Weekend Box Office

With fall legitimately almost a month in, the box office has been fairly blah so far, especially considering the strongest title to emerge from the last month was a 3-D release of a film 17 years old.  That being said while overall the picture looks bleak, a few notable holdovers (and a few of them are rather smart ones as well) have been earning their respective keeps for the past few weeks, despite nothing verging into blockbuster or sleeper success territory.

1. Real Steel- The rock 'em, sock 'em, robots fighting\father-son tale bested the rest for the second week in a row, earning $16.3 million over the weekend, for total of $51 million in two weeks.  The 40% dip is a fairly strong showcase, as was its impressive uptick from Friday to Saturday (it trailed Footloose on Friday), but this one (from Disney and DreamWorks) was a pricey, $100+ movie to make...
2. Footloose- A ho hum $16 million take for the remake of the 80s dance flick that made Kevin Bacon and Kenny Loggins popular; one has to assume that it really wasn't going to do much better than this, despite excessive marketing.
3. The Thing- The other remake debut of the weekend was even more of a non-starter, earning $8.7 million.
4. The Ides of March- The political yarn dropped a super-sweet 28% in weekend number two, earning $7.5 million for a total so far of $22 million; the film was cheap to make, so that's a good sign, and the low percentage drop is good will for future weeks.
5. Dolphin Tale- The family pic dropped 30% in it's fourth week, raising its cum to $58 million, on a production budget of $37 million; sea life + Morgan Freeman = success.
6. Moneyball- The baseball film not at all about baseball dropped a wonderful 26% in its fourth weekend; the Brad Pitt-starer (for which he will and should likely receive an Oscar nomination for) has earned $57 million so far.
7. 50/50- The Joseph Gordon Levitt cancer comedy got off to fairly slow start, but word of month seems to be genuinely positive, as the film had the slightest dip in top ten (off only 23% from last weekend) and has made $24 million so far in three weeks, on a production budget of only $8 million.  It's a good one, people!
8. Courageous- $3.4 million over the weekend \ $21 million to date.
9. The Big Year- The Steve Martin-Jack Black bird watching comedy bombed hard in its first weekend, earning just a little over $3 million; expect this one to be on DVD shortly.
10. The Lion King- Yes, it was only supposed to be in theaters for two weeks, and yes, the film is already available on Blue-Ray, but the lion is still kind of roaring, earning an extra $2.7 million this weekend.

Other notables:

*Contagion dropped out of the top ten in its sixth week of release, earning $1.8 million for a total so far of $72 million.
 
*The Skin I Live In, Pedro Almodovar's latest starring Antonio Banderas opened on six screens to a per-screen average of $38,500 and total cum of $231,000.  Highly respectable, and the loyal Almodovar cult should keep this one alive for further expansion, but it is one of the lower debuts for an Almodovar outing in quite some time.
 
*Trespass, the latest from director Joel Schmacher starring Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman (inexplicably), crashed and fumbled on ten screens (obviously a nod to hid the film), earning a pathetic $18,000.  The real question is why this one came about anyway, and where (if anywhere) is this film actually playing.  I live in a major city and have yet to find a theater displaying this, advertising this...nothing.  The movie will however be on DVD in about three weeks for the curious.