James Cameron’s Avatar stayed at the number one spot at the North American box office for the sixth weekend in a row. Three new films entered the marketplace but only the horror film Legion made any sort of measurable impact. Holdovers began to show their age as, Avatar aside, the box office began to quiet down following several weeks of very strong business.
With an estimated $36 million from 3,141 screens and a new cume of $552 million, Fox’s sci-fi juggernaut sailed past The Dark Knight to become the second-highest grossing domestic film release of all-time (pre-inflation, of course). The drop from last weekend’s three-day holiday take of $42.7 million is less than 20% (if estimates hold), which is just incredible in light of how much the movie has made and how many have seen it thus far. If the successive weekend drops continue to stay in the 20-30% range, Avatar could finish up its domestic box office gross somewhere in the $650 million dollar range, which is a gross that few people if any could have predicted when the movie opened in mid-December.
Of course, the film that Avatar has in its sights next for all-time box office domination is Cameron’s previous blockbuster, Titanic. While it will pass the 1997 drama’s $600 million gross within the next ten days or so, it will pass Titanics global gross of $1.2 billion sometime today. As of Friday, Avatar’s foreign take was at $1.194 billion.
Elsewhere at the box office, second place went to the new apocalyptic thriller Legion which grossed an estimated $18 million from 2,476 screens. Produced for a modest $26 million, this horror entry from Sony’s B-movie division Screen Gems opened as the studio expected thanks to an onslaught of advertising since the beginning of the year. While Legion did respectable business on Friday with a $6.7 million gross, the film only saw a 2% rise in sales on Saturday which is never a good sign for a movie’s long-term prospects at the box office.
Third spot went to another apocalyptic (in this case, post-apocalyptic) thriller with biblical overtones, Denzel Washington’s The Book of Eli with an estimated $17 million gross. Off 48% from last weekend’s strong opening, the new action flick from the Hughes Brothers now has a very healthy ten-day take of $62 million. Depending on how steep the drops are over the next few weekends, Eli could finish with a take between $90-100 million in domestic ticket sales with a healthy afterlife to be had on home video and cable.
In fourth place was the second new release of the weekend, the family comedy The Tooth Fairy. Starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Julie Andrews and Billy Crystal, the critically-slammed comedy could only muster $14.5 million in estimated ticket sales from a wide 3,344 screen count. Apparently, I’m not the only one who was mortified at the film’s trailers, although I did find the dog hanging off the wing kind of amusing. Given how well Avatar and the chipmunks sequel continue to do, I’m sure Fox could really care less about how badly the fairy fares.
Apparently, focusing on the tween girl market to sell the ultra-expensive fantasy drama The Lovely Bones was only good for one weekend of decent box office. The troubled Peter Jackson adaptation of the Alice Siebold novel dropped by 48% from last weekend’s take for a paltry $8.8 million and a new estimated cume of $31.3 million. The film will have to do spectacular business overseas to turn any sort of profit for co-distributors Paramount and Dreamworks.
Sixth place went to Warner’s holiday hit Sherlock Holmes with an estimated $7.2 million for a new gross to date of $191.5 million. The movie should cross the $200 million mark in the next two weeks and finish with a gross between $205-210 million prior to its March 30 Blu-ray Disc and DVD debut.
Seventh spot went to the first theatrical release of the newly-formed CBS Films, the Harrison Ford/Brendan Fraiser medical drama Extraordinary Measures, which imploded with a dismal $7 million from 2,549 screens. While the movie was heavily promoted, mostly on the CBS network, the drama had the look and feel of a television movie we’ve all seen far too many times and for free to boot. Familiarity aside, universally bad reviews from critics (remember, dramas aimed adults live or die on reviews) didn’t help matters much either. While Fraiser’s career isn’t in need of extraordinary measures to save it (yet), Ford’s is. The latest Indiana Jones adventure aside, Ford’s career has been on life support for over a decade thanks to poor grosses on 2003’s Hollywood Homicide, 2006’s Firewall, last year’s Crossing Over and now this film. Watch for this film to hit home video, or even CBS itself, in no time flat.
Rounding out the top ten were three holdovers nearing the ends of their successful runs. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel brought in an additional $6.5 million for a new estimated cume of $205 million. The Meryl Streep/Alec Baldwin comedy It’s Complicated made another $6.2 million to inch it ever so closer to the $100 million mark (it now stands at $98.5 million), while tenth spot went to Sandra Bullock’s runaway hit drama The Blind Side added $4.5 million to bring its new estimated total to $234 million to date.
Next weekend, Mel Gibson returns to being in front of the camera after an eight-year absence with the thriller Edge of Darkness, while Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel star in the romantic comedy When in Rome. Will Mad Mel or Veronica Mars have what it takes to knock the Na’vi off their perch? Stop by on Tuesday to enter your predictions in our weekly interactive Weekend Box Office Prophet game.
-Shawn Fitzgerald
