Blades Cut Competition to Shreds
April 2, 2007
March ended on a similar tone as it began, but not as strong as recent weeks.
Overall the weekend total gross was $128 million, down 5% from last weekend.
That is also down 10% from the same weekend last year.
However, it is important to note that was the weekend Ice Age: The Meltdown opened with nearly $70 million and 2007 is still 6% ahead of 2006's pace.
Blades of Glory's performance was right on the money, taking first with $33.0 million and nearly making it to the $10,000 per theater average.
This is an impressive opening for Will Ferrell, on par with Elf but below Talladega Nights, and could be enough for him to earn the fifth $100 million movie of his career.
For of Jon Heder, this is an unprecedented opening and more than his last movie made in total.
As for the film's long-term potential, its reviews improved over the weekend, ending with a top-ten-leading 70% positive.
As previously stated, $100 million is within reach.
Meet the Robinsons, on the other hand, was weaker than expected and pulled in just $25.1 million.
This is still a good total, but not up to par for a major Disney digitally animated release.
Granted, this was the second digitally animated release to come out in as many weeks, but the marketing might of Disney should have still done a better job at selling the movie.
On the other hand, the reviews were good at 64% positive and with the kid-friendly nature of the movie, it could have better than average legs.
Even so, $100 million is likely out of reach.
300 finished within a rounding error of Thursday's prediction, earning $11.4 million while moving one step closer to $200 million.
Overall, it has $179.9 million and by this time next week it should cut the margin in half.
It was revenge of the Fanboys as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fell more than 60% during its sophomore stint.
That's not a strange drop-off in retrospect, but it still caught analysts off guard.
On the one hand, this film is not living up to expectations.
On the other hand, it may have already matched its production budget, which is estimated to be $35 million, give or take, and because of that, it should have no trouble showing a profit by its initial push into the home market.
The battle for fifth place went down to the wire, but in the end both Wild Hogs and Shooter performed exactly as expected.
Wild Hogs won the race $8.7 million compared to Shooter's $8.4 million.
Despite earning the best reviews of any wide release, The Lookout failed to make the top ten.
In fact, it failed to match lowered expectations with just $2.0 million in 955 theaters.
The film will be all but gone after this week, but at least it has a shot at being rediscovered on the home market.
Finally there's Peaceful Warrior, which had the novel strategy of giving away $15 million in free tickets.
However, over the weekend it was only able to give away $1.9 million worth of free tickets to go along with the $200,000 in ticket sales.
This is more than it made during its entire limited release up to this point, but we won't know if the plan worked until next weekend when we'll see if there was a sustained bump in actual ticket sales.
There was a bumper crop in sophomore films this weekend led by The Hills Have Eyes 2.
That film fell 57% to $4.2 million, giving it a total of $16.1 million.
This is far from a being a hit, and might not even be enough to cover its limited budget.
Reign Over Me held up better, down 49%, but its weekend haul of $3.8 million and its total of $13.5 million is still very disappointing.
The Last Mimzy fell nearly 62% to $3.8 million, which is a very high drop-off for a kids movie.
Meanwhile, Pride was little better, down 59% to $1.4 million for the weekend and just $5.7 million in total.
Filed under: Wild Hogs, Blades of Glory, Meet the Robinsons, TMNT, Shooter, The Last Mimzy, The Hills Have Eyes II, Reign Over Me, Pride, The Lookout, Peaceful Warrior, 300