Box Office - 'Shutter Island' is Scorcese's Best Debut

Coming off bigger than initially reported Friday receipts, Shutter Island cruised to an easy box office win this weekend, more than doubling its next closest competition. The $40 million three-day frame is by far the best in Martin Scorsese's career, and it marks a new record for Leonardo DiCaprio, as well. The thriller might have a good 14-day run before Alice in Wonderland arrives; I'm not sure of the box office potential for either Cop Out or The Crazies, especially if Shutter Island hovers around 50% returns next weekend. That could be an interesting race. However, between this past Friday and next Friday, the film will be over $50 million in its first week, a great beginning for a movie shelved for nearly half a year. Big drops for Valentine's Day, Percy Jackson, and The Wolfman, which included a surprising 70% freefall for Valentine's Day. How a movie can start with $66 million in four days and look like it won't make it to $130 million just a week later is beyond me. I guess it served its limited purpose for the holiday weekend, but we're looking at a movie that made $23 million a week ago today that will need about two more full weeks to make that much again. Anyway, the lack of audience for those three films - a combined $42 million after last weekend's $120 million debuts - allowed Shutter Island to grab shares from each and it also propelled Avatar back into third place. Its $16 million weekend is its slowest, and now that we know the DVD is due in two months, we can begin to see the finish line for this one, which is probably just short of $750 million domestic, but it will still do $2.5 billion globaly. And from the While You Weren't Looking Department: The Princess and the Frog is now over $100 million, which is a testament to the staying power of Disney animation. You wouldn't look at that film's first two wide release weekends (only $45 million) and think it could make it through December and January. Not that it's a major success, because the hand-drawn film somehow cost over $100 million and the international box office hasn't been gargantuan, but now it's not a complete wash. And Up in the Air, which never placed better than sixth on the weekend charts and was never in more than 2,218 theaters, just passed $80 million in the US and is closing in on $150 million worldwide. Not bad for a $25 million movie they stopped marketing two months ago. The Top Five:
1 - Shutter Island ($40.2 million)
2 - Valentine's Day ($17.2 million)
3 - Avatar ($16.1 million)
4 - Percy Jackson ($15.3 million)
5 - The Wolfman ($9.85 million)

Comments

[Vince]

Excellent (and somewhat surprising) opening for the film. Didn't think it break the $40 million mark. This definitely bodes well for its box office prospects. It could do Inglourious Basterds numbers, or even better if word-of-mouth is good enough. There aren't really any adult thrillers like this out there.

Not at all surprised to see that the films opening last weekend completely crashed. That won't stop the Valentine's proposed follow-up, but The Wolfman is a bomb and Percy Jackson only has a small chance to break $100 million. Seeing as that movie cost around $100 million, it'll need a huge surge of international business for the film to even be considered a success. It's looking good on the international front at the moment, but I'm still not convinced.

[Get The Big Picture]

I think we have to look at what some of the other Potter wannabes have done. It's not fair to pick on The Vampire's Assistant, although that should be the model for these things, since it only cost about $40 million before P & A. But Eragon, also from Fox, made $250 million worldwide and didn't get a sequel. Golden Compass doubled its money (over $350 in total ticket sales) and it didn't register a part two, either.

Unless it's one of those things where the $100 million returns them $400 million or more, or like Twilight, where the films have a better gross return of investment than the Transformers movies (no joke), then the studios might be better off paying whatever the option is on a new book and trying to mold franchises out of them. Of course, since only Warner Bros. has figured out how - I'm going to say Summit just kind of backed into it - I wonder why they still try.