Weekend Box-Office: September 29-October 1, 2011

The
Dolphin Tale upsets the Lion King

Just like last weekend when 4
new releases opened wide only to have THE LION KING remain in the
#1 spot, this weekend’s 4 new releases couldn’t even pierce the
top 3 as one of last week’s releases, THE DOLPHIN TALE, managed to
move from 3rd to 1st place, overtaking THE LION KING in the #1
spot and moving ahead of MONEYBALL, which remained in second
place, just like last weekend. THE LION KING finally lost some of
its mojo, as it dropped close to 50% of its audience from last
weekend, while dropping into 3rd place. The film has earned close
to $80M after three weeks of release.

Out of the 4 new releases of
the weekend, it was 50/50 that managed to make the most bucks in
4th place with close to $9M, followed pretty closely by the
Christian film COURAGEOUS in 5th place. The latter film’s results
were more impressive because it was only featured in half
the number of theaters than 50/50. Not surprisingly, the studios
didn’t preview DREAM HOUSE or WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER for critics (for
obvious reasons, our very own film critics gave the films
respective scores of 3/10
and
5/10) and in turn, neither film did too well at the box-office
with DREAM HOUSE opening in 6th place with about $8M and WHAT’S
YOUR NUMBER opening in 8th place with about $5.6M. BTW, how
under-promoted was Chris Evans in the latter film? Yipes! Must’ve
been in the contract…

For fans of great movies, it
was sad to see DRIVE drop out of the top 10 in only its 3rd week
of release (much like WARRIOR last week) although in its defense,
it did generate $27M in revenues, which is already a lot more than
its budget of $15M. Taylor Lautner’s ADBUCTION also dropped from
4th to 7th place in its second weekend of release while KILLER
ELITE dropped from 5th to 10th place, as both films lost about 50%
of their respective audiences from last weekend.

Besides DRIVE ($27M),
the other 3 films to get booted from the top 10 this weekend
included THE HELP ($159M), STRAW DOGS ($10M) and I DON’T KNOW HOW
SHE DOES IT ($9M). THE HELP was a major surprise and success,
while the latter two films….not so much.

Next weekend sees the release of the highly
anticipated kid’s movie REAL
STEEL featuring Hugh Jackman and a bunch of robots
fighting it out, as well as the Oscar-nip entitled THE
IDES OF MARCH which was written by, directed by and
starring George Clooney. You can read our review of it HERE.
There are 4 other limited releases opening up as well, each of
which has already been reviewed by our critics including the Clive
Owen-starring INTRUDERS
(read review HERE),
the other Olsen-sister-starring MARTHA
MARCY MAY MARLENE (read review HERE),
the Sam Shepard-starring BLACKTHORN
(read review HERE)
as well as THE
HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2 (read review HERE).
We haven’t asked this sort of question in a while, so how much $$$
do you think REAL STEEL will open with next weekend? VOTE
HERE!!!