Box Office Analysis Week 48

Source: www.boxofficemojo.com

New Moon almost eclipsed by Bullock’s Blind Side!

Everyone blindly assumed that NEW MOON would return as the #1 movie over the Thanksgiving weekend. And while, yes, NEW MOON was the #1 movie this holiday weekend, it was by a much smaller margin than most anticipated. NEW MOON grossed $42.5MM this weekend beating out THE BLIND SIDE by only about $2MM. While MOON dropped a big-time 70.2%, the Sandra Bullock family drama THE BLIND SIDE actually rose by 17.6% with $40.1 million bringing its total so far to over $100MM in just its second week.

So with all the frantic Twihards flooding the movie theatres this weekend, you might think that everyone else would stay home and not want to fight the crowds, but it was a surprisingly strong week. The Sandra Bullock drama THE BLIND SIDE surprised with a $34.5 million performance, the biggest ever opening for the actress (and this is after THE PROPOSAL opened to $33.7 million earlier this year). And while it sported a decent sized drop of 59% off last week’s numbers, 2012 still did decent business in third place with $26.5 million. NEW MOON’s numbers aren’t exactly shabby though with a total of $230.7MM since opening last weekend.

The weekend’s two major new releases, OLD DOGS and NINJA ASSASSIN, did just okay in their first weekends with OLD DOGS unable to tap into the family audiences that BLIND SIDE dominated and only was able to bring in $16.8MM. NINJA, on the other hand, landed in 6th place and brought in $13.1MM.

Speaking of family fare, FANTASTIC MR. FOX expanded wide over the Thanksgiving weekend and didn’t make much of an impact. It posted a disappointing $7MM despite overwhelmingly positive reviews. Meanwhile, the Disney mo-cap animated A CHRISTMAS CAROL actually saw its totals increase by over 30% despite losing over 500 theatres. It brought in an additional $16MM for a total of $105MM so far that will only grow as Christmas approaches.

Finally, this weekend saw the limited release of two very different movies, THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG and THE ROAD. PRINCESS only opened in New York and Los Angeles but brought in an astounding $356,000 average per theatre. THE ROAD opened slightly larger (in 111 theatres) and performed respectfully with $1.5MM.

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