By Katey Rich
Nothing too surprising about this weekend's box office. As predicted, Josh Hartnett somehow became the #1 movie star in America, with 30 Days of Night earning $16 million to come in at number one. Tyler Perry continues his reign with Why Did I Get Married? slipping to #2, and The Rock remains inexplicably durable with The Game Plan, which slipped one notch to #3 with a gross of $8 million. Let's not even get into how unscreened-for-critics sports parody The Comebacks debuted at #6 and made nearly $6 million. It's just too dismal to think about.
Happily, two movies for grown-ups are hanging on, at least, with Michael Clayton sticking around at #4 for its third weekend, with only a 31% drop. Gone Baby Gone was the only one of the four "serious movies" (we'll get to the rest in a second) that made a name for itself, debuting at #5 with a $6 million gross.
Short round-up of those "others" I mentioned: Rendition tanked at #9 with $4,175,00 (on over 2,000 screens!), Things We Lost in the Fire tanked even harder at #15, bringing in just over $1.5 million, and Reservation Road, with a limited opening on 13 screens, managed a $2,830 per-screen average but didn't make much of a splash.
Rounding out the top 10 were last week's We Own the Night at #7 (another example of grown-up fare hanging on by a thread), The Heartbreak Kid at #10 with $3.9 million, and the first weekend of The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D, which is one of the more remarkable stories that no one seems to be talking about. A modest hit when it opened in 1993, the film has become a rerun classic (it seems to be on cable every Thanksgiving for some reason) and has been a huge success with its annual re-release in theatres. The film pulled off a phenomenal $9,122 per-theater average over the weekend, on 564 screens; I remember my parents telling me about the days before VHS, when you would wait every year for your favorites to come on television or back into theatres. It looks like 3D and the venerable power of a classic have somehow brought that tradition back to theatres. People still ringing the death knell for the theatrical experience (OK, maybe we have to go back to 2005 to find those people) should keep an eye on, of all people, Tim Burton.
Next weekend: Oh goodness, there's another Saw coming out. Enjoy these next few days, since soon we'll all be bemoaning the degradation of our culture once again. Full box-office numbers, thanks to boxofficemojo.com, are available after the jump.
Rank Title Studio Weekend Gross Drop # of screens Per-theater Total gross Week #
1 | N | 30 Days of Night | Sony | $16,000,000 | - | 2,855 | - | $5,604 | $16,000,000 | 1 | |
| 2 | 1 | Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married | LGF | $12,100,000 | -43.3% | 2,034 | +23 | $5,948 | $38,865,000 | - | 2 |
| 3 | 2 | The Game Plan | BV | $8,122,000 | -26.4% | 3,301 | +173 | $2,460 | $69,150,000 | - | 4 |
| 4 | 4 | Michael Clayton | WB | $7,100,000 | -31.6% | 2,585 | +74 | $2,746 | $21,986,000 | - | 3 |
| 5 | N | Gone Baby Gone | Mira. | $6,000,000 | - | 1,713 | - | $3,502 | $6,000,000 | - | 1 |
| 6 | N | The Comebacks | FoxA | $5,850,000 | - | 2,812 | - | $2,080 | $5,850,000 | - | 1 |
| 7 | 3 | We Own the Night | Sony | $5,500,000 | -49.2% | 2,362 | - | $2,328 | $19,784,000 | 2 | |
| 8 | N | Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas in Disney Digital 3-D (2007 re-issue) | BV | $5,145,000 | - | 564 | - | $9,122 | $5,145,000 | - | 1 |
| 9 | N | Rendition | NL | $4,175,000 | - | 2,250 | - | $1,855 | $4,175,000 | - | 1 |
| 10 | 5 | The Heartbreak Kid | P/DW | $3,900,000 | -46.4% | 2,782 | -451 | $1,401 | $32,111,000 | - | 3 |
| 11 | 6 | Elizabeth: The Golden Age | Uni. | $3,139,000 | -49.0% | 2,006 | +5 | $1,564 | $11,213,000 | - | 2 |
| 12 | 8 | Across the Universe | SonR | $2,700,000 | -29.4% | 960 | +6 | $2,812 | $16,767,000 | - | 6 |
| 13 | 7 | The Kingdom | Uni. | $2,379,000 | -48.4% | 1,730 | -1,106 | $1,375 | $43,950,000 | 4 | |
| 14 | 16 | Into the Wild | ParV | $2,150,000 | +131.5% | 658 | +505 | $3,267 | $6,502,000 | - | 5 |
| 15 | N | Things We Lost in the Fire | P/DW | $1,604,000 | - | 1,142 | - | $1,404 | $1,604,000 | - | 1 |
| 16 | 15 | The Darjeeling Limited | FoxS | $1,320,000 | +21.6% | 202 | +107 | $6,534 | $3,903,000 | - | 4 |
| 17 | 9 | Resident Evil: Extinction | SGem | $1,050,000 | -60.3% | 1,183 | -1,066 | $887 | $50,008,000 | - | 5 |
| 18 | 11 | Good Luck Chuck | LGF | $670,000 | -67.0% | 852 | -1,099 | $786 | $34,206,000 | - | 5 |
| 19 | 22 | Lust, Caution | Focus | $586,000 | -3.9% | 125 | +48 | $4,688 | $2,107,000 | 4 | |
| 20 | 27 | The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford | WB | $560,000 | +29.5% | 301 | +138 | $1,860 | $2,208,000 | 5 |
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