June 9th, 2010
There were a handful of new releases that reached the top 30 on this week's sales chart, including the new number one. However, none of them were particularly strong. Valentine's Day led the way with 498,000 units sold, generating $8.46 million in opening week sales. Given its box office performance, this is a disappointing start.
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May 17th, 2010
It's an amazingly slow week. In fact, there is only one Featured Review on this week's list that is for a DVD coming out this week. (The other four are for screeners that arrived late.) Additionally, there's not a single first-run release on this week's list that managed to be a hit both at the box office and with critics. The film that came closest was Invictus, but for Pick of the Week I'm going with The Messenger on DVD or Blu-ray. Both are worth picking up, and High Definition is the better deal.
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March 28th, 2010
Just Another Pandora's Box started its international run in sixth place with $7.57 million on 417 screens in 2 markets. These two markets include Hong Kong, where it placed third with $333,000 on 33 screens.
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February 8th, 2010
Oceans opened in its native France and that helped it climb into sixth place with $9.52 million on 888 screens in 4 markets for a total of $16.98 million. It earned third place in its native market with $5.39 million on 542 screens while it was down just 7% during its sophomore stint in Japan with $3.48 million on 303 screens over the weekend for a total of $10.81 million after two.
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January 31st, 2010
It's Complicated saw its weekend haul climb 16%, but it still fell out of the top five.
It added $10.37 million over the weekend on 2,665 screens in 32 markets for a total of $50.92 million after a month of release.
The film opened in third place in Germany with $2.40 million on 552 screens over the weekend and $2.74 million in total.
Meanwhile in the U.K. it added $1.84 million on 431 screens over the weekend for a total of $8.72 million after three weeks of release.
With debuts in Japan, South Korea, and Italy still ahead of it, it could reach $100 million internationally to go with its $100 million domestic total.
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January 26th, 2010
January is coming to a close and we've yet to have a new release top the charts as Avatar reigned at multiplexes again this week. The weakness in the new releases is starting to take its toll, as the overall box office slumped to $144 million, which was 15% lower than last weekend and 10% lower than the same weekend last year. 2010 is still ahead of last year's pace by 9.7% at $888 million to $810 million, so there's little reason to panic at this point.
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January 24th, 2010
Up in the Air started its international run in sixth place with $5.83 million on 936 screens in 9 markets. This includes a fifth place debut in the U.K. where it earned $2.13 million on 325 screens while it also managed fifth in Australia with $1.61 million on just 173 screens. While it is hard for films to open in limited release domestically and expand wide, it is usually a lot harder for these films to thrive internationally. After all, many international markets are simply too small to have a thriving limited release marketplace. It will be interesting to see if this film will be able to take its performance during Awards Season and turn it into a successful international run despite this.
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January 19th, 2010
It was a record breaking Martin Luther King long weekend, as Avatar remained in top spot at least for three out of the four days, and for the weekend as a whole.
Its record-breaking weekend helped the overall box office hit $170 million over three days and $210 million over four.
This was down compared to last year by 12% over three days and 9% over four, which makes it the first down weekend in two months.
Even so, year-to-date, 2010 is still ahead of 2009's pace by nearly 15%, $707 million to $616 million, but this is the first bit of bad news we've had so far.
Perhaps next weekend will be strong and this will be nothing but a minor blip.
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January 17th, 2010
Avatar was pushed from top spot for a day, but came back to comfortably win its fifth straight weekend, according to studio estimates released on Sunday.
With another $41.3 million in the bank, Avatar was down just 18% from last weekend (helped somewhat by the MLK long weekend), and will pass $500 million on Monday after just 32 days in release, easily beating the record held by The Dark Knight (see chart).
It also tops Titanic's record for the biggest fifth weekend at the box office (see chart).
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January 14th, 2010
It's Martin Luther King long weekend, the first long weekend of the year, but not the biggest.
It is also the weekend the Golden Globe awards will be handed out and that could have a larger effect on the box office in the long term.
However, it might have a negative effect in the short term as people stay home to watch the awards.
This could prevent the new releases from keeping up with last year's crop, which included the first $100 million movie of 2009 — a feat that is very unlikely to happen again this year.
In fact, Avatar will probably continue to rule to box office as it overtakes yet another film on the All-Time Chart.
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January 1st, 2010
2009 ended breaking lots of records, so 2010 starts both on a high note, and with a bit of trepidation.
On the one hand, there are several holdovers that should continue to be major players at the box office for the next few weeks, which can only help.
On the other hand, there's almost no chance 2010 will get off to as strong a start as 2009 did, since some of what happened at the box office during January of 2009 was unprecedented.
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