Box Office Battle (April 10th)

Hannah has second highest Easter weekend opening ever

BY COLIN ENQUIST

Playing in 3118 theatres, Hannah Montana: The Movie grossed an estimated $34M, with a Friday gross of $17.3M which is the highest ever for a live-action G-rated film on its opening day. Though not able to break the weekend gross of Scary Movie 4, Disney can probably thank Miley Cyrus' star status for bringing out the teenagers off of school on Good Friday to see the film which is also Disney's highest April take in the companies history.

Universals' Fast and Furious surpassed the $100M mark, becoming the fifth movie this year to do so. Dropping 59% into second, the Vin Diesel and Paul Walker film raked in $28.7M, making the decision easy for Universal, who signed both stars to a come back for yet another film for the franchise. The film also crossed the $200M mark worldwide over the weekend.

Monsters vs. Aliens brought in $22.6M, bringing its impressive total up around $141M. The film is still playing in over 4000 theatres, and with only a 30% drop in ticket sales, we should expect this to become the highest grossing film of the year sometime over the next week.

The dark comedy, Observe and Report opened in fourth place at $11.1M. Warner Bros. has high expectations for the Jody Hill comedy starring Seth Rogen, the studio is hoping it follows the line drawn by Kevin James' Paul Blart: Mall Cop which is the current number one grossing film this year. With the much darker material, the audience will be quite different.

Slots five through seven were filled by Alex Proyas and Nicolas Cage's sci-fi thriller Knowing with $6.7M, the Paul Rudd R-rated buddy comedy I Love You, Man with $6.4M and haunted house thriller The Haunting in Connecticut with $5.7M. They've grossed $68M, $59M and $46M respectively.

The biggest dissapointment would be Fox's Dragonball: Evolution, which opening only in 2181 theatres and bombed its way to $4.6M. The opened a few weeks back in the foreign market and has grabbed $25.3M overseas already.

Rounding out the top ten, Adventureland took in another $3.4M bringing its two week total around $11M. Duplicity earned another $2.9M, making the four week total $36.8M.

Box Office Battle (April 3rd)

Fast & Furious races past the competition.

BY COLIN ENQUIST

Universals Pictures’ Fast & Furious raced past the previous April opening record with $72.5M, held by Anger Management which opened to $42.2 million in 2003. Reuniting Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Michelle Rodriguez helped the studio surpass the original The Fast and the Furious which grossed $40.1M on opening weekend. 2 Fast 2 Furious opened around $50M while the third film in the series, directed by Justin Lin who also directed the current film, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift brought in $24M. The three films have totalled around $333M worldwide, with Fast & Furious surpassing the entire gross of Tokyo Drift’s earnings.

Last weeks leader, Monsters vs. Aliens, dropped 43.5% in ticket sales during its second weekend. The 3D animated film took in $33M bringing the total around $105M. DreamWorks Animation made the film for $175M.

The Haunting in Connecticut had an enormous fall in ticket sales but still came in third, losing 58.5% from last week. Still managing to grab slightly over $9.5M, raising the total earnings around $37M for the two weeks it has been released.

Alex Proyas’ and Nicolas Cage’s sci-fi flick Knowing earned another $8.1M in fourth place and has reached a three week total of $58.2M.

Fifth place film I Love You, Man added another $7.9M. The Paul Rudd and Jason Segel comedy has made a total of $49.3M in three weeks.

Miramax Films’ Adventureland, the comedy about a recent college grad who ponders the future after taking a job at a local amusement park took in $6M on its opening weekend finished in sixth place. The film stars Jesse Eisenberg, Ryan Reynolds, Kristen Stewart, Martin Starr, Paige Howard, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader and Margarita Levieva. Gregg Motolla wrote and directed the film.

The bottom four films were Duplicity ($4.3M), Race to Witch Mountain ($3.3M), 12 Rounds ($2.3M) and Sunshine Cleaning ($1.8M).

Box Office Battle (March 27th)

Monsters vs. Aliens easily fights off the competition.

DreamWorks Animation's 3-D animated feature Monsters vs. Aliens grabs the number one spot on its opening weekend with $58.2M. While not playing in 3-D in approximately 7600 screens it opened on, the overall contribution from the 3-D screens was just over 56%. Being the largest 3-D launch ever, it bodes well for future films with a 3-D tag attached to them.

Second place would be taken by The Haunting in Connecticut which grossed $23M also on its first weekend of release. Its debut landed in the Top Ten of supernatural horror movies (according to BoxOfficeMojo), shy of the 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror. "Based on true events" was also the marketing scheme that Amityville had used.

Summit's sci-fi thriller Knowing, starring Nicolas Cage had another strong weekend despite not being able to hold onto No. 1. The film dropped 40% yet still finished third, grabbing $14.7M bringing the total up around $46.2. Across the ocean and into the international box office Knowing looks to have snatched another $9.8M placing itself at No. 1.

Last weeks big release I Love You Man finished fourth, the R-rated comedy from Paramount had a 29% decline but still pulling in $12.6M with a cumulative total of $37M. Duplicity, the Universal flick with Julia Roberts and Clive Owen dropped almost 50% bringing in $7.6M for fifth place and a total gross of $25.6M.

Race to Witch Mountain maintained a steady pace with $5.6M, the Disney film has grossed $53.3M so far. 12 Rounds opened this weekend as well to a first round knockout from the other 6 films ahead of it. Grossing only $5.3M, the WWE may want to reconsider the venture into movies with its wrestling stars.

Watchmen has continued to fade worldwide. Domestically falling 59% in its fourth weekend to an estimated $2.8M for a total of $103.3M. Overseas, it grossed $4.6M for the weekend, $68M overall internationally. The property is not quite well known outside the USA but it is still disappointing for Legendary Pictures and Paramount.

Rounding out the top ten is Taken, with a total $2.7M bringing its impressive take at $137M. The Last House on the Left fell 4 spots in the third week of release. Garnering $2.6M which brings the remakes total just above $28M.

News in Film...

Knowing tops box office, Richardson is honoured on Broadway, Betsy Blair succumbs to cancer, Beatty is sued over Dick Tracy

Alex Proyas' sci-fi thriller Knowing (starring Nicolas Cage) reigned supreme at the domestic box office, pulling in an estimated $24.8 million in its opening weekend (Friday-Sunday), while the R-rated comedy I Love You, Man (starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segal) premiered as runner-up, with $18 million. Julia Roberts and Clive Owens' Duplicity debuted at #3 with $14.4 million, pushing last week's #1, Disney's Race to Witch Mountain, to the fourth spot, adding $13 million to its 10-day total of $44.7 million. Rounding out the Top 5 was Watchmen, which made just $6.7 million in week three for a total take of $98.1 million, far less than what Warner Bros. was hoping for. In just its second weekend The Last House on the Left slipped to #6 at the box office, with a 58% drop to $5.9 million, bringing its sum to $24 million. Box office numbers were down 5% from this same time frame last year.

The theaters of Broadway, in New York, dimmed their lights to pay homage to the late film and stage actress Natasha Richardson, who died last week following an accident on a Quebec ski hill. Richardson's husband, mother, and sister (actors Liam Neeson, Vanessa Redgrave, and Joely Richardson, respectively) were amongst the crowd at the rare Broadway tribute, which lasted for exactly one minute at 8:00 last Thursday evening. "Her theatrical lineage is legendary, but her own singular talent shined memorably on any stage she appeared," remembered Charlotte S. Martin, the Broadway League's executive director. The Tony-winning actress was just 45-years-old at the time of her death, which was caused by bleeding in the skull, as the result of a fall on a training hill.

New Jersey-born, London-based film and stage actress Betsy Blair died March 13th at the age of 85, following a battle with cancer. Blair (b. Elizabeth Winifred Boger) was still in her teens when she worked as a dancer at a New York nightclub, where she met choreographer (and later actor) Gene Kelly, 12 years her senior. The couple married in 1941, moved to Hollywood, and then divorced in 1957, but not before Blair earned an Oscar nod for her supporting work in 1955's Marty. Her strong left-wing beliefs eventually led to Blair being blacklisted in Hollywood, which stunted her acting opportunites almost altogether. In 1963 she wed Czech filmmaker Karel Reisz, and made her final appearance in the 1994 mini-series Scarlett.

Tribune Media Services has filed a lawsuit against Oscar-winning actor-director Warren Beatty, over the TV and film rights to the legendary Chester Gould-penned comic strip Dick Tracy. According to Delaware court documents Tribune--which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last December--claims that the rights should revert back to them, because Beatty, 71, has failed to make any "productive use" of them within a 10-year period. Beatty, who purchased the exclusive rights back in 1985, directed and starred in the 1990 motion picture Dick Tracy, which won three Academy Awards (Original Song, Makeup, Art/Set Direction) and co-starred Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, and Madonna. Beatty initially sued Tribune last November, claiming that he was working on a Dick Tracy television special, which would render Tribune's suit uncredited.

Watchmen has big first-day numbers

Zack Snyder's Watchmen epic pulled in an estimated $4.6 million in its midnight shows alone, hitting theatres across North America at 12:01 am Friday morning. That bested the $2.5 million that Snyder's last blockbuster, 300, earned with its midnight showings back in March 2007, but came up short for first-day tallies, as Watchmen made about $25 million on Friday, compared to 300's $28.1 million take. That gives Warner Brothers' Watchmen the third highest-grossing first-day total for an R-rated film, behind 300 and The Matrix Reloaded, which garnered $42.5 million in '03. Watchmen also opened in more theatres--3,611--than any other R-rated movie in history, some 500 more than 300, which went on to produce an accumulated $210 million at the domestic box office.

Watchmen, which is a superhero feature based on the 23-year-old 12-book DC graphic novel series penned by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, is the first major blockbuster flick of the year, and is expected to rake in about $65 million in its first weekend, less than the $70.9 million total that 300 did two years ago. These numbers are more than good enough to give it the #1 spot at the box office this Sunday, bumping Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail from its two-week reign at the top.