Weekend Box Office (Sep 11 - 13)

Here are Steve Mason's Friday estimates and weekend projections (although, he seems to have forgot about The Final Destination):

EXCLUSIVE STEVE MASON FRIDAY & 3-DAY ESTIMATES FOR SEPTEMBER 11-13
1. Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself (Lionsgate) - $8.6M Fri - $23.75M 3-day - $23.75M cume
2. 9 (Focus) - $3.3M Fri - $9.75M 3-day - $14.2M cume
3. Inglourious Basterds (Weinstein) - $2M Fri - $7M 3-day - $104.8M cume
4. All About Steve (Fox) - $1.9M Fri - $6.3M 3-day - $22.3M cume
5. White Out (Warner Bros) - $1.9M Fri - $5.5M 3-day - $5.5M cume
*Sorority Row (Summit) - $1.8M Fri - $4.6M 3-day - $4.6M cume
*GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra (Paramount) - $675K Fri - $2.5M 3-day - $144.25M cume

Box Office Mojo has listed Friday estimates, but when you click on it you get the whole weeks numbers instead of Friday's numbers, so here are the top 3 at least, and it has Sorority Row at 3 (although, it is only .1M difference):

FRIDAY ESTIMATES
1. I Can Do Bad All By Myself $8,600,000
2. 9 $3,325,000
3. Sorority Row $1,925,000

Really no surprises here. Tyler Perry slays the rest of the pack and everything else tanks.

I wouldn't be surprised if Inglourious managed to snag the #2 spot again this week.

Hopefully, Cloudy With A Chance will help this weak September so far.

Next week will probably be the same story: Cloudy does well while everything else tanks.

Buscemi wrote:Next week will probably be the same story: Cloudy does well while everything else tanks.

Maybe all of the people that you said were going to go to Sorority Row are waiting until Jennifer's Body next week. :)

No, there just isn't an audience for horror right now. Not for Jennifer's Body, not for Zombieland, not for Night Of The Demons, not even for Saw VI. Maybe The Stepfather could bring younger viewers in but I don't see it now.

They are probably waiting for Surrogates and Couples Retreat. You know, movies with actual promotional campaigns and familiar faces.

Because no one went to watch what's probably a snoozefest, no one will watch Zombieland? I haven't seen promos for Couples Retreat either... Surrogates, though, it everywhere.

I find it hilarious that in the last week you've changed from "Fame is going to win two weekends in a row." to "People are waiting on Surrogates."

and...

"People are getting tired of Vince Vaughn." to "People are waiting for Couples Retreat."

Anything can happen over a span of a couple of weeks. Also, Shryke told me that Surrogates ads were everywhere right now. I've been seeing Couples Retreats posters and trailers all over theatres as well.

As for the horror films, it's just too damn crowded at the moment. The Final Destination was #1 for two weeks and that has probably satisfied the horror pallet for the moment. Halloween II and Sorority Row have disappointed (despite Sorority Row's big ad campaign), Jennifer's Body and Zombieland will fall under the horror comedy curse, Night Of The Demons, Pandorum and The Box are DOA and Saw VI is part of a sinking ship. The only horror that may do well for the rest of the year will likely be The Stepfather since it is PG-13 and will bring in the younger crowd (also some teenagers will probably buy Stepfather tickets and sneak into Saw VI or Law Abiding Citizen).

Also about snoozefests, are 80% of today's movies snoozefests anyway?

Seems like anything Summit releases not starring Nicolas Cage or vegetarian vampires flops...

I think Zombieland and JB both offer something other than straight horror, unlike Halloween, Sorority Row, and FD. Comedy and Megan Fox, namely. I still think these two will be fine. Then again, I though SR would do well too.

Couples Retreat has its trailer on almost every movie in theaters, for some reason though I haven't seen a poster, billboard, or any TV spots anywhere.

Well, Couples Retreat is still about a month away. I don't usually start seeing TV spots for fall movies until about three weeks prior to release.

I bought a ticket for 9 today, but went into the wrong theater; the theater that I entered (which was showing Tyler Perry) had trailers for Pastor Brown, Precious, Good Hair and Couples Retreat. I realized my mistake just in time to go one theater over and catch the trailer for The Vampire's Assistant.

And 9 was awesome, BTW. I gave it 9/10. (No, really.)

I just looked up Pastor Brown. Though it sounds like every other clone of a Tyler Perry/T.D. Jakes project, the reteaming of the two main protagonists from Gargoyles may make it worth a rental or something.

Buscemi wrote:No, there just isn't an audience for horror right now. Not for Jennifer's Body, not for Zombieland, not for Night Of The Demons, not even for Saw VI. Maybe The Stepfather could bring younger viewers in but I don't see it now.

They are probably waiting for Surrogates and Couples Retreat. You know, movies with actual promotional campaigns and familiar faces.

I'm gonna have to disagree with you there... there is absolutely an audience for horror, just not for the typical crap that is dumped into the market. Jennifer's Body is just an excuse to have Megan Fox get sexy for an hour and a half (not that there's anything wrong with that ), Zombieland doesn't really fit the straight horror mold, Night of Demons should go straight to DVD and the Saw series became nothing more than over-the-top brutality many movies ago.

The problem isn't that people aren't interested in horror, the problem is that most horror put out is crap. The horror industry seems to forget that it normally requires suspense and terror to make a great horror movie (and maybe even *gasp* good acting), not just blood and guts. When good horror is marketed and released properly, it does very well in the box office. The fact that horror movies are bombing right now isn't because the market is saturated or because people have lost interest, it's because most of them are terrible. If you add up the RT ratings of Halloween 2, The Final Destination, Sorority Row and Jennifer's Body, you can't even crack 100. That's pathetic... they aren't even trying.

I wish the horror industry wasn't so lazy. Rarely do they create a great movie and when they do, it gets sequeled to death and then to a pulp from there. Rest assured though, when a QUALITY horror movie is put out and given a proper release/advertising, it'll almost always do well for itself, especially because they're such a rarity nowadays.

The sequels are what I hate, especially. When's the last time there was a half-decent horror flick that didn't have a sequel almost immediately greenlit. It's insulting that producers think of horror as "easy money". Grab some corn syrup, some C list actors, get some chick to show her tits, BOOM - it's in theaters.

Spectre wrote:
The problem isn't that people aren't interested in horror, the problem is that most horror put out is crap. The horror industry seems to forget that it normally requires suspense and terror to make a great horror movie (and maybe even *gasp* good acting), not just blood and guts. When good horror is marketed and released properly, it does very well in the box office. The fact that horror movies are bombing right now isn't because the market is saturated or because people have lost interest, it's because most of them are terrible. If you add up the RT ratings of Halloween 2, The Final Destination, Sorority Row and Jennifer's Body, you can't even crack 100. That's pathetic... they aren't even trying.

That's exactly my feeling, Spectre. There is exactly one horror movie from now till the end of the year that I'm looking forward to. Which one? The Fourth Kind. Reminds me a lot of The Mothman Prophecies, a terrifically underrated spooky thriller. One doesn't need slashing machetes or demons from hell to be scary. All it takes is the unknown. That's it. Magnify it, embellish it, make it almost tangible. The monster you can't see is much MUCH scarier than the one you can.

BanksIsDaFuture wrote:The sequels are what I hate, especially. When's the last time there was a half-decent horror flick that didn't have a sequel almost immediately greenlit. It's insulting that producers think of horror as "easy money". Grab some corn syrup, some C list actors, get some chick to show her tits, BOOM - it's in theaters.

http://www.imdb.com/news/ni0824428/

BOM's Sunday Estimates:

Top 5

1. Tyler Perry - $24.0 M
2. 9 - $10.85M
3. Basterds - $6.55M
4. Steve - $5.8M
5. Final - $5.5M

6. Sorority - $5.3M
7. Whiteout - $5.1M


PTA

1. Tyler Perry
2. No Impact Man
3. Amreeka
4. The Other Man
5. The September Issue


Note: "The Other Man", which was just added to the September leagues this month, and which I had pegged as coming out on 9/25, apparently moved up without my knowledge. Therefore, the only person that had it - JackO - will get the 2 PTA points that come with it. How 'bout them apples?

The Hangover had its biggest drop yet at 39%. Should be starting to leave a lot more theaters soon, especially with all the R-rated comedies coming within the next couple of weeks.

Final Destination should be out of the Top 10 next week, with Cloudy taking all of its 3D screens.

My mind is still blown about how well The Hangover did. Its still in my local theater with 6 showings a day!

transformers2 wrote:My mind is still blown about how well The Hangover did. Its still in my local theater with 6 showings a day!

I don't think it's mind blowing at all. When you make a good movie and you market it well enough to the get the WOM engine rocking full steam, you're going to make a lot of money. Now... did I expect it to approach $300M? No way in hell, but good movies can definitely make surprise money like this. It's amazing Hollywood doesn't take advantage of that fact more often and try to produce more quality and less quantity.

I'm still wanting Hollywood to produce more NC-17 movies.

well the last NC 17 movie was lust caution which was 2 years ago, and the highest grossing one ever was showgirls which only made 20 million. Even though we would all love to see more of them it doesn't look like its going to happen any time soon. Especially since movies like Bruno and Zack and Miri refuse to accept the nc17 and recut their movies till its an R

Why would there be more when they don't make money? Just watch porn if you want to get your adult action fix.

An NC17 movie doesn't have to be a porno. It could be rated that for extreme violence, although the way movies are nowadays I doubt that will happen any time soon. If you have ever seen a porno you would know that their attempt at a story just flat out sucks. An NC17 movie has the oppertunity to tell whatever story they want without having to worry about watering it down for a certain audience.

I'm sure if someone made a good one there would be enough of an audience for it to make a modest amount of money.

In yet another case of horror performing better in the UK than in the US, Sorority Row actually opened in fourth place against two other horror films (The Final Destination and Dorian Gray, which were #2 and #3 respectively). The #1 film over there was District 9, another film featuring horror elements (despite that film being mostly rooted in the action and sci-fi genres).

Sorority Row's UK numbers were £782,693 in 345 theatres for a £2,268 average. Converted to US dollars, the PTA was more than double the US PTA.

As for Dorian Gray, it does not have a US distributor yet despite having premiered at the Toronto Film Festival.