Weekend Box Office: Baby Mama Demands Cash, Gets It

A tiresome looking scene from Baby Mama. 

As many expected (and others, like me, found inexplicable), Baby Mama opened at number one this weekend, taking the top spot over rival comedy opener Harold & Kumar Go to Guantanamo Bay. According to Variety, the estimated weekend tally was $18.3 million for the surrogate mom vs. $14.6 for the stoner pair. In a perhaps depressing celebration of stereotypes, Baby Mama’s audience was 68% female, with 45% of the ticketbuyers under 25, while 65% of the Harold & Kumar group was 18-35 year old males.

Harold & Kumar incidentally, is well on its way to overtaking its predecessor; Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle only made $18 million as a theatrical release but became a big hit on DVD.

Last weekend’s top pair, Forbidden Kingdom and Forgetting Sarah Marshall held up well in their second weekend. Kingdom declined 48%, taking in an estimated $11.2 million, while Sarah Marshall dropped just 38% with an extremely estimated $11 million. The final numbers on both were too close to call who made third and fourth place; the leader will be determined later today. Steady performing kids movie, Nim’s Island, rounded out the top five with $4.5 million.

From indie land, little film that could The Visitor  expanded to 76 theaters, taking in $508,000. That’s a per screen average of $6,684 for the well-received film. Standard Operating Procedure, the Errol Morris Abu Graib doc, had a total of $14, 916 for a per screen average of $7,458.

There’s a glut of comedies right now–Sarah Marshall, Baby Mama, and next week’s Made of Honor are competing for similar audiences; Harold & Kumar is probably skewing younger or more male. But what I mean is just that it seems like there was this panicked rush in putting together schedules to try to get in as many comedies as possible before the big action movies hit and perhaps overwhelm things. I guess the interesting thing will be to see how well these hold up, and if any of them can endure well into the summer, or if their success is just a byproduct of clever scheduling.