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Weekend Box Office Results for January 26-28, 2007

Hollywood has to be breathing a sigh of relief after this weekend. Although the box office was down ten percent from last year, it could have been much worse. There were four new releases - three of them were not pre-screened for critics, and they have now all come in below 30% at Rotten Tomatoes. On top of that, the strongest carry-over has been out for six weeks! Analysts expected the carnage to be much worse than it actually was.

Some executives at Fox must be particularly relieved at the performance of Epic Movie, a film reviled by critics ("assured to be the worst film I will behold all year"), yet on top of the box office. Can anyone recall when a film with 0% positive reviews made the head of the class? That has to be a first.

Audiences cut some slack for Epic Movie and Smokin' Aces, and even Catch and Release (which took in a surprising eight million), but they had no interest at all in the offbeat supernatural movie Blood and Chocolate, which seems too much like a straight-to-vid project. It finished 15th, and was the only film on the list to perform below expectations. And those expectations were modest to begin with!

Scorsese's The Departed was re-released after the Oscar nominations, and pulled in another three million bucks, finishing in the top twelve!