Well, it was a pretty impressive debut - $90.1 million including midnight ticket sales on
Thursday. That's more than
Thor or
Fast Five opened with, but slightly short
of the $100 million + that Disney was hoping for. (It's already made more than $250 million
overseas, so it's not exactly a bomb.) The film supposedly cost around $200 million to make
(probably more like $250 million) and should still collect a tidy profit, although whether it will
clear enough to guarantee another entry remains to be seen. A script has already been turned
in for number five, although plot details are being kept under wraps. If I had to guess, there
was initial talk of "steampunk" elements for the fourth film; I wouldn't be surprised if those
ideas and that aesthetic got carried over to the new film.
Anyway, we'll see how the ships of
On Stranger Tides fare against the sequel double-assault of
Hangover, Part II and
Kung Fu Panda 2, both of which open on
Friday. Two very different audiences, but with
Kung Fu Panda 2 nabbing some of the
prized 3D theaters, it could be a stalemate.
But the biggest surprise of the weekend box office derby was the amazing hold of Universal's
Bridesmaids, which dropped a minuscule 20% to rack up another $21 million, to
come in at the #2 spot. This is great for female-led comedies and for quality comedies in
general; a truly impressive hold for an absolutely wonderful film.
Besides that, it was business as usual at the North American box office.
Priest took
the tumble I was predicting last week, dropping 69%, enough to nab the #6 spot with $4.6
million. This was the movie that Paul Bettany chose instead of taking the Colin Firth role in
The King's Speech. Can we just think about this for a minute? Good. Sometimes it's
good to wallow in other people's bad decisions.
Most amazingly, though, is the fact that Woody Allen's wonderful
Midnight in Paris
almost cracked the top 10 despite being in SIX theaters. It racked up $579,000, which is
slightly less than the #11 movie,
Soul Surfer - and that movie played in 984
theaters! That's truly phenomenal. The buzz seems to be out about how good this one is, and
when it goes national it should be a nice little sleeper hit.
- #1 - Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Disney) - $90.1 million
- #2 - Bridesmaids (Universal) - $21.5 million
- #3 - Thor (Paramount) - $15.5 million
- #4 - Fast Five (Universal) - $10.6 million
- #5 - Rio (Fox) - $4.6 million
- #6 - Priest (Sony) - $4.6 million
- #7 - Jumping the Broom (Sony) - $3.7 million
- #8 - Something Borrowed (Warner Bros) - $3.4 million
- #9 - Water for Elephants (Fox) - $2.1 million
- #10 - Madea's Big Happy Family (Lionsgate) - $990 thousand