Moviegoers, the majority of which were women and over the age of 25, chose to spend their dollars learning about the turbulent birth of Facebook at the box office this weekend. Everyone else either joined them or found alternate means of entertainment.
David Fincher’s The Social Network pulled in an estimated $23 million in ticket sales from Friday through Sunday with a per-screen average of $8,300. The David Fincher drama starring Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin and Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker is off to a solid start and should have strong legs attracting adults through word of mouth for several weekends to come.
As Friday’s numbers hinted, the other two newcomers were not as fortunate.
Paramount Vantage brushed the dust off Case 39 and managed to attract $5.4 million in business, good enough for only seventh place. The film’s poor performance reinforces the idea that Renee Zellweger’s box office magnetism is a thing of the past.
Case 39 was expected to flop based on the 25% fresh rating at reviews aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes. The similar fate of Matt Reeves’ Let Me In, the American remake of Let The Right One In, casts a doubt on the validity of reviews and Internet bloggers to drum up business.
Despite an 86% fresh rating, Let Me In could only muster $5.3 million playing on a similar screen count as Case 39. Unlike Case 39, it has been heavily promoted by distributer Overture Films over the past several weeks and bloggers have been gushing nonstop about how fantastic it is and pushing their followers to go see it. The buzz never caught on outside a small niche audience and the result is sharing the horror genre and “flop” status with Case 39.
The rest of the weekend box office top ten breaks down with Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole surprisingly taking second place with $10.9 million; Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps with $10.1 million; The Town with $10 million; Easy A starring Emma Stone aka the new Mary Jane with $7 million; You Again with $5.6 million; Devil with $3.7 million and Alpha and Omega with $3 million.
The finalized weekend box office numbers and the results of our Weekend Box Office Prophet Game will be published Monday afternoon.
