Audiences return for second helpings of 'Meatballs'

By Sarah Sluis

With only a small decrease in demand, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs came in at #1 for the second week in a row. It dropped just 18.8%, an unheard-of amount, to bring in another $24.6 million. Because it's the only family film in the marketplace right now, and comes with the added boost of 3D

and IMAX locations, this movie's release benefited from a perfectly clear forecast.

Bruce Willis futuristic film Surrogates opened at #2 with $15 million in ticket sales. It's half the amount of last year's fantasy-action movie Eagle Eye, which opened on the same weekend last year. Given Surrogates' $80 million budget, this opening is a disappointment.

Scrubbed for tweens, Fame brought in $10 million and the second-runner-up spot. The double digit opening is about half the movie's production costs, which should satisfy MGM's expectations.

Sci-fi/horror movie Pandorum, "endlessly derivative of films such as Alien, Event Horizon, Pitch Black and countless others," opened at $4.4 million. Apparently, space mutants don't sell themselves the way they used to.

Among the rest of the returning films, The Informant! fared best, dropping a light 33% to bring in $6.9 million. Strong second-week returns were expected given the film's older audience.

On the specialty circuit, Coco Before Chanel and Capitalism: A Love Story both made big waves at the box office.

Coco Before Chanel, which stars charming Audrey Tautou, has already earned $24.8 million at the foreign box office, and brought in $35,400 at each of its five locations, a per-location average that speaks well to the film's future.

Michael Moore's Capitalim: A Love Story brought in $60,000 per location at each of its four locations,

giving it the highest per-screen average of the year--though it appears it was running on more than one screen at those theatres, at least in New York City. While the opening seems stellar, it's difficult to compare the debut to other Michael Moore films, all of which had different specialty-to-wide release patterns: Fahrenheit 9/11 opened wide on a Friday after a two-location debut on Wednesday. Though its per-screen averages were lower, Capitalism could still fall short of Fahrenheit's $119 million total gross. Moore's more recent film, Sicko, opened on one screen on a Friday its first weekend, giving it a $68,000 per-screen average by limiting supply--showing how easily per-screen averages can be deceiving.

Along with Capitalism: A Love Story, Ricky Gervais/Jennifer Garner comedy Invention of Lying will open wide this Friday, keeping company with teen roller derby movie Whip It!, and a double feature re-release of Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3D.