Box Office Report: Special SAW weekend edition

Dude here again. Doing my laundry. Wondering what happened with Daylight Savings Time. It usually occurs this time of year. (According to my past box office reports). How does that happen? I mean, I know it's an arbitrary date set for farmers, but still, how can we just decide to change it? Sometimes my brain hurts from thinking things through too much.

This weekend, in a shock to absolutely nobody at all, Saw IV took the top spot at the box office. It's rather predictable at this point. Almost kind of sad. Almost. 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. Saw IV (LGF) - $32.1, 3183 screens, week 1, $32.1 total

2. Dan in Real Life (BV) - $12.0, 1921 screens, week 1, $12.0 total

3. 30 Days of Night (Sony) - $6.7, 2859 screens, week 2, $27.3 total

4. The Game Plan (BV) - $6.2, 3342 screens, week 5, $77.0 total

5. Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married? (LGF) - $5.7, 1897 screens, week 3, $47.3 total

6. Michael Clayton (WB)- $5.0, 2585 screens, week 4, $28.7 total

7. Gone Baby Gone (Mira) - $3.9, 1713 screens, week 2, $11.3 total

8. The Comebacks (FoxA) - $3.45, 2812 screens, week 2, $10.0 total

9. We Own The Night (Sony) - $3.4 2402 screens, week 3, $25.0 total

10. Nightmare Before Christmas 3-D (BV) - $3.3, 564 screens, week 2, $10.0 total

So those are the numbers, but what do they mean? It means that not even death can stop Jigsaw. Apparently dying at the end of Saw III (oh, spoiler for a year-old movie you shouldn't care about) is no match for major box office success. In fact, the movie is so successful that they've already begun back-to-back productions on Saw V and VI, meaning I can just cut and paste this paragraph for the next two halloweens! Lethargy rules!

It should be noted that the success of this movie means all those "torture porn movies are waning in the public eye" people are going to be silenced, and we're gonna have a few more down the pipe again.

Dan In Real Life, the movie that asks us to believe that Steve Carell and Dane Cook are brothers, came in second, taking in around $12 million. Not bad, considering that it was released on less than 2000 screens. Pretty impressive, as it's also the movie getting the best reviews of the week.

The rest of the holdovers continue to underperform, which is no surprise.

Below the radar, the latest film from cinematic legend Sidney Lumet, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, opened up on 2 screens and took in $73,500, making it the highest per screen average of the week. (Finally besting the average of the Blade Runner cut that's been out for several weeks).

And in the "Because It's There" series: Halloween took in $156,000 on 271 screens, bringing it's grand total to $57,971,000 in 9 weeks.

There you have my break down. Next week, we have a highly anticipated animated movie, and the re-teaming of the cast of Virtuosity, which should lead to some record breaking box office weekends. Or not. This business is totally unpredictable.

Until next weekend....