Weekend Estimates by Klady – Oct 25
Paranormal has clearly found normal, holding for what is estimated to be 3x Friday over the weekend… which is better than most horror genre films do. More congrats to Paramount marketing.
As for WTWTA, not sensational, but not deadly. You have to go back to July to find a movie other than Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs that opened to $30m or more and dropped less than 49% in the second weekend. My sense is that its still rather blurry about who the movie is for. But the door is closing on WB after this next weekend. $80m domestic is going to be a fight and foreign is going to define whether the film is profitable.
The most interesting number on the board, for me, is $1.3m for Aida Live… 1 screening… 4 hours long… in just 403 theaters. I have never been much of a believer in event programming satellited to theaters. But this is very interesting.
There is a certain amusement about An Education and AntiChrist having about the same per screen.
“Law Abiding Citizen” passes Righteous Kill to become Overture’s biggest hit after only two weekends?!
If “Cirque Du Freak” really had a $40 million production budget…ouch.
Whatever Stan Helsing is, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a $70 per theatre average. 3 tickets per day?
Another bomb for Uma Thurman…
glad PA did well even if it isn’t the best/fave horror of mine, it is better than the vast majority of Hwood horror in the last 15 yrs. Bonza.
Very glad it kicked Saw’s blade since I never wa a fan and they should have stopped at the first.
WTWTA was a manipulated piece of disappointment. Didn;t enjoy the type of projection that the writer/dir made onto an originally great story. If it aint broke don’t fix it.
I’m curious how DP will try to downplay those Paranormal Activities numbers *this* time.
I haven’t even had a chance to see it yet but I find it incredibly refreshing that clever marketing and good word of mouth can still be used to turn a small film into a blockbuster.
So with an opening weekend of about $15 million, Saw VI will end up with between $30-$35 million when all is said and done. It’ll make a little more than half of what Saw V made. I haven’t seen part five but based on reviews and fan reaction it seems that even fans of the series hated it. Is that a much bigger factor than the success of PA? It’ll be on DVD in three months and Showtime in a year, so maybe even fans figured they can wait. That’s a pretty huge drop in one year. Maybe by Saw VIII they’ll be direct-to-DVD.
Fox Searchlight has three wide-release bombs in row: POST GRAD, WHIP IT and AMELIA….. It is a good sign for them….
“If [Paranormal Activity]is a $100 million movie… or even a $60m movie, I will be eat my shoe.” — David Poland, Oct. 10, 2009.
So when do we see the video of the shoe-eating?
Boo Yah, Joe. BOO YAH!
That would make a great DP/30 with Werner Herzog. Hmmm, Bad Lieutenant opens next month.
Has Poland ever indicated whether he liked Paranormal Activity? I think it’s a terrific DIY horror experience, better than the underrated Blair Witch.
It might be THE moviegoing experience of the year. It is a film that really only works in a packed theater. It simply won’t have the same effect on DVD, iPod, or computer. Like the best horror, it’s the anticipation of what’s coming that makes the movie work. The final 15 minutes are worth the wait.
Even if you don’t like it, you can’t deny the experience of seeing it in a theater is what makes it special.
How is it I can be in a packed midnight showing of Transformers 2 and feel all alone? Meanwhile, I saw Paranormal Activity with no more than 40 people and it felt like we were in it together.
Jimmy: it’s because you go see TF2 with a bunch of assholes, that are way too uptight maybe? My TF2 crowd was pretty damn loud. So it’s a site by site situation. Nevertheless, Paranormal Activity demonstrates how this current moviegoing generation are a bunch of suckers.
Yup, Aida Live took in $1.3m.
And that was only in North America. These performances are beamed to over 40 countries worldwide and I saw it here in Ireland. Nice little money earner for the Met.
THANK YOU! Thank you for somebody going against the utter shit of the SAW series and beating it. This could have happened a year or 2 ago. TRICK R’ TREAT would have crushed it.
SAW is the most redundant, idiotic series I can remember. And I’m a horror fanboy.
I wonder if this one ends with a 10 minute monologue by Jigsaw where he explains who was playing the game, but then it was someone else who the game was on. THEN –oh no!!–it was actually somebody else who had the game played on them while playing a game on the other guy who was REALLY the target of the game. All while that annoying music mounts.
If that constitutes as a SPOILER, sorry. But the other 5 ended the same way.
The series and the genre needs to go away. looks like it’s almost gone.
Thank you, Jebus!
I’m not so sure about TRICK R’ TREAT. I finally caught up with it on DVD after hearing about it for a couple of years and I think the studio might have done the right thing by dumping it.
I found it to be one of those dreaded horror “comedies” that wasn’t particularly funny *or* scary. I didn’t find any of the various stories to have any meat on them as they plodded towards their fairly obvious conclusions. Other than the hook of trying to possibly exploit the Anna Paquin/True Blood angle I think this would have been very hard to market.
And I assume we should expect Paranormal Activity 2 for Halloween 2010?
I hate to say it but I agree with Krazy Eyes – Trick ‘r Treat struck me as pretty underwhelming. Direct to video felt like the right choice. It didn’t need to be sat on for two years though.
Trick ‘R Treat was basically a soft R-rated version of a Goosebumps ABC Family TV movie. I have no idea where all the love for it came from over the last two years.
Because in Geekworld, any time a genre-type movie (say, Meat Train) or a movie by a beloved type (like, say, Mike Judge), it’s automatically assumed sight unseen by Fanboy Nation that it’s yet another example of a BIG, BAD STUDIO sitting on a searing work of art that would TOTALLY clean up at the box office if it got the release it deserves.
Nine times out of 10, the movie in question is just kind of pleasantly average and truly had zero commercial potential.
I haven’t seen Trick R Treat yet so I don’t know…but it seems to me just by the trailer they could have released it and made some cash. Was it worse than Saw 5 or The Grudge 2?
fwiw — i thought ‘trick ‘r treat’ was a complete, total waste of time and was still better than ‘stan helsing’…but neither was as good as ‘killer movie’ or ‘my super psycho sweet sixteen'(which were not very good at all)…..that said, i will never again volunteer to do a piece on scary spoofs for halloween…really…never
I’d like to give Anna Vag-quin a trick r treat.
A WHITE treat if you know what I mean.
Have horror anthology movies ever worked at the box office?
I’m thinking the Twilight Zone movie, Tales from the Darkside the movie, the old UK Tales From the Crypt, the Amazing Stories movie…I guess Creepshow did okay, but that was quite a while ago.
As for Trick ‘r Treat, it’s okay. Not some massive undiscovered gem, but certainly not terrible either.
Dead of Night was a big hit back in ’45. I think.
The Twilight Zone made money. They can work with the right elements and stories…in a way its hard to judge because there haven’t been that many of them, really.
well, the twilight zone movie had a bit of a ‘publicity bump’ that kinda guaranteed making money….
today watched ‘house of the devil’….on the one hand, it’s a 70’s ‘don’t-go-in-the-basement’ movie with jump cuts, music cues and a really dumb ending….on the other hand, it’s pretty effective and scary….i believe it’s vod this week-end…..
House of the Devil is pretty great at what it sets out to do. The period recreation is so spot on I only knew that it was a new film because of Tom Noonan’s age. It’s the first movie I’ve ever watched on VOD and was a great little fright flick to watch on the couch.
And yes, Scooterzz, you had the same thought I did. “with the right elements” = horrifying triple manslaughter (murder?) that gains the film tons of free publicity and permanent infamy.
As far as anthologies go, check out Three… Extremes from 2005.
ha, i was just going to mention ‘3 extremes’ scott, nice asian horror anthology
(you can’t go past ‘black sabbath’ of course. there was one called ‘campfire tales’ on cable here recently that i’d’ never even heard of, it was surprisingly entertaining)
Correction:
I said [Fox Searchlight has three wide-release bombs in row: POST GRAD, WHIP IT and AMELIA….. It is a good sign for them….]
In fact, it is a bad sign for Fox Searchlight, not good. I’m sorry for my typing mistake.
Forget 3 Extremes and just see Dumplings. That movie is deranged!
now watching ‘zombieland’ and kinda disappointed that it doesn’t play so well 2nd time/at home… actually it’s pretty annoying….must…stop….halloween….movies….now….
Speaking of anthology horror movies, how about NIGHTMARES, from 1983?
I barely remember the other stories, but the one with Emilio Estevez as an arcade gamer was all the rage back in the sixth grade; Didn’t Joseph Sargent direct that?
One of those weird Universal movies from that era (like Wild Life or Terror in the Aisles) that seem to have totally disappeared from all existence, except for a once-a-decade run on Starz or Encore.
kam, if ‘dumplings’ is the one i’m thinking of (bai ling plays the cook?), it’s not an anthology from what i remember
Uh, I think his point was that “Dumplings” so overshadows the other sections you may as well not even bother with the anthology and just watch the feature-length version of that one.
(Although I like the Miike segment too)
Asian movies Asian movies < American movies. YEP YEP. 100% OF THE TIME. Watching Asian bullshit is like watching the WNBA. Only reason everyone digs it is because of Tarantino, and because dorky white dudes have an Asian fetish. When EURASIAN is the way to go. YEP YEP.
sorry, i seem to have no memory of the short ‘dumplings’; maybe i melded the two ‘dumplings’ together in my memory, or i somehow missed the short ‘dumplings’ on the DVD all together…weird. at any rate, i like both the park and miike segments, ‘box’ is spooky and surreal
my comment above was re: bob violence’s comment re: kam’s comment
DUMPLINGS is a STUPID FUCKING WORD,
Like the STUPIDEST FUCKING WORD EVER.
DUMPLINGS.
CHRIST. Who the FUCKING FUCKING FUCK would name ANYTHING “dumplings,” be it food or a MOVIE?
If you have seen this, you TAKE IT UP THE ASS.
FUCK OFF with your MIIKE, who’s like a weak version of our FAR SUPERIOR ELI ROTH ANYWAY.
ASIAN MOVIES SUCK MORE COCK THAN BELLADONNA.
AMERICA NUMBER ONE FANBOYS.
dumplings dumplings dumplings dumplings dumplings!
at least people who take it up the ass are gettin some
(and eli roth isn’t fit to use miike’s or park’s or the-‘dumplings’-guy-what-i-don’t-know-his-name’s snot rag)
GO HAVE A FEW TRILLION MORE KIDS
AND GET OFF THAT VAGINAMONY.
LEYKIS COMMANDS YOU.
HEN.
what huff sputter well i never
leahnz: If you don’t remember it then watch the feature-length version ASAP (the short version is good too but finally redundant). Also don’t read anything else about it because it works better that way. Also watch it through a pair of welder’s goggles while suspended upside down.
Oh wait, the short version has a different ending that adds a whole other level of WTF, so I guess it’s not totally redundant after all
bob v: thanks for that, i was probably as clear as mud last night re: ‘dumplings’; i saw the feature length version a while back and i’ve seen ‘3 extremes’ but i can’t for the life of me remember the short ‘dumplings’ on ‘3 extremes’, so i can only think i either lumped the long and the short films together in my memory somehow, or i didn’t watch the short at all for some reason (maybe because i’d seen the long version and figured ‘why bother’?), or maybe i’m just losing it, i don’t know.
anyhoo, i’ll borrow the ‘3 extremes’ DVD again and watch the short just to see if i recognise it and fill the bizarro gap in my memory. no probs re: the welder’s goggles and hanging from a trapeze, i was gonna do that anyway