Box Office Zoology: The Bunny Still Reigns

Bunnies continued to be the favored animal at the weekend box office as Hop overperformed again. The cuddly bears of Arthur and the gaping wolf maw of Hanna split ticket buyers enough that Soul Surfer's shark was able to bite off not just a pretty girl's arm but a surprising chunk of the weekend box office. It was...wait for it... a zoo out there. hahahahhhaa unghhh. I'm here all week. Re: Soul Surfer, I understand that inspirational sports movies are a familiar comfort-food movie genre and I can live with that. But please don't let this mean Helen Hunt is back in the game. I beg you universe, I beg you!

Bears, and Wolves and Sharks. Oh my

The Box Office (Actuals)

01 HOP $21.2 (cumulative $67.7)
02 HANNA new $12.3
03 ARTHUR new $12.2  [my review]
04 SOUL SURFER new $10.6
05 INSIDIOUS $9.3 (cumulative $26.7)
06 YOUR HIGHNESS new $9.3
07 SOURCE CODE $8.6 (cumulative $28.2)
08 LIMITLESS $5.4 (cumulative $64.1)
09 DIARY OF A WIMPY KID $4.7 (cumulative $45.3)
10 THE LINCOLN LAWYER $4.2 (cumulative $46.1)

What does all this mean? That's for you to decide. When I try to understand the nation's moviegoers my eyes often bleed and blood attracts carnivorous animals. Why are people so eager to see an animated bunny rock star with the voice of Russell Brand? Why am I so obsessed with hating that (unseen) movie?

What did you see over the weekend, in theater or at home? (I keep a screening log over in the "reviews" section if you're curious about me.)

Box Office: The Source of that Insidious Hopping

Fact #1: I love Easter, bunnies, Easter bunnies, chocolate bunnies, coloring eggs.
Fact #2: Seeing Hop would ruin the upcoming holiday entirely for me because nothing makes me gag harder than animated CGI characters doing hip anachronistic things like oh, I don't know dreaming of playing in a rock n roll band. Just typing this out gave me salmonella. Mainstream moviegoers felt otherwise throwing their hardearned cash at the British wabbit. It had the best opening weekend since Rango. Where were these crowds when The Rock was doing Tooth Fairy?

01. HOP $37.5 new
02. SOURCE CODE $14.8 new
03. INSIDIOUS $13.2 new
04. DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: RODRICK RULES $10.0 (cumulative: $38.1)
05. LIMITLESS $9.3 (cumulative: $55.5)

Poor Patrick. Things never end well for him at the movies.

Hop's success frightens me and the only possible joy that can come from it is that maybe someone will give James Marsden another plum comic gig like the one in Enchanted.  I would however totally want to see this week's chart topper if it were about Jake Gyllenhaal and the Easter Bunny ibeing thrust back in time repeatedly until they saved Patrick Wilson from demonic possessions in The Source of That Insidious Hopping. Don't you wish you could sometimes watch three movies at once?

Per Screen Average Which movies were you most likely to find crowds at? I've eliminated all the specialty IMAX stuff and everything that's only at one theater because "come on" and here's what'cha got.

01. HOP $10,000ish
02. IN A BETTER WORLD $8,000ish (The Danish Oscar winner is finally on a few screens. Weird to wait an entire month post Oscar win to debut.)
03. WIN WIN $7,000ish (cumulative $1.9 million. Big jump in screen count this past weekend. I almost went today but my friend shifted plans.)
04. JANE EYRE $6,700ish  (cumulative $3.4 million. Still going strong. Yay)
05. INSIDIOUS $5,500ish (and this type of movie is always better with a crowd)

What did you see over the weekend? I was entertaining so I didn't get out. Although we did watch the SXSW winner Weekend which was fairly strong as indies go. It definitely knew what it wanted to be and didn't get distracted at being that and that's always a huge plus.

Predix: Supporting Actor and The Matter of Young Leads

Jim Broadbent as Dennis ThatcherWhen it comes to blindfolded Oscar predictions, almost nothing beats the supporting categories. I have this vague fantasy of time travel and returning to propose all 10 supporting acting nominees correctly one April to reams of laughter from the internet. They can be so hard to see coming for so many reasons including: adaptations sometimes lean on different characters than the novels or plays that birthed them, ensembles are tricky because you don't know who will win "best in show" reviews, one lead films are tricky because the huge role at the center (The Iron Lady, J. Edgar) sometimes end up sucking up all the oxygen and other times have coattails. Then there's the small matter of Oscar being more diverse aesthetically when it comes to supporting work. Here is where comedy, horror, sci-fi, fantasy  and even comic book movies (Dick Tracy, The Dark Knight) can show up even though they rarely if ever get play in lead categories.

Kenneth Branagh? Christoph Waltz? Philip Seymour Hoffman x 2? Viggo Mortensen x 2? Armie Hammer or Josh Lucas? Ben Kingsley? Christopher Plummer? Jim Broadbent -- his Iron Lady performance already has tongues (and fingers) wagging -- Richard E Grant or Anthony Head? Nick Nolte? Brad Pitt? You can drive yourself crazy thinking about all the possibilities. Maybe you have?

The first predictions for 2011

NEW TOPIC: This is as good a year as any, I assume, to prove my frequent statements about Oscar's double standards with gender. There are at least three very high profile films with young male leads this year: HUGO CABRET (Asa Butterfield is 14 years old), WAR HORSE (Jeremy Irvine is ??? years old), and SUPER 8 (Joel Courtney is ??? years old).

Asa Butterfield, Jeremy Irvine and Joel Courtney

If you've ever doubted my assertion about this double standard -- some people have objected to the statements -- watch how these performances are treated this year while keeping in mind how Hailee Steinfeld's work was greeted in True Grit as if the heavens or the red sea had parted. The media, critics and Oscar voters are quick to shove aside experience and accomplishment in women when a "fresh player" enters but not so with male actors. My prediction: at least one of these three does work on par or better than Hailee's and doesn't get anything like her traction. Watch and see.

Obviously there are exceptions, as there are to every rule: There was no denying Haley Joel Osment's gift in The Sixth Sense (1999) although he did get demoted to Supporting and lost to somebody who already had an Oscar, and Justin Henry won a nomination at 8 (!) for Kramer Vs. Kramer. In both cases the films were absolute sensations at the box office. Dramas no longer explode with audiences like Kramer vs. Kramer did but in today's dollars its box office haul was truly insane. We're talking a domestic haul closer to the latest Harry Potter than a True Grit or King's Speech. In other words, even Oscar doesn't ignore the zeitgeist.

BOB: Sucker Punching Dead Horses

Today's Box Office Blather is short, though hardly sweet. The weekend had only two wide openings which fought it out for two markets: the family and the fanboys. Though girls ruled and boys drooled on Friday when Sucker Punch triumphed, family-market films always grow over opening weekends rather than fade like normal movies.

Carla Gugino, Jena Malone, Abbie Cornish, Emily Browning, Jamie Chung and Vanessa Hudgens at the Sucker Punch premiere

So the weekend went to Wimpy Kids rather than Violent Girls.

01. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules $23.7 new
02. Sucker Punch $19 new
03. Limitless $15 (cumulative: $41.1)
04. The Lincoln Lawyer $10.7 (cumulative: $28.7)
05. Rango $9.7 million (cumulative: $106.3)

Limitless and Lincoln held well in week 2 indicating that people who saw them last week maybe didn't regret their ticket purchases. Rango is now the top grosser of 2011, a title it seems likely to hold until the end of May when Johnny Depp will overthrow himself by way of Pirates #4. (Sigh) Unless Thor gets deified by general audiences or Jane Eyre busts out of her bodice on a record breaking 6,321 screens... all of them sold out for the rest of the summer. (Sorry, fever dream on account of the feverishly Fassbending podcast. But wouldn't it be great if box office were THAT impossible to predict? Hypothetical question. The answer is yes.)

What did you see this weekend? Besides Mildred Pierce, I mean.

Finally, in Shamelessly Beating Dead Horses news: the PG-13 version of The King's Speech opens this Friday. Begone naughty fuck word, you have no power here! The King's Profanity has been redacted. Oscar campaigns don't pay for themselves, people. Although, the $15 million dollar budgeted film has already earned $361 million worldwide so now they're just being greedy fuckers.

Box Office: "Limitless" Returns, Limited Hits

Yes, yes... we're irregular about box office reportage. It's a Battle New York staying regular-like about these things. Bear with us.  (Updated to reflect tiny adjustments of actual grosses)

WIDE TOP TEN
top hits of the 600+ screen count club.

01 Limitless $18.9 new
Most reports suggest that this is an "okay" debut in a weak frame despite hitting #1 and having a stronger per screen average by a couple thousand from its closest competitors. Does that mean that Bradley Cooper is only half-fuckable? That he's a walk-of-shame type that you'll feel guilty about afterwards? Or that there were just too many arrogant blonde leading men types fighting for your dollars (#1,#3,#4... it's a blonde multiplex invasion.)
02 Rango $15.0 (cumulative: $92.3)
This'll be the top grosser of 2011 any second now saving us the embarrassment of Just Go With It holding that honor.
03 Battle Los Angeles $14.5 (cumulative: $60.5)
04 The Lincoln Lawyer $13.2 new
05 Paul $13.0 new
06 Red Riding Hood $7.1 (cumulative: $25.8)
07 The Adjustment Bureau $5.7 (cumulative: 48.6)
08 Mars Needs Moms $5.3 (cumulative: $15.4)
09 Beastly $3.1 (cumulative: $22.1)
10 Hall Pass $2.5 (cumulative: $39.5) 

But the "Top o' the Charts" only tell such a small part of each week's stories. How about Jane Eyre and the like..

LIMITED TOP TEN
On less than 600 screens -- not including former wide releases that are on the fade. 

01. Cedar Rapids $.5 (cumulative $5.4 on 462 screens)
02. Jane Eyre $.4 (cumulative $.7 on 26 screens)
Jane and Mr. Rochester are still packing them in big city arthouses, tripling any per screen average within the actual top ten. But when you're playing at so few screens it's still hard to rack up a gross equal to your buzz. Will Focus wait a long time to expand this on lose the buzz? These things are always tricky and the men in capes and tights (i.e. summer season) are right around the corner, generally sucking up every last bit of media oxygen. If so many of last year's Oscar movies can huddle around the $100 million mark, there's no reason why this movie shouldn't be at least a minor hit. We shall see.
03. Of Gods and Men $.2 (cumulative $1.6 on 94 screens)
04. Win Win $.1 new on 5 screens
After The Station Agent and The Visitor, writer/director Thomas McCarthy may well be three for three, critically speaking. Will this drama with Paul Giamatti as a wrestling coach also be as popular as his other movies with specialty crowds. The Station Agent won $5.7 in its US run plus a SAG nomination and The Visitor managed $9.4 million and an Oscar nod for lead actor Richard Jenkins. Thomas McCarthy was Oscar-nominated for co-writing Pixar's Up, but he break out soon in a larger way with so much goodwill behind him?

poll by twiigs.com

McCarthy and Binoche in limited release

05. Barney's Version $.1 (cumulative $3.8 on 114 screens)
06. Kill the Irishman $.1 new on 21 screens 
07. Certified Copy $.1 (cumulative $.2 on 23 screens)
Abbas Kiarostami's engaging and provocative two-hander is opening and expanding like a French-language mirror of Jane Eyre though it isn't faring quite as well with only $237,000 so far. Hopefully it'll catch on with sophisticated moviegoers. Cross your fingers that this catches on at least as well as Michael Haneke's Caché which played for months in arthouses and racked up well over 3 million before hitting DVD. I bring up that film, also starring Juliette Binoche (what a filmography she's built) because though they're very very different films each is hugely rewarding: impressive filmmaking, hours of post-movie conversation fodder, and another chance to enjoy Juliette Binoche's mysterious magic and always moving tears. 
08. The Grace Card $.1 (cumulative $2.1 on 114 screens)
09. Biutiful $.09 (cumulative $4.6 on 89 screens)
10. The Music Never Stopped $.08 new on 32 screens

WHAT DID YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND?
In other words: Whose economy did you support?

I tried to give Kiarostami & Binoche some money but ended up throwing it Verbinski & Depp's way (like they needed it post Pirates) for Rango. Blame the clock.