Weekend Box-Office: August 26-28, 2011

People love movies about maids

I don’t think anybody thought this weekend was going to be anything great in the first place, but with that bitch-and-a-half hurricane Irene rocking the East Coast and about 65 million of its inhabitants, the weekend’s box-office numbers sucked the bag as most hookers do most evenings. Seriously though, can you believe that THE HELP has been in the top 2 for the past three weekends now? Yeah, that’s right and it was the #1 movie in America over the past 2 weekends to boot. I have nothing against the film, but it’s strange to see films like FRIGHT NIGHT, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK and COLOMBIANA all performing like balls.

THE HELP has now grossed close to $100M, and that’s only on a budget of $25M so expect THE HELP 2: FILIPINO NANNIES in theaters next August! It was actually the lowest total weekend box-office gross of 2011 ($88M) since Superbowl weekend back in early February ($87M). RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is also still performing admirably as it hangs out at number 4 after four weeks of release. The film has now grossed close to $150M and is now the 11th highest grossing film of the summer. That may not make a difference to you, but for our annual JoBlo.com Staff Box-Office contest, that shit might affect results, if it ever manages to surpass KUNG FU PANDA 2 in 10th place (it made $164M over the summer).

In terms of the 3 new releases of the weekend, Luc Besson’s COLOMBIANA fared best with a $10M opening, which is decent for a film of its ilk. It apparently cost about $40M to make, but flicks like that do very well worldwide so they shouldn’t have a problem recouping their investment on this one. Guillermo Del Toro’s DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK made close to $9M for its release, which was also decent for it $25M price tag. BTW, I realize both those films were “produced” by those guys, but they were marketed as “their films” hence my wording above.

The biggest drop of the weekend came from CONAN THE BARBARIAN which can now officially be deemed a “summer bomb” as it lost 70% of its audience from last weekend (which wasn’t that big to begin with) and with its $90M price tag (how the f*ck did that happen?), I think it’s safe to say that we won’t be seeing a CONAN THE DESTROYER anytime soon.

The 3 films to get booted from the top 10 this weekend included 30 MINUTES OF LESS ($32M), FINAL DESTINATION 5 ($38M) and ONE DAY ($9M) in only its 2nd weekend of release.

Next weekend continues the “dump week” for Hollywood studios as APOLLO 18 and SHARK NIGHT 3D are dropped into our collective laps. So even though next weekend’s releases don’t look too great, what movie are you most looking forward to seeing this September? VOTE HERE!!!