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Sunday
Feb072010

Box Office - 'Dear John' Whallops 'Avatar'

DateSunday, February 7, 2010 at 9:44AM
Not only did Dear John muss up Avatar's hair and take over the top spot at the box office this weekend, the surprise hit also set a Super Bowl weekend record with $32 million. At least according to the early projections, John beat the Hannah Montana concert movie from 2008, which debuted with $31.1 million. Projections can be undone by the real numbers (released tomorrow), but for the time being, Dear John has a record-breaking performance.

How did it happen? Chicks. They almost made When in Rome a hit last weekend, but given the chance to cry during a movie, women rarely turn it down. And they haven't had a movie created expressly for them in quite a while. Even still, this is a much bigger turnout than people anticipated.

The $32 million was $10 million more than Avatar, that's about 30% more in almost exactly the same number of theaters. Avatar didn't get an Oscar spike, although that would be limited more than normal because the film has already beaten every known box office record. There's not a lot of mystery left for people. But those were the only two movies to even break $20 million this weekend, and taking it a little further, they're the only two to break $10 million.

From Paris with Love tanked, earning $8.5 million, Edge of Darkness took in about $7 million, meaning that it almost certainly won't come near its $80 million budget; I wonder if Warner Bros. will touch director Martin Campbell's $150 million allotment for Green Lantern now, since that always seemed about 25% too high.

Crazy Heart and The Blind Side did get the Oscar push, though; the Jeff Bridges movie finally expanded into a reasonable number of theaters and cracked the top ten with $4 million, and Sandra Bullock made it back into the top ten, depending on which estimates you look at, after being absent for a couple of weeks. The Blind Side is now poised to give Warners its second completely unexpected $250 million movie from 2009, joining The Hangover. When you have two movies that cost so little in the top ten of the year, that's not a bad deal.

The Top Five:
1 - Dear John ($32 million)
2 - Avatar ($22 million)
3 - From Paris With Love ($8.5 million)
4 - Edge of Darkness ($7 million)
5 - The Tooth Fairy ($6.8 million)

AuthorGet The Big Picture | | in , , , , | Print ArticlePrint Article | Comment4 Comments |

Reader Comments (4)

So that would be 8 movies from 2009 that made $250 million. Any idea Colin what the record is for $250 million movies in a single year? This has to be a record

Sunday, February 7, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterHonz Brix

I think six had been the record; that's from 2007. Of course, it looks even better when you have the top movie ever on that list for 2009. Blind Side, I should point out, isn't at $250 million yet. It has about $8 million more to go, but it's still making a few hundred thousand a day at this point, so it should get there by Oscar time. I know Warners won't pull it out of theaters between now and then.

Sunday, February 7, 2010 | Registered CommenterGet The Big Picture

on a similar note to The Blind Side, it is also interesting that the three big movies from December ALL made it into the top 10 of 2009. Sherlock Holmes, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and Avatar all did incredibly well despite being crammed in together. this certainly was a year of surprises

Sunday, February 7, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterNelson

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