Such was Avatar’s dominance it’s hard to remember a frame being so lopsided. With $1.6 Million since Thursday Avatar bested second placed Twilight: New Moon by an astonishing $1.5 Million. Adding in the Wednesday night previews and the sci-fi epic has pulled in a smidge over $1.7 Million to date.
While this total is impressive, it is a tad short of what might have been expected given the films’ audience awareness, the marketing blitz and the adding surcharge from dozens of 3-D cinemas. But the director’s follow-up to Titanic did fall on the final weekend before Christmas, which is traditionally a tough weekend for films to perform on.
Relinquishing the top spot for the first time on five weeks, New Moon slipped a moderate 38% and gobbled up another $141,000 from the Twi-hards, a final total north of $6 Million should be achievable.
Where The Wild Things Are continued to perform well both with adults and children as the film settled into third this weekend. With $879,000 already in the bank look for the Spike Jonze flick to crest the coveted $1 Million mark over the Christmas weekend.
Planet 51 showed the best legs in the top ten this weekend, falling a very respectable 7% to actually climb the charts from seventh into fourth. The film is finally gaining traction with the school holidays kicking in and will now be a viable option for families over the traditionally strong Boxing Day period.
The Time Traveler’s Wife saw its total boosted by $80,000 as it plopped into fifth place for the weekend. Already out-performing expectations, the romantic drama has collected over $660,000 and looks placed to give audiences a nice alternative to the bombastic top two blockbusters.
Falling 54% Zombieland was overtaken by The Time Traveler’s Wife as it slid into sixth place for the weekend; having already collected roughly 80% of its expected final total, look for the hit horror to shed theatres to make room for the Boxing Day releases this week. Following in seventh place was another animated extravaganza, with the oddly named Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs. The Sony release has collected almost three times as much as Planet 51 and benefited greatly from a two week headstart on its main competition.
Tumbling an alarming 44% in its second week, the dark Kiwi novel adaptation Under The Mountain dropped to $52,000 to bring its total to only $193,000. Despite being heavily pushed on TV, radio and online, the Jonathon King production is disappointing in a big way and calls into question the feasibility of high-risk and high-investment Kiwi tentpole flicks.
The only film to open against Avatar was duly crushed and swept aside by the Jake Sully and his giant blue friend. Bandslam got slammed and could only manage a paltry $42,000 despite playing in 48 theatres. To put that into perspective, The Storm Warriors pulled just under that total last week, playing on only seven screens. Look for Bandslam to disappear over the next couple of weeks. Rounding out the top ten was 2012, which was most affected by the opening of Avatar, as its audience was stolen away and it could only manage $40,000.
Next week should see some impressive numbers at the Kiwi box office with Avatar facing strong competition on Boxing Day as Sherlock Holmes, The Lovely Bones, Alvin and The Chipmunks 2 and critically acclaimed The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo all open. Avatar should easily win the weekend, thanks to the other titles only debuting on Sunday, but the overall box office should be smoking into next week.
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