Other Crap

Weekend Box Office Results for October 19–21, 2007

The slump continues. This was the fifth consecutive weekend below its 2006 comp. Note, however, that the results seem worse than they are because 2006 was extraordinary. This weekend actually beat the comparable weekend in 2005 by more than 10%, while last weekend beat 2005 by more than 20%!

The Alaskan vampires sucked the competitors dry, but performed slightly below their range of expectations. Perhaps they sucked on some anemic victims.

Several of the other newcomers in an overcrowded field fell substantially below the predictions, particularly the Meryl Streep "thriller" and the Halle Berry drama. That seems to be kind of a shame in the latter case, since that is supposed to be a pretty decent little flick, but Streep's Rendition was just a flat-out bomb. With $4.1 million in 2200 theaters, it almost perfectly mirrored the numbers for Gigli. Worse than that, its 44% positive reviews probably makes it the worst-reviewed film of the year, because liberal sermonette movies always score higher than that, no matter how bad they are.

Speaking of bad reviews, the unfunny genre spoof, The Comebacks (8% positive reviews), also finished well below expectations.

There was some good news in the mix. The re-release of Tim Burtons's The Nightmare Before Christmas did great, finishing eighth for the week despite being in only 600 theaters. Ben Affleck's movie also performed above expectations, and pulled in 93% positive reviews.