Weekend Box-Office: March 4-6, 2011

Johnny
Depp reigns supreme…

Despite the fact that this
year’s box-office has been down considerably compared to last year
(there has only been one weekend this year that topped the same
time-period from last year), Johnny Depp was out chewing a ton
of bubble-gum this weekend while kicking ass, as RANGO easily
topped all other films with $38M in the first three days of
release. Matt Damon and Emily Blunt didn’t fare too badly either
with THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU, the sci-fi romance which opened with a
respectable $21M in 2nd place, while the very cute Vanessa Hudgens
and her starring role in the latest Beauty and the Beast
re-imagining, entitled BEASTLY, opened with a decent $10M in third
place.

But where did TAKE ME HOME
TONIGHT open, you may be asking? The teen comedy starring Topher
Grace (‘member that dude from "That ’70s Show" whose
career never went anywhere afterwards?) and Anna Faris (I
didn’t even realize she was in the film until this afternoon)
opened in 11th place in the first weekend of its release, with
only $3.5M, despite opening in over 2,000 theaters. This, my
friends…is what they call a "bomb". And speaking of
bombs, let’s all rejoice as BIG MOMMA’S HOUSE: LIKE FATHER, LIKE
SON, dropped from 7th to 12th place in only its 3rd week of
release, hopefully signifying the end of that memorable comedic
era in film (go hang out with those FOCKERS and the fat suits
from previous Eddie Murphy films!).

Last week’s #1 movie, HALL
PASS, managed to hang on to a good percentage of its audience from
last weekend, losing only 33% of its take from last week, but
dropping to 4th place because of the new releases. GNOMEO &
JULIET also dropped from 2nd to 5th place because of the new
"animated" film on the block, RANGO, which BTW, was
Industrial Light & Magic’s (ILM) first animated feature
release — the studio founded by one George Lucas back in 1975.
Cha-ching.

As for last weekend’s big Oscar
winner, THE KING’S SPEECH, it managed to hang around the top 10
despite being released 15 weeks ago, but dropped from 7th to 8th
place, and didn’t seem to have any specific upswing because of the
victories last Sunday night (at $124M total gross, methinks
most everyone who wanted to see this film, has seen it at this
point). The 4 films to get booted from the top 10 this week
include the aforementioned BIG MOMMAS 3 ($33M), DRIVE ANGRY ($9M)
in only its 2nd week of release (yipes!) and TRUE GRIT,
which finally dropped out of the top 10 after 11 weeks of release
and $168M smackers. Congrats to the Coen bros for their biggest
box-office hit ever! (2nd best is NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN with
$74M).

Next week sees the release of 3
more new releases, each of which has a shot at the #1 spot,
including MARS
NEEDS MOMS, the latest animated family film to hit theaters, RED
RIDING HOOD, the latest from TWILIGHT director Catherine
Hardwicke featuring Amanda Seyfried as the lead "girl in
distress" and the great Gary Oldman in a classic "bad
guy" role. Finally, the film that we’ve been curious about
since last year’s Comic Con, BATTLE:
LOS ANGELES, starring Michelle Rodriguez, Aaron Eckhart
and….yup, aliens! Will the latter film turn into another SKYLINE
or something closer to DISTRICT 9? Only time will tell. This
week’s poll asks you what film you believe will hold the #1 spot
next weekend? VOTE
HERE!!!