Weekend Box Office: Audiences Choose Their “Avatar”

Avatar vs. Snowstorm:  Snowstorm wins?

Here’s the money:

1. Avatar $73,000,000

2. The Princess and the Frog $12,224,000

3. The Blind Side $10,030,000

4. Did You Hear About the Morgans? $7,000,000

5. The Twilight Saga: New Moon $4,370,000

So the highly touted “Avatar” opened to good, but not stunning domestic numbers; with $73 million, it falls short of the best December opening record held by “I Am Legend” ($77.2 million). At this point, it’s impossible to sort out whether this is due to less excitement about the movie than expected or whether the nor’easter that swept up the US east coast, snowing in large swaths of the population, is the real culprit. We’ll have to see how well it holds up over the holiday week.

No one’s weeping for the financiers behind “Avatar,” though. Sure, it cost reportedly over $300 million to make, but in addition to the US take, it also earned $159.2 million worldwide, giving it an opening weekend total of $232.2 million. One or two more weeks of at least similar numbers will put everyone in the black, unless that fancy Hollywood accounting finds a way to prove the movie made no money whatsoever.

Interesting fact from The Hollywood Reporter about the audiences for “Avatar”: the audience was 57% male, and 62% of the ticket buyers were over age 25, so this appears to be a big action sci fi movie that has avoided the trap of being labeled as just for boys 12-18. That actually bodes well for its future, I would think. It might even do solid family business over Christmas.

Interesting note about the box office this week: Did you notice that the week before Christmas saw the first time that “Disney’s A Christmas Carol” dropped out of the top five? I still think they erred by releasing that movie way too early. It’s obviously on no one’s minds or in anyone’s plans right now.

Interesting note about the specialty box office this week: Although “Nine” got almost universally bad reviews (including some outright awful ones), it actually clocked an impressive $246,933 from four theaters, for a $61,733 per screen average. And this is for a movie whose target audience is largely made up of people who read and take reviews seriously. I guess movie stars in lingerie is as good a lock as big explosions, even with the art house crowd. The musical expands nationwide next week.

As for this week’s only other wide opener, “Did You Hear About the Morgans?”–I’m guessing most people only heard about the Morgans when their real movie of choice was sold out.

Next week: “Avatar” week 2 vs. “Sherlock Holmes” vs. holiday weekend sales and bargain hunters.