Winners at the box office, if not the Olympics.
Remember how the art house box office put the multiplex box office to shame over the last few weekends, with movies like “The Master,” “Arbitrage,” and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” racking up huge per screen averages? Yeah, well, never mind–the multiplex box office showed its muscle this weekend, with movies like “Hotel Transylvania,” “Looper,” and even the small-scale release of “Pitch Perfect” all putting up impressive numbers.
There weren’t many newcomers at the specialty box office, though, and none with any big indie world names. In the end, the documentary “The Other Dream Team,” about the scrappy Lithuanian national basketball team at the 1992 Olympics, was the only new movie that made a respectable showing. It had a $11,357 per screen average at two theaters, for a total of $22,714. They’re planning to slowly roll out to more theaters over the next few weeks.
On the other hand, last week’s big opener “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” expanded to 102 theaters and did well with $11,150 per screen for about $1.5 million, pushing it into 13th place on the overall box office list. They’ll continue to expand until they reach every girl who wants to take care of Logan Lerman and see what Emma Watson is wearing.
Next week! We have “Butter,” the political comedy with Jennifer Garner and Olivia Wilde that’s taken about a year to reach theaters. Then there’s “The Paperboy,” Lee Daniels’s slice of Southern Gothic camp which wildly divided festival audiences this year. With Nicole Kidman, Matthew McConaughy, and Zac Efron, it might get some people in the door to find out what the fuss is all about.
