Weekend Box-Office: October 7-9, 2011

Robots
+ Disney + Jackman = hit!

It’s rare that an entire
weekend box-office report doesn’t include anything that
“surprising” per se, but I think this week is one of
those. Granted, Hugh Jackman and his merry robots from REAL STEEL
broke out of the pack and achieved an impressive #1 showing with
around $27M, but honestly…who wasn’t expecting that? (close
to 40% of the JoBlo.com readers we polled last weekend had it
in exactly that range) The film did cost $110M to make, but the
word of mouth has been pretty positive so far, and with the rest
of October not looking all that interesting, the movie might
ultimately end up making close to $100M (or I’m talking out of my
ass).

The other new release of the
weekend, George Clooney’s THE IDES OF MARCH (no idea what that
means, by the way) also fared well with a 2nd place showing and
about $10M in receipts. And because of those two new films,
DOLPHIN TALE was knocked down to 3rd place after one week in the
top spot. MONEYBALL also dropped one spot from 3rd to 4th place
this weekend, as both films close in on the $50M mark.

The biggest drop-off from last
weekend to this one came from THE LION KING, which lost 57% of its
audience from last week. Seeing as REAL STEEL was a “family
film”, it’s obvious that most of those same peeps decided to
check out the robots instead. That said, THE LION KING has now
generated $85M since its 3D re-release, which ain’t too shabby
when you consider that it had already grossed $313M during its
original release back in 1994. The film’s overall total is now
$414M, which moves it up from around 31st
place on the All-Time Domestic Box-Office charts to 10th place!
(only TOY STORY 3 and SHREK 2 have made more money domestically as
an animated film)

Seth Rogen’s cancer-comedy
50/50 also fared decently this weekend as it remained in 5th place
for a second weekend in a row. The film has now grossed close to
$20M and cost only about $8M to produce. The 2 films to get booted
from the top 10 in order to make way for the two new releases were
CONTAGION ($69M) and KILLER ELITE ($22M).

Next weekend is an odd one as a
few “big name”-starring films will be receiving only
“limited releases” including TRESPASS
starring Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman and FATHER
OF INVENTION starring Kevin Spacey. No worries about
catching them in theaters though as both films will be released on
home video in the coming weeks! TRESPASS will be out on DVD
on November
1st, while FATHER OF INVENTION will hit video-stores (do
they still exist?) on October
28th. Weird.

And speaking of weird, I can’t
find any reliable information about the Julia Roberts/Ryan
Reynolds film FIREFLIES
IN THE GARDEN other than the IMBD which states that it
will be coming out next weekend. The film was shot back in 2007,
but had problems with its distribution…and then some! If you
know exactly what is happening with this film, please post it in
the STRIKE BACKs below.

Finally, the 3 wide releases
opening next weekend include THE
BIG YEAR starring Jack Black, Steve Martin and Owen Wilson
(this looks hooooorrible), FOOTLOOSE
(this looks hooooooorible) and the remake – prequel – sequel –
lame-ass-idea THE
THING (this looks hoooooorrible). So more importantly,
which October film are you most excited about, if any? VOTE
HERE!!!