Geekscape’s Box Office Roundup For the Weekend of 10/14/11

Despite trying, nobody was able to illegally dance or shape-shift their way to the top spot as Real Steel came out throwing robot hay-makers and robot boxed its way to number one for the second weekend in a row.

The Top

Real Steel, the Hugh Jackman lead heartfelt story about a father, his son and robot boxing, held strong in it’s second weekend by adding another $16.3 million and claiming the top spot again. It saw a 40% dropoff from it’s opening weekend and is sitting at $51.7 million so far.

Comparing it from a Hugh Jackman perspective, it held stronger than 2009’s Wolverine, which saw a 69% dropoff in its second weekend, but brought in over $10 million more than Real Steel. In 2004, Van Helsing saw a 60% dropoff and brought in $20.7 million, but quickly faded in the weeks following that. Granted, those were both released during blockbuster season, so it’s hard to make a proper comparison. But in 2008, Australia dropped 52% to $7 million in it’s second weekend. With its relatively strong hold and positive word of mouth, Real Steel should have solid staying power over the next few weeks and should go down as Jackman’s biggest hit that isn’t Wolverine related.

For director Shawn Levy, the second weekend is almost identical to his last outing with last year’s Date Night for the second week in a row. That film went on to gross $98 million domestically, but did so as an April release. In order to reach that number or surpass it, Real Steel will have to do it amongst stiffer competition as it battles the Halloween horror rush and heads into Thanksgiving.

I’m gonna be honest here, I have no clue what to compare this movie to. Even as nonsensical and absurd as my comparisons can get, I don’t know where to go with a robot boxing movie. Hugh Jackman is Australian, and I watch a lot of Australian movies, so I guess I could suggest some of those, but none involve robots punching other robots in the face. I have nowhere else to go though, so I’m gonna do that. The first three Australian films that come to mind that I really enjoyed and think you should check out are my favorite movie of 2010, Red Hill, the most depressing movie I’ve ever seen, 2009’s Beautiful and the Heath Ledger/Abbie Cornish druggie love story from 2006, Candy.

From a depressing angle, Real Steel’s $16.3 million is more than Warrior, a film about humans punching each other in the face, has made in its entire six week run in theaters so far. Warrior sits at just $13.5 million after six weeks, despite extremely positive word of mouth and legitimate Oscar buzz for Nick Nolte.

The Rest

The unnecessary remake of 1984’s Footloose made a strong push for number one, but fell short with $16.1 million to land in the second spot. While it seems like a strong debut, it’s lower than expected considering this was one of the widest releases ever. To compare with a similar title, when adjusted for inflation, the original Footloose opened with $20 million.

Other than not living up to the original, it also fell short of other dance films from recent years. In 2007, Stomp The Yard, which I firmly stand by saying is a great film, opened with $21.8 million. It also fell short of Step Up ($20.7 million) and Step Up 2 The Streets ($18.9 million). It did manage to beat Step Up 3D’s $15.8 million, but let’s all be honest, Step Up 3D sucked.

Comparing it to other remakes of 80’s films that Kevin Bacon is in, Footloose didn’t even come close to the $40.5 million Friday The 13th made in 2009.

Another remake came in third as The Thing scared up a measly $8.7 million. As far as attendance goes, the remake’s numbers were almost identical to the original back in 1982.

Someone brought a gun to a fire fight…

The Thing’s star, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, is no stranger to the horror genre, but usually sees much more success. She had solid openings with 2005’s The Ring Two ($35 million) and 2006’s Final Destination 3 ($19 million). Oh yeah, and she survived the Tarantino/Rodriguez box office miss of 2007’s Grindhouse ($11.5 million). The Thing did, however, double her last horror remake effort, the 2006 trainwreck that was Black Christmas ($3.7 million).

The Thing’s opening doesn’t even hold up to recent remakes of horror movies that were nowhere near as popular as the original The Thing. Six years ago on this same weekend, another remake of a John Carpenter film, The Fog, opened with $11.7 million. And nobody even likes the original The Fog. Even The Stepfather saw more success with $11.6 million, and nobody cares about the original The Stepfather.

The Ides Of March held strong after it’s debut last week, only seeing a 28% drop off and added another $7.5 million to come in fourth.

Dolphin Tale continues to hold strong as it came in fifth by tacking on another $6.3 million to its impressive four week total. Good for everybody involved, but this movie needs to drop out of the top ten already. Not because I think the idea of a feel good story about Morgan Freeman making a robot tale for a gimpy dolphin, but because you have no idea how hard it is when I’m writing about this movie not to bring up that book that guy wrote about how he had a sexual relationship with a dolphin for a long time. I think they’re making a movie about that, so I’ll just have to wait for the release of Dolphin Tail to talk about that.

Seriously though, not to get off topic or anything, but google ‘dolphin sex’ if you’re bored sometime. It’s ridiculous.

Brad Pitt’s Moneyball only saw a 26% drop off in its fourth weekend to come in sixth with $5.5 million, followed in seventh by 50/50, which also saw a small drop off of 24% and added $4.3 million to officially earn quadruple its budget.

Courageous rounds out the top eight, but I’m tired of talking about that movie.

In limited release, The Skin I Live In earned $231,000 despite only opening in six theaters. The Antonio Banderas movie average $38,500 per theater, which is the highest average since Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part Two’s $38,672 in July.

The Worst

The Big Year opening in mid-October was fitting, because it was so much of a bomb its scary. The bird watching comedy tried to cash in on the star power of Owen Wilson, Jack Black and Steve Martin, but failed miserably and opened in ninth place by only earning $3.3 million.

“Look! Over there! An audience member! No. Wait. False alarm. Just another sleeping usher.”

The opening immediately drops to the bottom of the resume for each of the three stars, as it only barely beat out some of the biggest bombs for all of them.

For Steve Martin, 1994’s Mixed Nuts was his most disappointing opening, but it still earned $2.3 million on 800 fewer theaters. After inflation, that opening is better than The Big Year’s.

Owen Wilson’s biggest bomb previously was 2004’s The Big Bounce. It also opened with $3.3 million, but was just slightly ahead of The Big Year. For Jack Black, it barely beat out the $3.2 million that his Tenacious D movie made in 2006. In 2008, he saw a bigger opening ($4 million) with Be Kind, Rewind, despite it opening in only 808 theaters, compared to The Big Year’s 2,150.

The Big Year was a big turd and won’t even earn a fourth of it’s $41 million budget domestically. It’ll be lucky to even reach a fifth of it.

Next

Next week sees four movies opening wide hoping to shake things up. Are people tired of the Paranormal Activity movies already, or can three scare off the competition? Will people run out in packs to see the long awaited, long overdue sequel to Johnny English? What’s that? You didn’t realize it’s a sequel? Yeah, the first one came out a while ago. Do we really need another retelling of The Three Musketeers? Can the Mighty Macs skate into the top ten on just 1,000 screens? Also, Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey opens in one theater. If you live near that theater, I am jealous.