Weekend Box-Office: October 28-30, 2011

Animated
kid’s movie leads Halloween!

With none of the studios
believing that Halloween weekend is a great time to drop a horror
movie into our laps, it was the animated PUSS IN BOOTS that
led the box-office this weekend with $34M in the #1 spot. For me,
I can’t help laughing at the film’s title since "boots"
literally means "vagina" in Armenian. Aaaaaah, the
double-entendres. That aside, the first SHREK spin-off flick
opened extremely strongly for a non-horror movie (what do I
know?), in fact it’s on track to beat SAW III as the top Halloween
weekend opener of all-time.

In their second weekends of
release, both PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 and THE THREE MUSKETEERS lost
over 60% of their respective audiences from last weekend, dropping
PARANORMAL from #1 to #2, while MUSKETEERS went from #4 to #7.
Overall, the weekend was pretty weak with the #4 movie FOOTLOOSE
grossing only $5M. The three films to get knocked out of the top
10 this week including 50/50 ($30M), JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN ($5M)
and THE THING ($15M). 

Other than PUSS IN BOOTS, the
two other new releases of the weekend didn’t fare too well with
Justin Timberlake’s IN TIME opening in 3rd place with lots
of negative reviews and only $12M in receipts. It’s
interesting to note that the film’s writer/director Andrew
Niccol’s most well-known film, GATTACA, actually only grossed $12M
overall when it was released back in 1997.

The other new release was Johnny Depp’s THE RUM
DIARY, which didn’t feature Pirates on the screen or Tim Burton
behind the lens, but rather another interpretation of Hunter S.
Thompson’s works. Depp starred in 1998’s FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS
VEGAS which only opened with $3M (grossed only $11M overall),
which means that the folks behind THE RUM DIARY should be somewhat
happy that their film opened with a little more this weekend
($5M). That said, I don’t think Disney needs to worry too much
about this film taking away from their golden boy’s billion-dollar
aura.

The overall weekend was pretty crappy though and
many reasons may have impacted these results including the lack of
horror movies released, the World Series on TV, the nasty East
Coast snowstorm or just the overall emphasis on partying on
Halloween weekend. It’s to note that THE
ADVENTURES OF TINTIN opened widely in many countries around
the world this past weekend (obviously not North America) and
performed very well, earning $56M in 19 markets and opening in 1st
place in 17 of those 19 countries. The film opens on December 21st
on our side of the world.

Next weekend sees the release of two new films
including Eddie Murphy’s return to the adult-oriented comedy, TOWER
HEIST, co-starring Ben Stiller, Casey Affleck, Mathew
Broderick, Tea Leoni and others, as well as an early X-Mas present
for all the fun-loving stoners out there as A
VERY HAROLD & KUMAR CHRISTMAS hits theaters. Now that
we’re switching over to November, what film are you most looking
forward to seeing next month? VOTE
HERE!!!