Friday, March 05, 2010

The Weekend Derby

Now with Nikkifying Add On.

... Starting with Forbes Magazine and Exhibitors' Relations predictions for the first full weekend of March:

Disney's new version of ''Alice in Wonderland'' will take over 3-D screens, ending the dominance of ''Avatar.''

... On Friday [Avatar] loses its IMAX slot and most 3-D screens in multiplexes. Around 75% of Avatar's $2.5 billion in box office earnings have come from 3-D.

The new Disney ( DIS - news - people ) movie Alice in Wonderland will take its place. The Tim Burton film stars Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter in a sort of sequel to the original Alice tale. This time, Alice goes back to Wonderland as a 19-year-old and has to battle a dragon.

Disney angered theater owners last month when Chief Executive Robert Iger announced that the DVD of Alice would hit stores a mere three months after the film's release date. ...

And here's how Exhibitor's R. guesstimates Alice and various competitors will perform:

Alice In Wonderland $70 million

Shutter Island $14 million

Brooklyn's Finest $10 million

Cop Out $10 million

Avatar $9 million

Add On: The Nikkster gives us early figures ... that make it look like T. Burton has done it again!

I'm hearing that Friday's North American grosses for Disney's 3D Alice In Wonderland are looking like $35+M and maybe even as high as $40M from 3,728 theaters. This would make it the biggest film of 2010 so far and its aleady the biggest 3D bow ever. ...

This is another one of those awkward Hollywood situations where a studio cleans house only to have the new management preside over a huge hit courtesy of their predecessors. In this case, Rich Ross et al will benefit from what Dick Cook and Oren Aviv hath wrought. Dick had a very special relationship with both Tim and Johnny.

No doubt Dick C. is chortling gleefully from his yacht in Newport Beach ...

Add On Too: And now ol' Dick is consumed by hysterical laughter, as Alice rakes in $41 million on Friday.

Brooklyn's Finest, Shutter Island, Cop Out and The Crazies follow in that order.

Avatar continues to make money in its flat-screen incarnation, taking in $1,975,000.

Add On III And at the wire, it's Dick Cook splitting his sides re Alice In Wonderland. The Nikkster totes up the semi-final numbers:

1. Alice In Wonderland (Disney) NEW [3,728 Theaters] Friday $41M, Saturday $45M, Weekend $115+M

2. Brooklyn's Finest (Overture) NEW [1,936 Theaters] Friday $4.7M, Saturday $5.5M, Weekend $13.5M

3. Shutter Island (Paramount) Week 3 [3,178 Theaters] Friday $4.0M, Saturday $6.1M, Weekend $13.5M, Cume $96.0M

4. Cop Out (Warner Bros) Week 2 [3,150 Theaters] Friday $2.8M, Saturday $4.2M, Weekend $9.2M, Cume $32.4M

5. The Crazies (Overture) Week 2 [2,479 Theaters] Friday $2.3M, Saturday $3.0M, Weekend $6.9M, Cume $27.3M

6. Avatar (Fox) [2,163 Theaters] Week 12 Friday $1.9M, Saturday $3.7M, Weekend $7.6M, Estimated Cume $720.0M

7. Valentine's Day (Warner Bros) Week 4 [3,040 Theaters] Friday $1.4M, Estimated Weekend $4.5M, Estimated Cume $106.4M

8. Percy Jackson (Fox) Week 4 [2,994 Theaters] Friday $1.3M, Estimated Weekend $5.2M, Estimated Cume $78.0M

9. Dear John (Sony) Week 5 [2,496 Theaters] Friday $965K, Saturday $1.3M, Weekend $3.0M, Estimated Cume $76.8M

10. Crazy Heart (Fox Searchlight) Week 12 [1,274 Theaters] Friday $925K, Estimated Weekend $3.5M, Estimated Cume $29.6M

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Saw it today. Luckily, for free--because I wouldn't pay to see that pile of crap. It's really, REALLY horrible. Why should anyone care about the so-so "designs" when the audience can't connect with the characters? The 3D is headache inducing, and the image is SO DIM--far more so than any other 3D film I've seen (and yes, I saw it with dual projectors--as bright as it can possibly be).

I'm sure it'll do OK over the weekend, but the audience I saw it with was fidgeting and bored.

Locall said...

I saw it yesterday and loved it tbh!
The Red Queen was hilarious, Johnny Depp great as always, and the music, WOW!

Anonymous said...

To Anonyomus: Perhaps if you PAID for your ticket, you would have gotten a pair of 3D Glasses with the ticket. Had you not picked up a dicarded pair up off the floor which were scratched and scuffed from people walking all over them, you might have gotten a better perception of the movie. OR, had you not been wearing them upside-down and backwards, like some are found to be reading a book in such a way, the movie may not have been so headache-inducing. Maybe your glasses were an old pair from the sixties....I am just trying to troubleshoot the problem.
Certainly, Burton is much much better than making a movie that is such a bother to print.....

Anonymous said...

Looks like Burton finally has another hit on his hands (with his abysmal track record who knows why people kept giving him money) so all I can say is: "in your face Pixar!" Ha! Story, story, story! What a load of crap...obviously story doesn't matter if a film by Tim Burton can be a bigger hit then even Avatar. Let's see Pixar do that with all their talk about story...

Anonymous said...

This time, Alice goes back to Wonderland as a 19-year-old and has to battle a dragon.

(Let's just linger on that description for a moment, people...
Oh, did it mention, she has to dress up as Joan of Arc to do it? Or the various ways in which Burton confused the story with the Wizard of Oz?--Admit it, you used to too, when you were a kid.)

Anonymous said...

definitely Burton's best film in LONG time. He did manage to get a couple of Burton creepiness and just weird shots in there.

it was surprising dim. it certainly did not have to be a 3D movie and the 3D didn't do anything for it. but good film for Burton.

Anonymous said...

Definitely Burton's best film in LONG time.

Yeah, it's been, what, fifteen months since he made Sweeney Todd as a relatively restrained, disciplined and "grownup" source-faithful adaptation?

(And I know that there are those here who revere "Beauty & the Beast", so I will not speak ill here of Linda Woolverton's talents as an adaptation screenwriter in general...MUCH though I would love the opportunity to.)

Anonymous said...

There are quite a few people who worked on 'Beauty & the Beast' who say that Linda Woolverton actually had relatively little to do with that film, despite the credit (and what it did for her career). But that's another story.

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