Weekend Box Office: Marley Top Dog Again

Actually, Owen, it’s the dog that carries the movie. 

If your New Year’s resolution was to do your best to make last weekend’s box office winners repeat this weekend, well, congratulations! You succeeded. “Marley & Me” was in first place again, with $24 million. The dog’s life with very blonde people film is now at $107 million over its first eleven days. It’s so simple. People. Love. Dogs. (numbers courtesy of Variety, by the way)

“Bedtime Stories” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” which had virtually tied for 2nd and 3rd last weekend finished in those places again. This time, though, “Bedtime” was decidedly in second with $20.3 million, and “Benjamin Button” was in third with $18.4 million. That’s apparently better than expected for the century spanning Brad Pitt drama; it’s tough to make a lot of money in a short period when each showing runs, well, about a century (full disclosure: I haven’t seen it yet, but the one person I know who did considered it close to pure movie torture due to length and boredom. Uh oh.).

“Valkyrie” made $14.3 million, good enough for fourth place, and again, better than expected. Considering all the pre-release gossip and general bad karma around this movie, landing in the top five in its first two weeks has to be considered a major victory. “Yes Man” came in fifth, with $13.9 million, declining only 17% from last week and proving that people will still come out to see Jim Carrey do that Jim Carrey thing that he did like 15 years ago that made audiences like him. “Ace Ventura III” isn’t far behind (oh wait, I just looked it up on IMDb–sadly, there IS an Ace Ventura III on the way, though it is focused on “the eccentric detective’s son.” Okay, Jim, you’re off the hook for this one. Looking forward to “I Love You, Phillip Morris.”

There weren’t any big new general releases this weekend, so it’s no surprise that last week’s films held over. Probably the bigger surprise is that considering all the talk of economic woes, they did this well. I guess all those people who usually go to some island resort over the holidays stayed home and went to the movies. New releases begin to show up next week, including “The Unborn” and “Bride Wars.” Let’s see if anything can make a dent in the “big holiday movie” lock.