Other Crap

Weekend Box Office Results for April 13-15, 2007

It was a mediocre weekend which finished about 9% below last year. The 2006 stats were buoyed by a strong $40 million opening for Scary Movie 4, which single-handedly took in almost as much as the sum of all six of this year's new movies.

This was the first week that the scattershot technique failed this year, but the failure is understandable when you consider that the seven new/expanded choices do not really offer that much choice. The newbies include three thrillers, a Viking fantasy, a specialty stoner film, and an independently distributed Euro-gearhead film. (The Hoax, the expansion, is a retro true-life crime pic.) There is nothing for mainstream comedy fans and nothing for families, and the absence of those genres leaves a gaping hole in the box-office coverage. I found no reason to go to a theater this week, and I suppose many other moviegoers felt the same way.

Grindhouse continued to perform below expectations. Those people who hoped that its legs would make up for its poor start will be disappointed to hear that it dropped far faster than expected. The ultimate humiliation occurred when it fell below The Reaping, a film it defeated last week. As I predicted, Grindhouse almost fell out of the top ten. It barely clung to tenth place over Redline, and appears headed for a final number below $30m.

Young Shia LaBeouf was the most positive story of the week, as his thriller soundly trounced Bruce Willis and Halle Berry head-to-head. Shia's Disturbia was the only new release to exceed expectations.

The third thriller, a Ray Liotta vehicle called Slow Burn, may have set some kind of record for the lowest box office ever for films in a thousand theaters or more. I'm not sure what that record is (I couldn't find it at Box Office Mojo), but there can't be too many such films below Slow Burn's $800,000.

The stoner movie finished 13th, but actually did quite well per theater.