'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' enchants family audiences

By Sarah Sluis

Earning three times as much as the second-place movie, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs whipped up $30.1 million over the weekend. It also earned $2.5 million from its 127 IMAX locations, a

per-location average that was double the non-IMAX total. It doesn't face any competition until two weekends from now, when Disney releases Toy Story and Toy Story 2 as a 3D double feature, so it should perform strongly through its second weekend. People at Sony Pictures Animation also have reason to be happy: it's the highest-grossing opening weekend of any of their movies, including Surf's Up or Open Season.

The other three wide releases earned in the $6-10 million range, though their low production costs should mitigate their lower opening weekend grosses. The Informant! earned $10.5 million, with Matt Damon considered the biggest draw to moviegoers. Its adult-heavy audience could stem its losses in following weeks, since many adults aren't set on seeing a film opening weekend.

The audience for teen draw Jennifer's Body should have turned out in force for opening weekend, but didn't . It scared up $6.8 million, dropping 50% from Friday to Sunday. The reviews didn't match the hype, diminishing the chances of expanding its audience beyond 18-25's, as screenwriter Diablo Cody's Juno was able to do. Many also suspect that younger teens were shut out of the movie since it was rated R.

Jennifer's Body was beat by the soundly unoriginal Love Happens, which sold $8.4 million worth of tickets to an audience of primarily older females.

Bright Star, which is specialty distributor Apparition's first release, did an auspicious $10,000 per

location for a weekend cumulative of $190,000, making good on critic Ray Bennett's prediction that "art-house audiences will swoon." Its rave reviews should help grow that number in coming weeks. Since PG romances are all too rare, Bright Star could also draw in older and more conservative audiences when it expands next week to 120 theatres.

This Friday, Fame will open widest, followed by sci-fi thriller Surrogates and sci-fi horror Pandorum. Other films opening small that we'll be watching include Capitalism: A Love Story (which opens Wednesday), Coco Before Chanel, and I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.

Box office forecast is 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs'

By Sarah Sluis

Releasing in 3D and IMAX, to a welcoming audience that's settled into school and ready for some entertainment, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is considered the likely winner of the weekend box office. It's clever and fast-paced, with "breakneck humor and sparkling wordplay," according to our critic Frank Lovece. While the plot is much more embellished than Ron and Judi Barrett's illustrated classic, it stays true to its wish-fulfillment premise. It rains ice cream, cheeseburgers, spaghetti and more--every kid's dream. Its 3,119 screen release includes 1,828 3D screens and 127 IMAX screens, a new high that should significantly pad the returns of the animated movie.

A "campy pastiche of horror and high-school movie clichs" appealing to the 18-25 crowd, Jennifer's Body (2,701 screens) should woo male and female audiences alike. The critical consensus appears to be that Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody's hipster-quip dialogue isn't quite as charming the second time around, but moviegoers may be much more forgiving of the slick horror film. Plus, there's Megan Fox, whose candid interviews and sultry on-screen personality will sell more than a few tickets.

Love Happens, which is billed as a Jennifer Aniston-Aaron Eckhart romantic comedy but is actually more about Eckhart coming to term's with his wife's death in a car accident, opens on 1,898 screens. It's a genre picture straight down to its green-screen shots of Seattle, but executed just well enough to make your hour and forty minutes more diverting than plodding.

Steven Soderbergh's The Informant! (2,505 screens) also debuts. Soderbergh is another one of those prolific directors who cranks out film after film--I got a hint of why in the comedy/thriller, which has a few shots with sloppy cinematography (Soderbergh does it himself under the pseudonym Peter Andrews). Our Executive Editor Kevin Lally hated the "relentlessly jaunty music score." While that film device fails, there's also a clever voice-over narration that illustrates the "cognitive dissonance" of Matt Damon's character. The "manic stream filled with non-sequiturs" about corn and polar bears was one of my favorite parts of the film.

This week is a crowded one at the box office. We'll recap Monday to see how the weekend played out.