Weekend Box-Office: August 19-21, 2011

We’re
a movin’ on up…

It’s extremely rare that a film
won’t open in 1st place on its initial weekend of release,
but then actually move up to #1 after that, but this
weekend THE HELP did just that, as it had opened in 2nd place last
week behind RISE OF THOSE CRAZY MONKEYS, but finally managed to
knock the APES out of the top spot after two straight weekends at
#1. THE HELP obviously has been getting a lot of tremendous
“word of mouth” and only lost about 20% of its audience
from last weekend. Mind you, the APES still fared pretty well in
2nd place with another $16M added to its total, which is now
closing in on the $135M mark after only three weeks of release
(currently in 13th
place for 2011).

Ironically, four new movies
were released over the past weekend, yet none of them
managed to crack the top 2 spots from the top 10. In fact, it was
the 4th installment of the SPY KIDS series that managed the
“best” opening of all the releases, with $12M in
receipts and a 3rd place finish. That figure was about 1/3 of what
the previous SPY KIDS film had opened with back in 2003 ($33M) and
that’s despite both the 3D and smell-O-vision “add-ons”
this time around. Unfortunately for director Robert Rodriguez,
this franchise seems played out at this point, despite his
low-budget scheme to make them.

The “reboot” of the CONAN THE BARBARIAN
franchise also seems to have failed, despite its $10M gate and 4th
place opening. Unfortunately for that film, it apparently cost
about $90M to make, so unless it makes tremendous dollars
overseas, I think it will likely stall at this one movie in the
imagined “reboot”. FRIGHT NIGHT, despite
its overwhelmingly positive reviews, also doesn’t seem to have
connected with audiences in late August, as it only managed about
$8M, which was only a few grand over FINAL DESTINATION 5 right
below it in 7th place.

Somewhat surprisingly, the Anne Hathaway-starring
romance ONE DAY received the worst
critical notices of the weekend, and only managed a 9th place
opening. Yipes! With the summer season winding down, the 4 films
to get kicked out of the top 10 this weekend included HARRY POTTER
AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 ($366M), COWBOYS & ALIENS
($89M), CAPTAIN AMERICA ($165M) and THE CHANGE-UP ($32M).

With the final weekend of August and first weekend
of September generally representing a good time for studios to
“dump” films of which they are not very proud, it’ll be
interesting to see how Luc Besson’s COLOMBIANA
does next weekend (“from the makers of THE PROFESSIONAL
comes…another ripoff of THE PROFESSIONAL!!“), Guillermo
del Toro’s DON’T
BE AFRAID OF THE DARK (Note: neither Luc nor Guillermo
directed their respective movies), as well as the Paul
Rudd-starring OUR
IDIOT BROTHER. Since there don’t appear to be any
groundbreaking films coming out in the next two weeks, I guess we
can finally ask you the big question: what was your favorite movie
this summer? VOTE
HERE!!!