Other Crap

Weekend Box Office Results for October 27–29, 2006

• The top twelve were just about even with last year. They were actually up by $2.1 million, and that was completely accounted for by the difference between Saw 2 and Saw 3.
• Saw 3 opened with $34 million, compared to $32m for its predecessor, and $18m for the first one in the series. Saw 3 and Saw 2 were virtually identical in the "average per theater" column, but the latest one was in 200 more theaters.
• Scorsese scored well again. The Departed held on to the #2 slot, and dropped only 27% despite losing a few theaters.
• In a week in which the carry-over films had generally small drops, Grudge 2 was an exception, dropping 60%, presumably because it faced direct competition for its target audience from Saw 3.
• Running with Scissors did well in limited distribution, and actually finished second in the "per screen" column to climb to tenth in aggregate revenues
• Catch a Fire couldn't have done much worse. It barely crawled to $2m, which was less than half of expectations. And expectations were low to begin with!