This weekend, a movie that is NOT a sequel actually nabs the top spot. You're just as shocked as I am on this one, believe me. Sure, there are plenty of sequels in the list, but the top one... not so much. Let's go to the numbers, shall we? (All in millions, remember, and these are the studio estimates, the actuals will be available on Monday. Just to prove me wrong).
1. Ratatouille (Dis/Pix) - $47.2, 3940 screens, week 1, $47.2 total
2. Live Free or Die Hard (Fox)- $33.15, 3408 screens, week 1, $48.178 total
3. Evan Almighty (Uni) - $15.089, 3636 screens, week 2, $60.6 total
4. 1408 (MGM/Dim) - $10.6, 2733 screens, week 2, $40.389 total
5. Fantastic 4: Rise Of The Silver Surfer (Fox) - $9.0, 3424 screens, week 3, $114.8 total
6. Knocked Up (Uni) - $7.4, 2678 screens, week 5, $122.4 total
7. Ocean's 13 (WB) - $6.05, 2903 screens, week 4, $102.085 total
8. Pirates: At World's End (BV) - $5.0, 2162 screens, week 6, $295.758 total
9. Sicko (LGF) - $4.5, 411 screens, week 2, $4.6 total
10. Evening (Focus) - $3.5, 977 screens, week 1, $3.5 total
Ok, those are the numbers, but what do they mean? Well, it means that Pixar is one step closer to their world domination, although this is definitely one of the lower openings in the Pixar spectrum. Despite glowing reviews from many people, audiences couldn't get as excited for rats as they can for pop culture spewing ogres. For shame, people. Still, it opened right when people are going on extended vacations, and the weather has been lovely most places across the country, so I don't know, maybe children were actually *gasp* outside playing instead of in a movie theater. Regardless, expect this movie to have legs, because I believe everyone said the same thing about Cars last summer, that it "had an underperforming weekend" (although, considerably less than Rat here) then it went on to take a crap load of money. It's called "legs" in the "biz".
"Quotation marks"
Live Free or Die Hard, despite negative reviews from my trusted friend Dave, came in second with $33 million for the weekend, having taken in about $15 million from it's Wednesday opening. Smart move, as a lot of the audience for Die Hard will be seeing big robots fighting this next weekend. It should be noted, I believe this is the biggest opening weekend for a Die Hard movie. (But I really have no evidence to back that up. I'm gonna make an AWESOME lawyer).
Michael Moore's Sicko expanded this weekend to 410 more screens, and took in a decent $4.5 million, but given the performance of Moore's previous film Fahrenheit 911 (which is a feat rarely to be replicated in the documentary world), Sicko seems to be mildly disappointing. Again, expect good word of mouth to keep this in theaters for a long while, as it will make some money over this summer. And Evening, which seems to be about a woman dying slowly and flashing back to Claire Danes (which I admit, I sometimes do myself. Flashback to Claire Danes, that is.) took in a mild $3.5 million. And a lot of harsh reviews calling it too weepy.
I remember this line from a movie, but I don't have any idea what the movie is called. It involved an alien studying the human mating ritual, right? And he was observing the kind of movies that men and women prefer to see. The line was something like "Women prefer to watch a movie where one character dies slowly over the course of two hours, while men watch a movie where 50 characters die quickly in the first five minutes". It was something like that, and a lot funnier than I've just presented it here. Just something to make you think.
As far as holdovers go, blah blah blah, same crap, different day. Evan might not even make $100 million, Knocked Up rules, Pirates eking to the $300 mark, Shrek off the top ten (HUZZAH!) . Below the radar, nothing really too interesting going on.
Did you know Liam Neeson is in Krull?!? This movie just keeps getting better!
(I left that there from last week, and felt it deserved to remain this week. Frankly because it makes me laugh.)
And in the "Because It's There" series: Once took in $370,000 on 128 screens, bringing it's grand total to $3,831,000 in 7 weeks.
There you have my break down.Technically beginning tomorrow, we have an onslaught of Michael Bay led robots that want to fight in front of us. There's also a romantic comedy with Robin WIlliams that honestly believes it has a chance. I wish it well, but this week's all about the robots. (Then the next week will be all about wizards! And then, damn, we're closer to a Simpsons movie finally being onscreen!)
Until next weekend.... (fighting robots!)
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