Weekend Box-Office: October 21-23, 2011

Paranormal
3 breaks records…

Nobody was really surprised to
see PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 in the #1 spot at the end of this past
weekend, but after the original film opened with $20M back in 2009
and its follow-up opened with $40M last year, it was a bit of a
surprise to see the latest film smash those figures, while
at the same time, becoming the "biggest horror movie opening
in history" with $54M over the last 3 days. It also became
the highest-opening October release of all-time, breaking JACKASS
3D’s record of $50M set just last year. The film only cost about
$5M to produce, so something tells me that we’ll be seeing plenty
of more PARANORMAL flicks in the coming years.

That said, is there any
specific reason why all the other studios decided not to
release any horror movies this late October?? (aren’t you kind of
giving audiences no "choice" other than to see this
movie if you want to be scared?) I mean seriously…how does that
work? Films like FRIGHT NIGHT, FINAL DESTINATION 5, DON’T BE
AFRAID OF THE DARK and SHARK NIGHT were dropped into the 2011
schedule in late August, but couldn’t be held up for a couple of
months for the Halloween crowds? I personally don’t get that
strategy. But hey…at least we get PUSS IN BOOTS next weekend,
right? Right?!?

As for the other 2 new releases
of the weekend, the news wasn’t that much better than THE BIG YEAR
was last week as Rowan Atkinson’s JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN scored
only $4M and a 8th place opening. That figure might be considered
troublesome on its own, but the film has already grossed over
$105M worldwide since its September release, so no major worries
about its $45M budget.

Paul WS Anderson’s THE THREE
MUSKETEERS (in 3D, sigh) didn’t fare too much better with a $9M
gross and a 4th place opening, but with only a 28%
positive rating over at Rotten Tomatoes, its chances of
breaking out aren’t very high going forward. Much like JOHNNY
ENGLISH, the THREE MUSKETEERS also opened in overseas theaters
last month, and did make around $50M from those countries, so Milla
needed worry too much about the US marketing and grosses.

The rest of the top 10 remained relatively the
same except every film moved down a notch or two, except for THE
THING which lost 63% of its audience from last weekend and went
from 3rd to 9th place. Films that dropped out of the top 10 this
week include one of the biggest flops of the year entitled THE BIG
YEAR ($4M), COURAGEOUS ($25M) and THE LION KING ($93M).

Now even though it’s Halloween next weekend, not
one studio is releasing a "scary movie" for reasons
known only to them, but they’re more than happy to release Johnny
Depp’s THE
RUM DIARY, Justin Timberlake’s sci-fi flick IN
TIME and Antonio Banderas’ SHREK spin-off movie PUSS
IN BOOTS. But this weekend is all about the paranormal, so we
ask you, would you be interested in seeing a PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4
in the near future? VOTE
HERE!!!