'Puss in Boots' enjoys back-to-back $30+ million weekends

By Sarah Sluis

Paramount's decision to release Puss in Boots one week early paid off. Last week, the CG-animated picture had a lower debut of $33 million thanks to Halloween celebrations and bad weather in the Northeast. This week, the Shrek spinoff dipped just 3%, the lowest drop for a non-holiday saturated release. Now Puss in Boots has over $75 million in the bank, and one more wide-open weekend before animated competitor Happy Feet 2 opens on Nov. 15.

In second place, Tower Heist came in with $25.1 million. Many in the industry expected more, and certainly the action comedy's $75 million budget hints at larger expectations. However, the comedy earned raves in exit polls, which puts the heist film in a strong place in coming weeks.

When your Christmas release opens well before most malls have decked out their stores in red-and-green cheer, it might be a problem. A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas debuted on the low side of expectations, to $13 million, and I suspect its eight-week lead time on the holiday contributed to the lower take. The stoner comedy reportedly cost less than $20 million to make, so steady weekends through the holiday will definitely put the movie in the black.

In sixth place, Footloose showed a surprisingly strong hold, dipping just 17% from last week for a $4.5 million total. The dance remake has played strongly among heartland audiences. Moneyball, in the tenth spot, showed resilience in its seventh week, boasting just a 20% drop as it added another $1.9 million to its $70 million total.

On the specialty front, the documentary about punk rock dads, The Other F Word, opened to a respectable $7,000 per-screen average on two screens. Like Crazy went up 120% from its opening weekend to $270,000. The indie romance averaged $16,800 per screen in quadruple the locations (16 from 4). That puts the indie romance ahead of Martha Marcy May Marlene, which only earned $248,000 its second week, even as it played on double the number of screens. Still, the cult drama starring Elizabeth Olsen is also performing well for a specialty film, passing the $1 million mark as it earned another $471,000 on a run that now numbers 98 screens.

This Friday, the fantasy action drama Immortal will make a splash with a wide release opposite Adam Sandler cross-dressing comedy Jack & Jill. Director Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar will jump the gun, opening small on Wednesday and big on Friday.

'50/50' has a chance at making the top spot

By Sarah Sluis

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as a cancer patient in the dramedy 50/50 (2,458 theatres). The ads I've seen have gone for the stoner comedy angle, which has also been helped by the presence of dude actor Seth Rogen, who plays the man's friend. The casting and marketing should make the cancer-themed
movie an easier sell, and there's a chance a mid-teen millions opening will drive this picture to the top spot. 50/50 will have tough competition from The Lion King, which has reigned at the box office for the past two weeks, as well as Moneyball and feel-good family pic Dolphin Tale. These three titles should hold above $10 million.

Thanks to the "essential mystery of casting," the romantic comedy What's Your Number? (3,002 theatres) gets a thumbs-up from David Noh. Anna Faris, who's similarly enlivened stereotypical roles in movies like The House Bunny (a surprise hit), stars as a woman who decides she's slept with too many guys and tracks down her previous sexual partners in search of Mr. Right. Faris' "delectably quirky grace" should bring this movie above $10 million, but still lower than The House Bunny's $14.6 million summer debut.

Stars Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz met on the set of Dream House (2,660 theatres), later getting married. Considering that Dream House didn't screen for critics, it appears that Weisz and Craig were too busy giving each other googly eyes to widen their eyes in faux-fear and possibly save what looks to be a bad horror movie.

The faith-based production company behind Fireproof returns with Courageous (1,161 theatres), the tale of four police officers struggling with their religion. With over $2 million in advance ticket sales, this movie could surprise by driving infrequent moviegoers to the theatres.

On the specialty circuit, the fabulous character actor Michael Shannon stars in Take Shelter (3 theatres) as a man haunted by visions of an epic storm that may or may not be signs that he's delusional. The ever-present Jessica Chastain (The Help, The Debt, The Tree of Life) co-stars as his wife in the "eerie drama" critic Kevin Lally found "gripping." I reviewed Margaret (2 theatres), a drama I found imperfect in whole but composed of beautifully rendered scenes. The long-delayed movie is worth seeing for these moments of artistry, or as a cautionary tale of a film stuck for years due to lawsuits, indecision, and politics.

On Monday, we'll see where the half-dozen films in close competition land in the top ten.

'Shutter Island' poised to shut down the competition

By Sarah Sluis

The only new wide offering on the market, Shutter Island (2,991 theatres), should go straight to the top this weekend, pushed along by equal interest among male and female moviegoers. The longer President's Day weekend is usually followed by larger-than-average drops among returning films, so despite three movies grossing $30 million plus last weekend, only Valentine's Day has an off-chance of besting the latest (but not greatest) work from director Martin Scorsese.

A "Gothic-style psychological thriller," according to Executive Editor Kevin Lally, Shutter Island suffers from "a surfeit of plot ingredients." Leonardo DiCaprio plays a guy investigating a disappearance in an insane asylum, and creepy things are happening. Two options pop up pretty quickly, perhaps even before the lights go down to start the show: Is it possible that the staff is conspiring to make him insane--or is he already insane, and everything is a delusion? It's a ruse that's sustained the whole way through, but grows wearying towards the end. As critic A.O. Scott of the New York Times aptly puts, "...just when the puzzle should accelerate, the picture slows down...[and gives viewers] painstaking exposition of matters that the audience already suspects are completely irrelevant." Still, the movie is beautiful to look at and draws inspiration from great filmmakers, including 40's suspense great Val Lewton.

Four theatres will unveil The Ghost Writer, which will expand over the next two weekends. Director Roman Polanski creates a professional, "well-made thriller that delivers two hours of slick entertainment" according to critic Rex Roberts, but "the movie feels as though it's been plotted by numbers," and the filmmakers include a number of slick contrivances to "coax their story along." With all the publicity from Polanski's imprisonment, as well as a general thumbs-up in the critical community (it's tracking at 78% on Rotten Tomatoes), this movie's opening numbers will be one to watch.

Rounding out the offerings, several small releases will make their way into theatres. The Good Guy, starring Alexis Bledel in a pre-recession love triangle involving Wall Streeters, opens in nine theatres. Happy Tears, about a man (Rip Torn) taking up with a crackhead hussy, much to his daughters' (Demi Moore and Parker Posey) chagrin, opens in 15 theatres. Maybe Torn's drunken bank robbery ("I thought I was in my home") can generate some dollars from people curious to see if he looks soused on-screen? Finally, newbie distributor Paladin releases Blood Done Sign My Name (95 theatres), a civil-rights era drama about violence sparked by the racially motivated murder of a black Vietnam veteran.

On Monday, the mystery of Shutter Island's performance will be solved, The Ghost Writer will have an idea of its prospects in the weeks ahead, and we'll see how Valentine's Day, Percy Jackson, and The Wolfman held on through their second week.

'Dear John,' 'From Paris with Love' provide alternatives to the Super Bowl

By Sarah Sluis

Take out your seven-layer dip, it's Super Bowl weekend, when people forgo popcorn for hot wings around a 60-inch screen. On Sunday, movie ticket sales drop precipitously as TV ratings go sky-high. Replicating a formula from last year, studios are releasing both a female-oriented romance expected to play through the weekend, as well as an action movie to catch males Friday and Saturday before most settle in for the big game.

Dear John (2,969 theatres) "falls in the upper middle range" of Nicolas Sparks adaptations, according to New York Times critic A.O. Scott. Amanda Seyfried plays a goody-two-shoes who falls for a rough solider (Channing Tatum). They correspond for his year-long deployment, but then 9/11 happens, he re-enlists, and the romance suffers. Slate critic Dana Stevens, who wrote her review in the form of a Dear John letter, voices one of Seyfried's Little Ms. Perfect dilemnas: "Would I be able to organize enough fundraisers to keep him alive and one day realize my dream of opening a horseback-riding camp for autistic children?" With a built-in fan base of Nicolas Sparks readers, Dear John should make a sizeable sum at the box office this weekend.

From Paris with Love (2,722 theatres) releases exactly a year after director Pierre Morel's smash hit Taken. Though the movie tries to replicate the successful elements of the first movie, it doesn't quite work, according to FJI critic Daniel Eagan. Using that familiar veteran/rookie pair-up (played by John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, respectively), "the Travolta part...is played for laughs, while the rest pretends to deal seriously with matters of love and trust," leading to an inconsistent tone.

Not to be confused with District 9, District 13: Ultimatum, the sequel to District B13, will open in nine theatres. Director Luc Besson's action thriller "aims to please and nails its targets with more speed and style than most of its higher-priced competition," according to Eagan.

Taking advantage of the buzz generated at its Sundance debut, Frozen will open in 106 theatres. The Open Water-esque premise has three skiers stranded on a ski lift for a weekend. Unfortunately, the thriller is unable to "create a self-enclosed world that allows the audience to suspend disbelief," according to critic James Greenberg. Horror movies really need to solve that cell phone problem.

With the Oscar nominations released this Tuesday, four of the nominated films will expand their runs. The Hurt Locker, which is already out on DVD, will move onto 110 screens. Precious will go from 222 to 669 theatres. Crazy Heart will ramp up its release, going from 239 theatres to 819. An Education, which had dwindled to just a four-theatre run from 200 screens, will expand to 760 theatres this weekend. Adding something new to the mix, Oscar-nominated documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers will debut on two screens.

Of course, despite all these new offerings and Oscar-related expansions, Avatar is expected to win the box office for the eighth week in a row, with added interest due to its nine Oscar nominations.

It's the movies, not the popcorn, that will be stale in early 2010

By Sarah Sluis

Conventional wisdom says that the more you move around and/or delay a movie's release date, the worse it is. It's mostly, but not always, true.

The New York Times published an article this week

about the many movies releasing in January and February that were put in

production over a year ago. In fact, 16 of the 28 movies went into

production in 2008 or earlier, well above the typical timeline for

movies, which usually release a year after production.

Lines of reasoning differ. Youth in Revolt (coming out 1/8/10), for example, was hampered

by the financial difficulties of its distributor, Weinstein Co. The

Green Zone, about the war in Iraq, may have been moved for topical

reasons, but with all the trouble Iraq-themed movies have had at the

box office, it also may be just plain out of touch. The last-minute move of Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island to February 19th from this holiday season is a little trickier to decipher. I think the upcoming thriller is either A) bad B) weird in a good way or C) good, but the studio lost confidence in it.

I have a particular interest in movie musical chairs because part of my job here at Film Journal involves keeping track of movie release dates. Every week I update our database of release dates, viewable online here in case you want to look up something. I've learned that not only does it matter if you change a movie's release date, it matters where you move it to, and how many times you change your mind.

Some movies vacillate between a few dates, and it's not unusual for them to return to a spot they held earlier. This often means little, just indecision on the part of the studios. Others seem to stalk towards their eventual (later) release date, getting moved farther and farther away until no one (they hope) realizes the movie was supposed to be out a year ago. Studios are either delaying the inevitable for another quarter or using the movie as filler, a placeholder to shove into a quiet weekend.

If two blockbusters are scheduled for the same release date, they sometimes play a game of chicken until the other one moves, but they're still contending for the prime summer and end-of-year spots. When I see a movie or would-be blockbuster move from a summer or winter holiday release to January, February, or September, I'm instantly suspicious. Case in point: The Wolfman, which will come out on February 12th after a year of delays. While studios are starting to put watchable movies into these dead time zones as all forms of media move away from the rerun and second-run model, the best strategy for the early winter will be to catch up on another stale, but delicious treat: the holiday releases.