Weekend Roundup: Audience Says 'Hit Me' to 21

By Katey Rich

I'm going to credit Film Journal's executive editor Kevin Lally for the success of 21 at the box office this weekend. Amid a sea of negative reviews, Kevin's stood out as particularly glowing; audiences clearly took his advice, putting 21 in the #1 spot for the weekend with a $23.7 million haul. It came in well ahead of its only real competition, the stalwart Horton Hears A Who!, which fell to #2 with a still-strong $17 million. Horton also became the first movie of 2008 to cross the $100 million mark.

As for the other new releases, audiences pretty much treated them exactly the way they deserved to be treated. In a glorious move away from the trend, lazy spoof Superhero Movie didn't rake in the cash. It didn't fare too badly either, coming in at #3 with $9 million, but that's well below what Meet the Spartans made in January and what other similar spoofs have done in the past. If this is a sign that the genre is flagging, I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Elsewhere, Stop-Loss fared OK in moderate release, coming in at #8 with $4.5 million. The real test will come next weekend, once MTV's teen-centric marketing has worn off and the audience knows it's getting in for an Iraq War movie and not a soapy melodrama. And Run, Fat Boy, Run, the most mediocre comedy Simon Pegg has ever made, made mediocre money. It couldn't even land in the top 10 with its $2.4 million draw, and had to settle for 13th place.

Holdover Meet the Browns saw a steep 60% drop, falling to #4 and a $7.7 million take; even though the movie has taken in $32 million in just two weekends, it's a lackluster performance from the Tyler Perry juggernaut. Drillbit Taylor, though, is a product from yet another never-ceasing production house that is faring even worse. The Judd Apatow-produced comedy fell to #5 and $5.8 million, though given that it didn't debut much higher, that's not actually too great a drop.

Shutter did pretty much what all Japanese horror remakes do, dropping sharply in its second weekend to #6 and $5 million; expect it to disappear entirely in another two weeks. 10,000 B.C, on the other hand, is hanging in there, coming in at #7 and adding another $4.8 million to its $84 million take. Give it a few more weeks and it might be the second movie of the year to cross the $100 million mark.

Rounding out the top 10, College Road Trip and The Bank Job continue hanging in there together, coming in at #9 ($3.5 million) and #10 ($2.8 million), respectively. Given that The Bank Job debuted with very little fanfare but has hung on this long, it's the real success story among the entire current crop of films.

After the jump is the full top 20, courtesy of Box Office Mojo. Under the Same Moon dropped in the box office despite upping its theatre count, but according to Variety, the Weinstein Company still has big plans to target this drama to Spanish-speaking audiences. Other than that, the biggest surprise is the undying Juno, which has probably seen its last weekend in the top 20; it still made half a million bucks over the weekend from 444 theatres, despite my impression that everyone in the universe had already seen the movie and gotten sick of repeating "I'm fo shizz up the spout" to their friends.

TW	LW	Title (click to view)	Studio	Weekend Gross	% Change	Theater Count / Change		Average	Total Gross	Budget*	Week #
1	N	21	Sony	$23,700,000	-	2,648	-	$8,950	$23,700,000	$35	1
2	1	Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!	Fox	$17,425,000	-29.1%	3,826	-135	$4,554	$117,274,000	$85	3
3	N	Superhero Movie	MGM/W	$9,510,000	-	2,960	-	$3,212	$9,510,000	-	1
4	2	Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns	LGF	$7,760,000	-61.4%	2,016	+10	$3,849	$32,828,000	-	2
5	4	Drillbit Taylor	Par.	$5,800,000	-43.7%	3,061	+5	$1,894	$20,574,000	-	2
6	3	Shutter	Fox	$5,325,000	-49.0%	2,756	+3	$1,932	$19,103,000	-	2
7	5	10,000 B.C.	WB	$4,875,000	-45.4%	3,055	-399	$1,595	$84,920,000	$105	4
8	N	Stop-Loss	Par.	$4,525,000	-	1,291	-	$3,505	$4,525,000	$25	1
9	7	College Road Trip	BV	$3,505,000	-25.4%	2,270	-305	$1,544	$38,370,000	-	4
10	8	The Bank Job	LGF	$2,800,000	-33.2%	1,605	-8	$1,744	$24,104,000	-	4
11	6	Never Back Down	Sum.	$2,405,000	-50.2%	1,869	-860	$1,286	$21,295,000	$20	3
12	9	Vantage Point	Sony	$2,400,000	-36.9%	1,739	-385	$1,380	$69,348,000	$40	6
13	N	Run Fat Boy Run	PicH	$2,390,000	-	1,133	+1,055	$2,109	$2,390,000	$10	1
14	10	Under the Same Moon	Wein.	$2,251,000	-18.7%	390	+124	$5,771	$6,675,000	-	2
15	12	The Other Boleyn Girl	Sony	$1,350,000	-33.8%	1,119	-69	$1,206	$25,012,000	$35	5
16	13	Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day	Focus	$1,167,000	-21.2%	516	-15	$2,261	$9,413,000	-	4
17	14	The Spiderwick Chronicles	Par.	$735,000	-39.0%	659	-567	$1,115	$69,381,000	$90	7
18	16	Fool's Gold	WB	$585,000	-38.6%	640	-371	$914	$68,110,000	$70	8
19	11	Doomsday	Uni.	$528,000	-76.5%	888	-1,050	$594	$10,560,000	-	3
20	19	Juno	FoxS	$480,000	-37.6%	444	-159	$1,081	$141,970,000	-	17