There was only one new release this weekend that managed to make a splash in the top ten, and that was the huge-budget disaster movie 2012, from Roland Emmerich. Emmerich specializes in big, noisy, action blockbusters where lots of stuff blows up, which means that 2012 is more like an out-of-season summer movie than it is a traditional winter movie, but that didn't keep audiences away. 2012 grossed an incredible $65 million this weekend.
Undoubtedly, that gross was elevated by both the presence of 3-D screenings and the new D-Box technology. Well, it's not new, per se. The use of physical manipulation of seats to put viewers further into the movie has been around since 1959's The Tingler, and that kind of cheap exploitative gimmick is even more popular today. I, for one, can't be happier to see it, and I'll be trying it out this week.
The only other big news this weekend was the expansion of Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire. The film added 156 theaters, but the gross leaped up a staggering 225% for a take of $6.09 million this weekend. That brings the movie to fourth place. The gross per theater is an astounding $35,000 per showing!
A Christmas Carol held strongly to its audience, dropping to second place from last week's first. The movie picked up another 22.325 million bones in the multiplexes, despite competing with 2012 for 3-D screens. It's going to need a lot more $20 million weekends to earn that big budget back.
Holding to third place was The Men Who Stare At Goats, which picked up $6.2 million this weekend. I got a chance to get into the theaters and see it, and I have to say that it's not a bad movie. It's a little too... Coen Brothers-lite, but it's still pretty entertaining. There's a lot of funny stuff in there.
Michael Jackson's This Is It dropped to fifth place from second last weekend, showing a more normal decline for this kind of movie. Last week was kind of an aberration, I think. The $5.1 million from this weekend fattened Jacko's box office totals to $68 million so far in the States, in only three weeks. I wonder: if Jackson had just made a comeback movie, rather than working himself to death to get back into shape for a big concert stand in London, would he have made this much? I doubt it.
The movies that took fifth, sixth, and seventh are separated by only $500,000 at best, so these numbers aren't guaranteed to be right. The Fourth Kind is probably a solid sixth place this weekend, with its $4.7 million, but Couples Retreat (seventh place, $4.253 million) and Paranormal Activity (eighth place, $4.2 million) could still swap places before all is said and done. Paranormal Activity and Couples Retreat did both break $100 million this weekend, so there's not much to complain about for either, no matter where the chips fall for the two.
Law Abiding Citizen drops to ninth from eighth, but it still took in nearly $4 million this weekend. $3.9 million, to be exact. It handily outpaced The Box, which brought in only $3.185 million to round out the top 10. Pirate Radio just barely missed the top 10.
There's a pretty big slate of movies coming out this weekend. There's Sandra Bullock's uplifting sports drama The Blind Side. The latest in a long, long line of animated comedies rolling out is Planet 51, featuring the voice of The Rock, Dwayne Johnson, among others. There's also a little movie coming out called The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which you might have heard of.
I cannot wait to get my teeth into that piece of junk. I'm salivating. What Twilight did to vampires, they're now trying to do to werewolves. Oh, they deserve this.
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