Box Office - 'Zombieland' Dominates Friday

We gave you an indication on Thursday that Zombieland might just pick up momentum and run away with this weekend at the box office, and it's doing exactly that. On Friday, the new zombie comedy made $9.4 million, more than the next three highest-grossing films combined, to put it on course for a mid-$20 million weekend. As we said earlier in the week, great reviews and public interest were going to be the reason this film took over the top spot from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and that animated flick is a distant second, slightly ahead of the double feature of Toy Story and Toy Story 2, with about $3.7 million. It's hard to say the rest of the field even matters in terms of a discussion of box office performance; the Ricky Gervais comedy, The Invention of Lying, and Drew Barrymore's Whip It will probably make no more than $12 million between them this weekend, so the overall numbers won't be too staggering a couple months from now. The big disappointment is Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, which last weekend set a record for per-screen average this year. Expanded into nearly 1,000 theaters, Moore could only muster $1.5 million, hitting seventh place. Ironically, it looks like Moore's new film about where the money went will be his lowest-grossing movie in a decade. We'll see how well Zombieland winds up doing tomorrow. Clearly, there's nothing else grabbing the attention of adult audiences, and that should help, even though this is the sort of film that could flame out pretty early after a big debut. I don't see that happening here because of the good buzz and the lack of interest in everything else. So it's possible we could be on the high end of the mid-$20s here, but it will at least make about $21 million this weekend.

Comments

[Denny B]

I think you may be prematurely dismissing Whip It!, for several reasons. First of all, it opened at approx. Half the theaters of what Zombie did. Second, I see it getting lots of word-of-mouth and gaiining legs while Zombie dies off after the first week. Lastly, I think a lot of the people that saw Zombie first, will check out Whip It! next. Just a hunch. : )

[Get The Big Picture]

It could be that Whip It gains an audience in future weeks, however, Fox Searchlight will soon begin its Oscar push for Amelia and the 1,700 theaters for Whip It represents the widest it will ever go. It's already in twice as many theaters as (500) Days of Summer ever was. So Searchlight can't be as patient with it as it can one of those movies that opens in 30 theaters one weekend and slowly expands and builds momentum.

It's also not a good sign that the film is released where it needs to be, major urban areas, and it will still struggle to hit $7 million this weekend. The per-screen average is also really low, and that's very hard to overcome.

[chris r]

I like watching movie like Zombieland in theaters, but prefer watching movies like Whip it at home.

There is nothing like seeing blood and guts on the big screen.