Box Office: 'Blart' Beats Bloodsuckers

All your base are belong to Paul Blart. Mall Cop rallied with a $10 million Saturday to push it past Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, scoring its second number one finish. The Kevin James comedy has now earned over $60 million in ten days, according to Box Office Mojo, and yep, it could be a $100 million movie by the time it's through. Yeah, I think we can plan on a sequel here. Lycans did what a lot of stiffs do at the box office: It never made more than it did on opening day. That means curiosity in the film is really limited, so the $20 million it has earned should be a significant chunk of its domestic total. The target audience for the Underworld prequel will have plenty to see in the coming weeks, which certainly won't help its cause. Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino is about two days away from $100 million, thanks to a third place finish this weekend, while Slumdog Millionaire cracked the top five with a $10.5 million debut in wide release. Slumdog should benefit the most from Oscar buzz, and by the time the Academy Awards hit, the feel-good film should be hovering around $80 million or more, and with a Best Picture win, it could push Slumdog close to $100 million, just in time for the March 31st DVD release. That's good planning. The Top Five:
1 - Paul Blart ($21 million)
2 - Underworld ($20 million)
3 - Gran Torino ($16 million)
4 - Hotel for Dogs ($12 million)
5 - Slumdog Millionaire ($10.5 million)

Box Office: 'Paul Blart' Cashes $34 Million Check

Lots of people underestimated Paul Blart: Mall Cop, but more people paid to see it. Remarkably, the new Kevin James comedy that is saddled with a leaky concept and bad reviews didn't just win the weekend box office, it crushed it.

The last man standing after Sunday's estimates, Paul Blart beat Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino by over $10 million. Nearly every projection going into the weekend had Blart in the $15 million dollar range, but Box Office Mojo reports a $34 million debut. If you're wondering, that's only $6 million off the pace of the biggest January opening ever, last year's Cloverfield. Damn. That left Eastwood fighting several new releases for second place. On Friday, Clint was in fourth, but Saturday and Sunday helped push him back above My Bloody Valentine and Notorious, a race for third place that might be too close to call until the official numbers are in Monday afternoon. Hotel for Dogs also did well for itself, with a debut that fell just shy of $18 million. All told, the top ten movies earned $160 million this weekend, and technically, there's one more day to go because Monday is a holiday. That's a healthy chunk of change for mid-January. The Top Five:
1 - Paul Blart: Mall Cop - $33.8 million
2 - Gran Torino - $22.2 million
3 - My Bloody Valentine - $21.9 million
4 - Notorious - $21.5 million
5 - Hotel for Dogs - $17.7 million

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Box Office - A Good Opening Day in the Big n' Tall Section

What's happening here? Next you're going to tell me that the Arizona Cardinals have a chance to go to the Super Bowl. Despite overwhelmingly dour reviews, which has been a fair deterrent in the past couple of months against bad movies raking in cash, Paul Blart: Mall Cop seems poised to win the holiday weekend at the box office. The Kevin James comedy made just under $10 million on opening day, a number nobody saw coming, and now it looks like over the four-day weekend, the movie could earn over $35 million. That's astonishing.

We had predicted a much lower number not just for that movie but also for Friday's second place finisher, the musical bio-pic Notorious. If we're looking at the weekend as counting Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, then Notorious could generate roughly $30 million itself. Projections were lower for both films across the board; most estimates had My Bloody Valentine and Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino in the top two spots in some order, but while Valentine remained very competitive and could hit the $25 - $30 million range, too (it actually tied Notorious dollar for dollar, according to Box Office Mojo, but it's in 900 more theaters), Gran Torino stumbled to fourth place, with over $6 million on Friday.

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Fearless Forecast - Clint Guns Down 'Valentine'

Though he'll be facing a lot of competition this weekend, with four new releases hitting theaters, plus the expected curiosity to see the Golden Globe winners in limited release, Clint Eastwood should emerge victorious at the box office again this weekend with Gran Torino.

We thought it was a possibility that he could last weekend, although we picked the younger-skewing Bride Wars. It turns out, Bride Wars was a slight disappointment in its debut and people were really drawn to the Eastwood flick; nobody pegged it as a $30 million debut in its wide release. But because those are the numbers, don't expect a huge drop this weekend. The NFL playoffs are only on Sunday now, which is not the biggest day of the three, anyway. And there's no direct competition for Eastwood's audience. Again, he's aiming for a much older demographic. The people interested in this film aren't interested in My Bloody Valentine 3-D, on the whole.

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Box Office - Clint Earns $30 Million with 'Torino'

Clint Eastwood has been a major box office player for years. Dirty Harry kicked off three straight movies in that franchise that were in the top ten of their given years in the 1970s. Every Which Way But Loose, his 1978 brawling comedy, was the fourth biggest hit of that year. Unforgiven and In the Line of Fire did great business,and even Space Cowboys made $90 million.

And at 78, Eastwood has his biggest debut ever, as well as the biggest wide release debut for a leading actor in his 70s. Gran Torino, which had been in limited release for a couple of weeks, put a stranglehold on its competition this weekend, outgrossing Bride Wars and The Unborn by nearly ten million dollars each. Eastwood's latest earned $29 million this weekend, according to Box Office Mojo, a phenomenal number when you consider all the factors. There's nobody else in the movie anyone's paying to see and there are a number of other choices for audiences - other Oscar favorites in theaters, the NFL playoffs - so the fact that we're sitting here talking about Eastwood really proves his remarkable clout with moviegoers.

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