same time, raising its overall total to $266M, already becoming the 45th highest grossing domestic movie of all-time. And that's despite the fact that I've yet to meet anyone that really liked it. Huh. The film has grossed about $570M worldwide so far.

From the week's 3 new movies, both DIARY OF A WIMPY KID and THE BOUNTY HUNTER opened quite well, which was particularly strange for the latter film, which was annihilated by most film critics, including our own Chris Bumbray. Unfortunately for REPO MEN, which was enjoyed by the critics on our site, along with a handful of schmoes on Movie Fan Central and our forums, it only managed about $6M in its first 3 days of release, which is pretty bad when you consider that the film apparently cost about $30M to produce. Expect it to be out of the top 10 in a couple of weeks, max.

The weekend's biggest drop-off came from REMEMBER ME, the Robert Pattinson flick, which lost about 60% of its audience from last weekend. I guess that proves that even Twi-hards aren't gonna see a movie umpteen times for the dude, especially if the ending stinks, like this one. And speaking of Twi-hards, Kristen Stewart also starred in a film this past weekend which did not include blood-suckers, entitled THE RUNAWAYS. The film was released in only 244 theaters, but didn't fare much better than REMEMBER ME, with less than $1M in receipts.

GREEN ZONE also dropped pretty heavily from 2nd to 6th place this weekend, bringing its total to about $25M so far, which also sucks pretty bad, when you consider that the film apparently cost about $100M to produce. Yikes! SHUTTER ISLAND, on the other hand, is going strong with $115M after 5 weeks of release. The film has become director Martin Scorsese's 2nd highest grossing movie of all-time, after 2006's THE DEPARTED, which made over $132M at the time.

The three movies to get booted from the top 10 this week include BROOKLYN'S FINEST ($25M --boy, that was fast!), THE CRAZIES ($36M) and Kevin Smith's COP OUT ($43M). Despite all the bad buzz on Smith's picture, it turned out to be his highest-grossing movie ever, along with being profitable (it only cost $30M to make). Roman Polanski's GHOST WRITER just missed the top 10 this week in 11th place. It was in 15th place last weekend.

Next week sees the release of only 2 new movies including another 3D flick -- this one animated -- called HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON. The other film opening next weekend looks pretty funny to me, and features one of the most straight-forward titles since SNAKES ON A PLANE. It's called HOT TUB TIME MACHINE but thankfully does not feature 3D effects (at least, not as of now).

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