Box Office Analysis Week 34

Source:
www.boxofficemojo.com

Tarantino remains geek king!

Finally!! A Tarantino movie that is a “hit” with critics and the movie-going public (at least in terms of its opening) QT’s latest film entitled INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS generated close to $38M in its first 3 days of release in North America, making it the Los Angeles-based director’s biggest opening ever! (his previous biggest launch was KILL BILL: VOLUME 2 in 2004 with $25M). BASTERDS added an additional $28M overseas increasing its grand total to $65M for its worldwide opening weekend. Bet the Weinstein brothers are damn relieved to see those figures, man!

For those scoring at home, the film apparently cost about $70M to produce, so unless it takes a major nosedive next weekend (although if it was up to us movie fans, the “word of mouth” will remain strong for a while), it looks like a pretty successful late summer release to me. Not sure if it will become Tarantino’s most successful box-office hit of all-time, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see for that. PULP FICTION made upwards of $107M back in 1994.

And speaking of successful late summer releases, last week’s big #1 hit, DISTRICT 9, managed a pretty solid second week as well, adding another $19M to its coffers, which are now filled with $73M worth of box-office dollars, in its first 10 days of release alone. Not too shabby for a $30M production. Despite being a “genre film” which are known to lose 60-70% of their audiences by week 2, DISTRICT 9 only lost 49% of its numbers from last weekend, which means that it might even be able to hit the $100M mark.

The weekend’s other “big releases” didn’t fare so well, including Tarantino’s buddy, Robert Rodriguez’ latest “kid’s movie” entitled SHORTS, which only managed about $7M and a 6th place finish (needed more nazis, I think). Some teen flick called POST GRAD also finished badly in 10th place with about $3M in receipts, which was apparently a lot more than Disney’s X-GAMES 3D: THE MOVIE, which barely managed $800,000, despite being released in 1,400 theaters! (only BANDSLAM had a lower per-screen average with $422/per screen) Looks like Disney ain’t finishing the summer strong. Thank God they have Pixar!!

Looking much further down the weekend charts, I see MY ONE AND ONLY, Renee Zellweger’s latest attempt to get back into the Hollywood game with only $60,000, although in its defense, it only opened in 4 theaters. My simple advice to Zellweger is this for now: eat more, honey! Go to Burger King, order a couple of Junior Whoppers and start from there. You looked amazing in JERRY MAGUIRE back in 1996, but something is seriously “off” with your figure these days (if you didn’t see her on Letterman the other night, behold the skinniness HERE). Nothing seems to be going right for this chick of late…somebody help her out.

The 3 films that were bounced from the top 10 this week include THE GOODS: LIVE HARD, SELL HARD (can we stop with the stupid subtitles already??), Disney’s PONYO and 500 DAYS OF SUMMER (I still don’t understand why the studio is waiting to release this WIDE, but at this point, I guess it’s not gonna happen).

…Download Australian & US Results Here