Box-Office Wrap-up – Sept. 18-20, 2009

It used to be that opening weekend expectations shifted significantly with the coming of autumn. Late August through October were where the longer-legged grown-up pictures that warm up the cinema for awards season had time to draw in audiences rather than be forced to play the eyeball-capturing game. This is still a bit true, though much less so, as distributors increasingly put big budget releases anywhere they can find breathing room on the calendar.

Four movies received wide releases this weekend; and though only one had the kind of budget that wants for big opening numbers, all represent significant P&A expenses, and will likely be forced into the tapering-off revenue pattern these wide releases tend to create. In that pattern, you hope you can bring in about half your production budget in those first three days; because then, even with mean drop-offs you can usually lurch into profitability. If you’ve got legs after that, that’s when the icing hits the cake.

Numbers come via the good folks at Box Office Mojo

1. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs Weekend Take: $30.3M Current Domestic Total: $30.3M

We may have passed a historical moment where there is now an unbroken and perpetual string of 3-D options available to moviegoers; and in the world of family animation it’s becoming practically expected. Sony Animation does not have anything like the built-in audience of Pixar, Dreamworks, or even Ice Age makers Blue Sky – the affection for the classic children’s book put them on a booster seat, but they will be sweating throughout the week as they hope for a little loyalty in the second weekend before Disney/Pixar’s debut of 3-D versions of Toy Story 1 & 2 on October 2nd peels the kiddies away.

2. The Informant! Weekend Take: $10.5M Current Domestic Total: $10.5M

Warner Brothers did their best with a tricky project to market, and have to be pleased with their take. The prodigious Steven Soderbergh and the dedicated Matt Damon kept production costs down to $22M; not everyone on the A-List is so flexible, but they understood that it was the right price for this project. Tell-your-friends-and-neighbors factor could be good to this one.

3. Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself Weekend Take: $9.9M Current Domestic Total: $37.7M

Lion’s Gate has two franchises – Tyler Perry and the Saw series – for which their work is effectively finished after the first weekend. The drop-offs are usually dizzying, but since they almost inevitably are already in the profit-taking phase, and have no call to try and hog zeitgeist bandwidth, they can just ride the numbers and start the DVD release campaign.

4. Love Happens Weekend Take: $8.1M Current Domestic Total: $8.1M

Even with one of the gooey-softest titles anyone could invent, marketing promised an unchallenging romance experience with Jennifer Aniston. And apparently about $8M-worth of people find that all for which they could want to ask. If they had made this movie for $50M (and there are times when a studio would have), this would be a terrifying opening. But they made it for $18M. There’s a lesson there.

5. Jennifer’s Body Weekend Take: $6.9M Current Domestic Total: $6.9M

By straight dollars-to-dollars study, this is at the bottom end of acceptable but still quite acceptable. Where things get dirty for Jennifer’s Body is in perception; heavy hype of both star Megan Fox and writer Diablo Cody artificially raised the bar beyond the movie’s $16M production budget. A lot of powers-that-be have put a lot of muscle behind the idea that Megan Fox is The Girl for this age. This damages that bet; badly. But if the studio can look past that, they’ll realize they escaped without getting their hair mussed.

6. 9 Weekend Take: $5.6M Current Domestic Total: $22.9M

Adding new theatres in the second weekend is a smart pattern for a movie that lends itself to word-of-mouth, and helped cushion the second weekend numbers. This movie didn’t need to be a breakout sensation to pay potentially great dividends in the animation field. It joins Coraline as examples from 2009 of imaginative and more mature projects that show what the medium can do at a price you can recoup. And its heavily-visual storytelling ought to do well internationally.

7. Inglourious Basterds Weekend Take: $3.8M Current Domestic Total: $110.1M

Tarantino’s opus is reluctantly shedding screens but holding a remarkable amount of its audience in its second month. The Weinstein brothers know the value of keeping this movie visible headed into awards season, and will likely seek to continue holding screens. It should have at least two more weekends in the top 10.

8. All About Steve Weekend Take: $3.4M Current Domestic Total: $26.7M

Female audiences may be increasing their trips to the multiplex and leaving the men at home with football, because All About Steve is enjoying a quiet trip to ticket window respectability. Sandra Bullock is savvy enough to know that not every project needs to bring in the dollars of The Proposal – merely by avoiding the black mark of a flop, she buttresses her star profile.

9. Sorority Row Weekend Take: $2.5M Current Domestic Total: $8.9M

Horror movies love fifty-percent second weekend drops. Sixty and even seventy have become increasingly regular in the genre. This kind of hold, reflecting maybe not word-of-mouth but murmur-of-mouth, changes the perception on Sorority Row, maybe even gets the producers exploring a direct-to-DVD sequel.

10. The Final Destination Weekend Take: $2.4M Current Domestic Total: $62.4M

With this, and the successful re-launch of the Friday the 13th franchise, we might be seeing a developing middle class in the horror world. The audience has certainly been nurtured enough by a steady stream of $20M-and-under projects released year-round; a select few brand-name entries at $40M practically serve as mini tent-poles for a crucial demographic. Which, knowing Hollywood, means they will quickly make too many of them and spend too much. If they’re mean to pretty teenagers around here, they’re even meaner to golden geese.