Unconventional titles and releases populate box office

By Sarah Sluis

Where the Wild Things Are opened this weekend to the tune of $32.5 million, on the high side of projections. However, the movie is rumored to cost around $100 million. Once you add in the marketing budget, it could be awhile before the film breaks even. After taking the Twitter pulse of the people, it appears that some found the movie to be slow and squirm-inducing, but others were pleased to see something so unconventional at the box office. While I enjoyed the movie, I think the budget was way too big. The production notes mention expensive choices like clearing a beach full of kelp and helicoptering the footprints out of a desert between takes--things a filmmaker with a smaller budget would be forced to work around. By comparison, its competitor, Fox's upcoming adaptation of the children's book Fantastic Mr. Fox, was made on a "medium-sized" budget, and also boasts a rollout distribution. It will release in New York and Los Angeles for two weeks before expanding (oddly, on the same weekend Disney's The Princess and the Frog opens wide). Their respective directors, Spike Jonze and Wes Anderson, can each be characterized as indie-crossover successes, and I suspect that Fox's release strategy will better serve their film.

The other unconventional release of the week was Paranormal Activity, which expanded its release to 760 theatres and racked up $20.1 million at the #3 spot. Its per-screen average was $26,530, down 50% from last week's $49,379. If the per-screen average drops another 50% next week, when it expands to about 1,800 screens, the movie will still gross about $23 million. Not so bad for a movie that cost around $10,000 with a reported marketing budget of $10 million. Next week it will contend with Saw VI, but it's worth noting that it didn't seem to have any problem with the competing horror title The Stepfather, which debuted this weekend to $12.3 million.

Going back up the list to #2, Law Abiding Citizen earned $21.2 million, a big win for its distributor, Overture. With a diverse cast and its appeal to adult males, the movie helped fill a neglected niche.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs brought in another $8.1 million to bring its box-office total to $108.2 million. Even with Where the Wild Things Are and Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3D, it dropped just 29%, yet another week with an extremely strong holdover. Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3D, however, a week past its advertised two-week engagement, dropped 61% to bring in $3 million. While a $28.5 million gross for a re-release is quite healthy, Disney spent an unknown but sizable amount remastering the movie in 3D, paying for prints, and marketing. Last week, it pushed back its re-release of Beauty and the Beast in 3D from February 12, 2010 to 2011, perhaps a sign it is rethinking its 3D re-release strategy.

Among specialty releases, The Maid had the highest per-screen, $18,000. New York, I Love You did light business, $3,000 per screen, but by opening at 119 locations it netted a third of a million dollars. A Serious Man, in its third week of release, added 60 locations for a total of 82, with a strong $10,400 per screen. An Education, in its second week, went from 4 to 19 locations, and drummed up $14,000 per screen.