1. Beverly Hills Chihuahua $29 million
2. Eagle Eye $17.7 million
3. Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist $12 million
4. Nights in Rodanthe $7.4 million
5. Appaloosa $5.0 million
If you had told me back in July that Beverly Hills Chihuahua would win the weekend I would have called you crazy. I took one look at the trailer and could barely get through it and couldn’t imagine sitting through the entire feature. Kids movie’s are interesting regarding box-office math. When the Friday estimates come in, you generally have a good idea of where grosses are going to land. But theaters have an advantage that can make a kids movie earn more than you expect. Since those movies tend to play to full houses in the morning and matinees, theaters can put them on more screens in those hours than in the evenings. It works out well, not many people are going rushing to see a heavy drama at that time of day, so they’re not losing many customers by giving up those screens to movies like this. Either way, congratulations to Disney!
Eagle Eye comes in at number two, and holding it’s own. This picture is outpacing Shia LaBeouf and director D.J. Caruso’s previous outing Disturbia, by a whopping 32%! Way to go DreamWorks.
The most interesting thing about this weekend is what happened further down the chart with the rest of the new movies. Religulus, the Bill Maher doc may have only earned $3.5 mil, but it was from 500 screens. I’d say that’s looking pretty good for a documentary. Blindness came in at number twelve, making $2 mil on 1700 screens. We’ll see what happens, but the reviews have not been stellar for this high concept drama. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People opened way down at number 19, which is not the best news for MGM considering it was on 1750 screens. Yikes! But we all know that it’ll be a movie that will be on cable forever.
Rachel Getting Married, starring Anne Hathaway opened at number 27, on nine screens. With a per screen average of $34,000, Sony Pictures Classics is surely celebrating. All they have to do is build on the buzz this picture is getting, and the buzz around Hathaway’s performance. I’d expect this to grow over the coming weeks. It opened at the perfect time to have it continue throughout the fall and make it’s mark in time for awards season. We shall see.
And that’s the weekend!
© 2008 MD TOTAL all rights reserved.
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