Box Office - A Win's a Win for 'This Is It'

The Michael Jackson documentary This Is It has done pretty well internationally, but the domestic numbers are nowhere near where they were expected to be. It's puzzling to me why there was still an air of dominance about the film's performance. Take for example yesterday's headline in Variety: "This Is It Continues to Transfix Auds." Well, look, $8 million on a Friday is commonplace. That's roughly what Paranormal Activity and Zombieland, and even less than Final Destination, Couples Retreat, and Where the Wild Things Are.

So yes, it won the weekend, but the ticket sales here in the US were not good. In fact, it's about 13% what AEG said the ridiculous number could be, and not quite 60% what the official estimates were. Again, the international numbers were strong - just over $100 million - but Sony just announced it will keep the movie in theaters longer than the two weeks it promised, a sure sign it won't make enough in that period to satisfy the studio. The five-day total here in the states is only $32.5 million, about $21 million of that coming over the traditional weekend. Paranormal Activity, of course, finished in second place. It only dropped 22% to $16.5 million this weekend, taking its total up to nearly $85 million. So we know it will be a $100 million movie, and as we discussed on Friday, it's already the most profitable movie ever made, thanks to its incredibly low budget. That $100 million will almost certainly come in a week or so, meaning the total US box office for this film will wind up close to $120 million.

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Box Office - A Soft Friday for 'This Is It'

When we made our prediction on Thursday about the box office future for This Is It, I was relying on information that turned out not to be true. It was reported that the film was estimated to make $10 - $12 million on Wednesday, so I based my projections on those numbers. Still, my pick wasn't all that high for a five-day period (around $50 million), but it won't get near that number, because the Wednesday actuals were in the $7 million range.

Now insider Steve Mason writes that This Is It only made $8 million on Friday, good enough for the daily win, of course, but that will only take the film to about $19 - $20 million over the first three-plus days (there were some paid sneaks on Tuesday night). And really, that's about 40% of what the film can do if Sony keeps it on the two-week release schedule. Saturday will be down considerably because of Halloween, and Sundays are known for their big rebounds at the box office. Mason's estimate is $33.2 million over the first five days, but I don't think it's got another $14 million or so over two days. That would require a big Sunday, so I'm putting this at around $30 million for the five days. That's...awful, frankly. The studio is already boosting the numbers by tying in the international results with the domestic numbers, and that's because AEG, the concert promoter and production company for the film, boasted that this documentary could make over $200 million in five days.

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Box Office - 'Wild Things' Rakes In $32 Million

Outside of the big debut for Law Abiding Citizen, the weekend played out pretty much the way we expected it to when we published our Fearless Forecast on Thursday. Where the Wild Things Are earned about a third of its production budget, with a weekend-leading $32.5 million.

As we mentioned, Law Abiding Citizen outperformed projections, nearly doubling most predictions with a very solid $21.3 million and a second place finish. The Jamie Foxx/Gerard Butler action flick only cost $50 million to make and wasn't overly hyped in the past few weeks, so there's a realistic chance this one can become pretty profitable when you add in international dollars. Speaking of profitable, Paranormal Activity continues its absurd climb through history. The sub-$15,000 horror movie made $20 million this weekend, to push its total over $33 million, and it will probably make another $30 million between now and the end of next weekend, when it will expand once again.

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Box Office - 'Wild Things' Eats Up Big Friday

Last weekend, we told you about a record-breaking performance by Couples Retreat that was so specific it barely counts as anything: Best live-action comedy opening day in October. Now there's another one along the same lines. Where the Wild Things Are pushed $11.9 million worth of tickets on Friday to secure the highest-grossing October opening day ever for live-action PG-rated movie. A coveted honor, no doubt.

While it's great that the movie did so well on Friday, let's remember that it's being released in over 3,700 theaters. That's within 10% or so of the summer blockbusters, so when we look at the final numbers this weekend - we projected low-to-mid-$30 millions and that seems about right - remember that this will have a wider opening than all but nine movies released so far this year. But if that's number one, what will finish in second place? It appears to be Law Abiding Citizen. I sent a Tweet last night alluding to the fact that we were seeing a lot more traffic here at The Big Picture for our Citizen review than even Wild Things, and I wondered if that had any meaning. It does. It means people are checking out the Jamie Foxx-Gerard Butler movie in pretty healthy numbers, so much so that it nearly grabbed as much in its entire weekend estimate on one day.

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Movie Review - 'Law Abiding Citizen'

Law Abiding Citizen Starring Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx, and Leslie Bibb Directed by F. Gary Gray Rated R

About a dozen years ago, the British evolutionist Richard Dawkins wrote a book called Climbing Mount Improbable. It has nothing to do with movies, but if Mount Improbable were real, I have no doubt that the new film Law Abiding Citizen would have its flag planted firmly at the summit. I don't remember the last film I saw that took itself so seriously and presented itself so gravely and at the same time is so monumentally unlikely. Somehow, though, you could make the case that Law Abiding Citizen works, perhaps in spite of itself. Movies like Pacific Heights and Arlington Road are a lot like this one, films dependent on a ridiculous chain of circumstances for absolutely anything to move forward. Roger Ebert's dissection of Arlington Road is a favorite of mine precisely because he introduces a logical skepticism to the film's third act, and when you do that, the whole damn mess falls apart instantly. That doesn't mean these movies can't be fun - although that's certainly not true with Pacific Heights - and director F. Gary Gray actually makes a pretty entertaining guilty pleasure out of spare parts from Saw and Law and Order - Saw and Order, if you will - dressed up like a better 88 Minutes or another game-is-already-set-in-motion flick. In this case, Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) witnessed the murder of his wife and daughter only to later witness a crime of another sort: Through a plea bargain, the man who committed the killings gave up another suspect in return for a reduced sentence. Three years later, the man who killed Clyde's family walked, thanks to the backroom dealings of an Assistant D.A. on the rise (Jamie Foxx).

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