The Weekend Report

Those Damned Apes Got A Peel

You can’t keep a good chimp down (or orangutan) and the re-booted Rise of the Planet of the Apes swung a wide arc with an estimated $54.2 million bow that handily set it atop weekend movie going. The frame’s other wide debut, the comic The Change-Up, chuckled into fourth slot with $13.5 million.

The session also saw a clutch of limited and exclusive bows that posted encouraging openings. The political thriller The Whistleblower grossed $57,400 from 7 posts while American indies Gun Hill Road and Bellflower had respective bows of $35,800 and $20,600 at three and two screens. The four and one-half hour fest fave The Mysteries of Lisbon was also upbeat with a $9,900 tally from two initial engagements.

Overall revenue climbed to about $166 million to register an 8% decline from the prior weekend and a 24% boost from 2010. One year back the launch of The Other Guys with $35.5 million led the field and the frame’s other frosh, Step Up 3D, ranked third with $15.8 million.

Both industry expectation and tracking for the umpteenth incarnation of the venerable Planet of the Apes franchise was ho-hum. The underlying attitude was uninformed with cynicism that ultimately gave way to enthusiastic reviews and considerably better than the $40 million or so predictions floating through the system.

The summer has been rife with low ball projections that ought to trouble industry tracking companies and cause a rethink on methodology. The past year has seen a shift in audience composition; most noticeably in the erosion of the 18 to 25 year old crowd that’s been the core of ticket buyers for decades. While Rise of the Planet of the Apes exit demos skewed slightly male with 54%, its audience was calculated 56% as 25 years and older … virtually every wide release of the summer has been dominated by “older” attendees.

While no one need pass around collection plates for theater owners, one can nonetheless appreciate their pain. In addition to hefty costs to convert to digital exhibition, they’ve been confronted with increasingly shrinking windows between theatrical and VOD, DVD and other ancillary revenue streams. Now they have to resolve the fact that a big chunk of their audience feels that the cost of a night at the movies is too expensive. The one-time avids haven’t lost the habit but they’re unquestionably less rabid.

The beneficiary of the shift ranges from circuits such as Landmark and screens devoted to alternative product to niche distributors and the studio’s specialized divisions. While the summer anomalies cannot claim the heights of My Big Fat Greek Wedding or The Blair Witch Project, there have been a handful of summer releases that embrace the likes of Midnight in Paris and Buck that have sustained and grossed far in excess of anyone’s dreams. The latest addition to that group is French import Sarah’s Key that’s already grossed $1.3 million after three weekends in very limited release.

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