Box Office Report: BANG!

Dude here again. Sorry about the tardiness, I was taking a brief holiday... In My MIND! Oh, and because I was waiting for the results of the 3 day holiday weekend before reporting. Yeah, that's what I was doing. I did not wake up several hours reeking of booze and gunpowder in the desert somewhere, and rushed to the nearest computer because I realized it was already Monday. Didn't do that at all.

This weekend, a whole lot more movies opened up. Very diverse. But there is only one king of the mountain. Let's go to the numbers, shall we? (All in millions, remember, and these are the studio estimates. The actuals will be available on Tuesday, as this is the holiday weekend estimates).

1. Paul Blart: Mall Cop (Sony)- $39.0, 3144 screens, week 1, $39.0 total

2. Gran Torino (WB) $26.2, 2972 screens, week 6, $77.2 total

3. My Bloody Valentine 3-D (LGF) - $24.2, 2534 screens, week 1, $24.2 total

4. Notorious (FoxS) - $24.0, 1638 screens, week 1, $24.0 total

5. Hotel For Dogs (Par/DW)- $22.5, 3271 screens, week 1, $22.5 total

6. Bride Wars (Fox)- $14.0, 3228 screens, week 2, $39.8 total

7. The Unborn (Uni) - $10.9, 2359 screens, week 2, $34.2 total

8. Defiance (ParV) - $10.7, 1789 screens, week 3, $11.0 total

9. Marley and Me (Fox) - $7.4, 2952 screens, week 4, $133.8 total

10. Slumdog Millionaire (FoxS) - $7.1, 582 screens, week 10, $43.9 total

So those are the numbers, but what do they mean? Well, it means the king of the hill is Paul Blart... Mall Cop. While I will confess to laughter at the title, I can't believe a movie with the title Paul Blart: Mall Cop is not only a number 1 movie, but it took in almost $40 million in four days. Say the title over and over again. Then think about what you could do with 40 million dollars. And how long that would take you to accumulate that amount.

Now take into account that there is also a movie released this weekend titled Hotel for Dogs, and while the take is significantly less, over $60 million was spent between a mall cop and a hotel for dogs.

And sandwiched in between is My Bloody Valentine 3-D, a movie about Biggie Smalls, and angry racist Clint Eastwood. Between Blart and Dogs.

This astounds me... I can't go on.

Hotel For Dogs.

There you have my amazing break down. Next week, another Underworld movie opens, the Dark Knight starts a rally to melt your face in IMAX again in case it gets a bunch of Oscar nominations, and a bunch of other Oscar-bation releases are expanding, due to the number of nominations they are anticipating. But in limited release comes Outlander, which is a movie about vikings fighting an alien which sounds like the greatest idea for a movie that my 14 year-old self could ever dream of.

Until next weekend.......