Well, after all that talk, it should have a decent opening.
Well, if you have a movie people have been talking about for five months, it better have a good opening weekend. And “The Paperboy” did just that–it had a good weekend. Not a great one. A good one. It turns out that there are a reasonable number of people who are interested in watching Nicole Kidman pee on Zac Efron. Or who have a fondness for Southern Gothic camp. Hopefully there was no one left who thought a movie called “The Paperboy” was really about the life and times of a boy delivering papers. The film earned $110,033 at eleven locations, for an average of $10,033 (I love the easy math ones). Again, good, not great. It will be interesting to see what happens as it expands.
The next best opening was for “The House I Live In.” The drug doc (umentary, not medical doc) earned $19,654 at two locations for an average of $9,827. The newest and surely not the last version of “Wuthering Heights” played in one theater for $8,785. The horror anthology “V/H/S” averaged only $2,667 from fifteen theaters, but the distributor, Magnolia, noted that it’s been available for months on VOD, so it’s been earning its keep. “The Oranges” had a bad weekend, with only $1,636 per screen at 110 theaters. Yikes.
On the other hand, the second week for “The Other Dream Team” went really well. The Lithuanian basketball documentary expanded to seven theaters, where it had a per screen average of $12,746. “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” also expanded; it’s now up to 221 theaters, where it averaged was $6,901 per screen. There are still romantic teen girls out there waiting to see this one, so it will keep on expanding.
What’s up for next week? We have some indie type movies that are getting larger releases, like “Atlas Shrugged, Part II” in 850 theaters (yes, they went ahead and made the second one) and “Seven Psychopaths” in 1,475. Then we have some indies that are so indie they have, well, no locations listed: “3, 2, 1…Frankie Go Boom,” “Nobody Walks,” “Excuse Me For Living,” “Middle of Nowhere,” “Simon and the Oaks.” It’s hard to predict anything from that list…
