Weekend Box-Office: March 19-21, 2010

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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