Other Crap

Weekend Box Office Results for March 23-25, 2007

It was another excellent weekend despite the facts that (1) there is no monster hit on the top of the list and (2) not one of the top ten has so much as 70% positive reviews, and half of them are below 30!

Once again the "something for everyone" formula worked perfectly, as the box office zoomed 27% above last year, which was in turn 11% above the previous year. This marked the sixth consecutive week of increases, and the average margin over last year has been nearly 25% in that period.

The new films performed more or less according to expectations. The only significant discrepancy from the predictions was a slight gain by the Turtles, which was offset by a slight loss for Marky Mark's thriller.

Among the carry-overs, 300 fell only 37% from last week, and Wild Hogs fell only 24%, as they each topped the forecasts.

On the bottom of the charts, the studio is making another half-hearted attempt to market Miss Potter, the biopic starring Ewan MacGregor and Renee Zellweger. It was in 40 theaters in January, then dropped as low as seven a couple of weeks ago, and is now back up to 87. For months it was trailered before every single movie I saw, but the marketing gurus apparently figured it didn't have any mass appeal. (Not sure why. It scores 7.1 at IMDb, got a Golden Globe nomination, and earned 63% positive reviews. You'd think they would have pushed it as a family picture, give its squeaky-clean PG combination of Peter Rabbit cartoons and live actors. Maybe they'll push it for Easter, given the bunny theme.)