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Sunday
04Jan2009

Box Office - 'Marley' Hits $100 Million, Wins Again

DateSunday, January 4, 2009 at 11:26AM
I'll be curious to see what happens next for the top four movies of the week. For the second straight week, Marley & Me won the box office, with Bedtime Stories, Benjamin Button, and Valkyrie filling out the rest of the top four. With no new competition this week, the films were able to put up pretty strong numbers, with Marley & Me topping $100 million in ten day and earning another $24 million over the New Year's weekend, according to Box Office Mojo.

In fact, all four of last week's new releases are primed to make $100 million, as Valkyrie has already made $60 million and will be close to $75 or $80 million in another week to ten days.

But I'm curious because there is competition coming; there are 14 wide releases hitting theaters within the next three weeks. It's not so much the quality of the competition - it is early January, after all - but the sheer numbers of movies that could make a movie like Bedtime Stories fade sooner than it normally would.

We'll have expansions by several Oscar movies, including Gran Torino, The Reader, and the re-released Dark Knight, as well as horror movies The Unborn and My Bloody Valentine that are being aggressively promoted.

Speaking of Oscar movies, they constituted nine of the top ten finishers this weekend on a per-screen basis. Defiance led the way with a whopping $60,000 per screen, about ten times as much as Marley. Gran Torino looks like it's on its way to being a huge hit; the Clint Eastwood film has made just under $10 million in four weeks...in a total of 84 theaters.

And Slumdog Millionaire continues to clean up, coming in tenth place at the box office overall, with earnings now at $28 million, and it has yet to pop up in wide release. That's another thing I'm curious about: Does Fox Searchlight give the film an expanded run after the Oscar nominations come out? By that point, Slumdog will have been in theaters for two months, and I'm sure the studio would want to cash in on DVD sales generated by the Oscar push. Maybe they'll be content with what the film will have earned by that point in theaters, concentrating on what is presumed to be a March DVD release.

The Top Five:
1 - Marley & Me ($24 million)
2 - Bedtime Stories ($20 million)
3 - Benjamin Button ($18 million)
4 - Valkyrie ($14 million)
5 - Yes Man ($13.8 million)

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AuthorColin Boyd | | in , , , , , , , , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | Comment1 Comment |

Reader Comments (1)

Colin: It will be interesting to see what happens at the box office during the next few weeks. What current movies will drop dramatically? Which ones will hold? Which new releases will bomb? I am curious to see how well Gran Torino, as well as the other movies going into wide release, will fare. I am really looking forward to seeing Clint's latest flick. I also hope to see The Wrestler, Slumdog Millionaire and Revolutionary Road later this month.

Sunday, January 4, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterAllan

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