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Saturday
05Dec2009

Box Office - 'Blind Side' Begins First Weekend On Top

DateSaturday, December 5, 2009 at 11:02AM
It's rare that you see a movie in wide release actually get stronger the longer it's in theaters. Actually if you look at the performance of certain films of all stripes over the past two months, you'll see that the opening-weekend-is-king philosophy hasn't meant much to audiences, with Paranormal Activity, Precious, and now The Blind Side. Each film approached its release differently, and each has been successful without needing to make the biggest impression first.

The Blind Side looks to be the film to beat this weekend, taking in just under $7 million on Friday. Variety compares it to last Friday's numbers (down 58% from seven days ago), but that's not really a reliable number, given that it was the day after Thanksgiving, and we know holiday weekends are their own animal. So let's look at the film's opening day, two weeks ago. From that perspective, The Blind Side has only lost 39% of its audience, which technically means that it has gained a massive audience through word-of-mouth, because that's a remarkable hold for a movie that has already made over $100 million.

I don't think New Moon has enough to three-peat, but the fact that The Blind Side competed straight up with a movie in the quarter-billion-dollar range over the same period of time is another measure of the football bio-pic's success. New Moon dropped to second place, earning $5.2 million on Friday. Very likely, the $5 million days are done for this one on Saturday. Sundays are usually slower than Fridays, and by the time the next Friday rolls around - given the drops this one has had each week - it will barely be performing over $2.5 million per day on the weekends.

I'm not positive it can get to $300 million with the way it's sliding, not that it needs to. But it would be a good milestone, and if it doesn't, it would be beaten only the third X-Men movie in terms of squandering a $100 million weekend. Right now, that's the only film to crack nine digits in three days and come up short in the race for $300, but New Moon made about $40 million more in its debut - the third best ever - and it looks like even if it hits $300 million, it won't be by much.

The percentages don't lie: Right now, New Moon's opening weekend accounts for just under 60% of its total domestic gross, and among the top 100 opening weekends ever, only Watchmen made over 50% of the gross in its first frame. To avoid that, New Moon will need about $25 million or so after this weekend.

Among the new releases, Brothers was the big winner with $3.5 million, Armored took in $2.4 million, and Everybody's Fine limped to $1.3 million in 2,133 theaters.

AuthorColin Boyd | | in , , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | CommentPost a Comment |

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