Movie Box Review

It turned out to be a great boxoffice weekend for movies aimed at adults, led of course by THE HELP.  THE DEBT had an extraordinarily strong Saturday for a new opening (up 40% from Friday), and is riding that to a surprising weekend finish above its more youth-oriented competition--and at considerably fewer theatres.  APOLLO 18 and SHARK NIGHT, in comparison, had Saturday increases of only 5-7%.  This puts Debt in a good position to add some theatres next weekend, although it faces more direct competition from newcomers CONTAGION and WARRIOR.  Adding to the sweep for adult audiences, CRAZY STUPID LOVE actually managed to go up in its 6th weekend despite losing theatres, demonstrating superb word of mouth.

No one showed up for 7 DAYS IN UTOPIA (a dim $2200 per theatre average at 561), which will be coming soon to a faith-based Netflix queue near you.  A much more serious and worthy film about religion, Vera Farmiga's HIGHER GROUND, was more impressive with around $5500 on each of 17 screens.  CIRCUMSTANCE was at an OK $3200 on each of 11, similar to THE GUARD's per-theatre number--but Guard's is more impressive because it's at 178 screens.  THE WHISTLEBLOWER and BRIGHTON ROCK were both under $2K per theatre, in 61 and 13, respectively.  Among new limited openings, DETECTIVE DEE was most impressive with over $15K at each of 3, while LOVE CRIMES and GAINSBOURG:  A HEROIC LIFE were both in the $7K per screen neighborhood at 3 each.  Bringing up the rear (no double entendre intended) was A GOOD OLD FASHIONED ORGY, with a terrible $750 average on 142 screens.

The probable effect of Irene is most evident in the weekend's limited releases, where loss of NY business would have been most damaging.  HIGHER GROUND, seemingly headed for a per-theatre average of $12K, could only manage $7600, while CIRCUMSTANCE, on track for a $8K average, made it to only $6200.  Similarly, some expansions were hit:  SARAH'S KEY, which looked to hold steady on Friday (while increasing theatre count by 35%), instead went down 17%.  And Sony Classics was unlucky in its last-hurrah expansion of MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, which increased its theatre count by almost 150% but saw grosses rise only 34%.

For the wider releases, the storm's effect was less serious.  THE HELP seemed hardly to be touched at all, probably because its audience isn't particularly centered on the East Coast, and the same goes for the genre movies COLOMBIANA and DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK.  OUR IDIOT BROTHER could plausibly claim that Irene caused it some pain, but even another $1M for the weekend wouldn't have made its bleak result much brighter. 

Labor Day weekend is historically terrible at the boxoffice, and studios will have to decide whether the possibility of making up for some of this weekend's shortfall justifies increased marketing for next weekend, in an effort to bring some of those lost audiences back in.  The big studios will probably do little, if any, of that--this weekend's openings were unlikely to have much gas in them anyway.  Smaller distributors like Sony Classics and Roadside Attractions, however, may find the push worthwhile.