Box Office - Two Weekends on 'Shutter Island'

Shutter Island repeated as the box office champion, an impressive performance considering that the two new releases both went after parts of that film's audience. The total after two weekends is now $75 million, so it's almost in the black. It makes the decision to move the film from October to February a little easier to take for Paramount, but I think this could have been one of the last two Best Picture nominees instead of A Serious Man or The Blind Side had it stayed on the 2009 docket. Shutter earned $22 million in weekend two and even though it will wither in the face of Alice in Wonderland in the next frame, it's a quality film that should continue to do pretty well for another two or three weeks. This doesn't include international dollars, and Martin Scorsese almost always does well overseas. Cop Out pulled away from The Crazies on Friday and Saturday to finish in second place, with $18.6 million. It'll be a profitable movie in the long run, but unlike Shutter Island, it probably won't keep much of an audience moving forward. I'd be really surprised if the Kevin Smith-Bruce Willis-Tracy Morgan flick kept over 50% of its audience next week. I was a bit surprised that The Crazies fell flat after a pretty healthy Friday. It got good reviews and a strong start, but somewhere along the way, at least according to the early estimates, it could only turn $6 million on Friday into $16.5 million for the whole weekend. Doesn't seem to add up. As we point out from time to time, these are estimates, and they could change. In fact, over the past three months or so, the Sunday numbers haven't been all that reliable, sometimes off by 20%. But this number is based on Friday and Saturday figures, so there was certainly a tailing off on the second day, which I thought would be the strongest point for The Crazies. Avatar hit $700 million ($707 million, actually) and this is its last weekend in the $10 million range. Because it will lose all those 3-D theaters next weekend, we shouldn't expect another $100 million out of this one. It might actually - gasp - drop out of the top five next weekend. The Top Five:
1 - Shutter Island ($22.2 million)
2 - Cop Out ($18.6 million)
3 - The Crazies ($16.5 million)
4 - Avatar ($14 million)
5 - Percy Jackson ($9.8 million)

Comments

[pae]

I think the beauty of the entire movie is you don’t know how to feel and you don’t know which to believe. You are very much in the mind of Leo’s character. Paranoid and stuck between two different things that both could very much be true. I called it very early on. The fact that it didn’t show him anywhere else but the Ferry and the Island. He has experienced Trauma. The Doctor said he does experimental procedures. Patients seemed coached. Just met his partner. And there wasn’t much to the movie unless he was crazy. Frankly, practically from the beginning I just felt that’s the only way it could have been.

[Vince]

I'm excited for next weekend. Alice could very possibly break the Spring opening weekend record. Well, I'm thinking it could.

[Get The Big Picture]

Should easily do $50 million. Chocolate Factory did $56 million in about 10% more theaters, but there's more interest and higher prices for this.

[J.Bradley]

You're right that this coulda' knocked out two of the Oscar Ten, but I'm thinkin' they saw how many horror movies there were last fall and they didn't want to get lost among them. Now they're out among only two and look at what they've done. It looks like they had to make a choice - box office or awards and they chose box office. Since there's 10 Oscars noms now - and maybe a longer memory to go with that many, they'll take their chances for next year. I also wonder if some of the effects weren't done in time. The trailers last fall didn't have the effects in them that the trailers that ran in December had.

[Jerry]

I saw Avatar and the story of the movie didn't impressed me. What I liked was 3-D version of the picture and the colors and graphic were amazing. I didn't see Shutter Island with Leo yet, but would like to.

[Vince]

No worries Jerry, pretty much everyone that saw Avatar had nothing particularly good to say about the story. That's a style over substance film if I've ever seen one.