Box Office Report: November 11-14-05

Dude here again. Well another weekend has struck, and another report of the box office is to be had. And I'm just the person to report it. Why? Because quite frankly, they asked me to. And then I kept doing it, never asking for a moment's peace. Sure it's irrational. But you know what else is irrational? Love.

This week, we had a few movies opening of different genre, all hoping to scrape some money before next week's behemoth Harry Potter opens. did they succeed? Let's go to the numbers, shall we? (All in millions, remember, and these are the studio estimates. Numbers could change on Monday).

1. Chicken Little (BV) - $32.0, 3658 screens, week 2, $80.774 total
2. Zathura (SONY) - $14.0, 3223 screens, week 1, $14.0 total
3. Derailed (WEIN) - $12.8, 2441 screens, week 1, $12.8 total
4. Get Rich or Die Tryin' (PAR) - $12.5, 1652 screens, week 1, $18.2 total (Wed. open)
5. Jarhead (UNI)- $12.26, 2448 screens, week 2, $47.06 total
6. Saw II (LG)- $9.4, 2949 screens, week 3, $74.15 total
7. The Legend of Zorro (Sony) - $6.6, 3053 screens, week 3, $39.489 total
8. Prime (UNI) - $3.954, 1781 screens, week 3, $18.998 total
9. Dreamer (DW) - $3.8, 2735 screens, week 4, $28.9 total
10. Pride and Prejudice (Focus) - $2.8, 215 screens, week 1, $2.8 total

Ok, those are the numbers, so what does this all mean? Well, if you're Chicken Little you can blah blah blah sky ISN'T falling joke here. Chicken Little bucked the competition, and held off family friendly Zathura to take the number one spot for the second week in a row. This seals some sort of a deal with Satan, I feel. Regardless, due to such a successful second weekend (plus, it will most likely play very strong over the upcoming weeks in spite of Potter) it looks like 2-D animation truly is dead at the House of Mouse. Bring on the 3-D computer animation forever. It should be noted that Chicken Little also plays in a Disney 3-D digital experience that is supposed to be a lot of fun. Well, the exact phrase I heard was "It takes your mind off the bad script."

If you're Zathura, I bet you were thinking that you'd do a lot better. I was thinking that. The previews looked great, Favreau makes solid movies, and it had a nice, old fashioned kind of charm. It also received a lot of positive reviews. And yet, it didn't perform that well. Strange. Was it the timing? Was it the fact that people thought it was Jumanji all over again? (Even though this one looks so much better). What happened? It shall remain a mystery. Again, we shall see what happens with it's performance in the next few weeks.

If you're the Weinstein brothers, you gotta be a little happy. Making more than most of the last bunch of films Miramax released combined, Derailed, the new flick from the Weinstein's offshoot, made quite a bit of money. Impressive for a film like this. Perhaps it's the star power of Jennifer Aniston and Clive Owen. Regardless, the R-Rated thriller had a nice opening. I hear the movie is pretty decent as well. But this is a nice beginning for the new company and the Weinsteins.

And if you're 50 Cent, you didn't even come close to matching Eminem's debut three years ago. Even with an extra two days, Get Rich or Die Tryin' couldn't match the $51 million opening of 8 Mile. Still, an $18 million gross by the end of the weekend is respectable, as we all have to remember we'll never make $18 million dollars in a weekend in our lives. The 50 Cent does have his fans.

And Keira Knightley's new movie, Pride and Prejudice, opened in tenth place on 215, but it had a $13,000 per screen average, which is the highest in the top ten. It looks like a pretty Jane Austen type movie, and like most of these smaller films around this time of year, it will continue to play through the awards season, possibly even proving to make a lot of money when the time comes.

The holdovers are performing alright. Jarhead dropped 55.8%, but is holding pace among the flicks released this weekend. Saw 2 dropped 44%, but is still making money and could possibly break into the $100 million club for the year, although it could not. How's that for vague? The Legend of Zorro not keeping up so much. Prime continued to fight the good fight. Dreamer keeps adding screens each week, even though it's making less. Weird.

Below the radar, only a few movies opened in limited release (that I was able to find numbers on). The lovely and vulgar Sarah Silverman's new concert film "Jesus is Magic" opened on 7 screens and made $128,000 dollars. And Bee Season, a drama (I think) with Richard Gere and... a child of some sort, that's supposed to be really good and it was made by the guys who made Suture (which kicks a fair amount of ass, check it out). Anyway, Bee Season made $127,000 on 21 screens.

And in the "just because it's there and because I can't champion the film enough" series: Broken Flowers made $11,100 dollars this weekend on 29 screens. Keep in mind, it's in it's 15th week.

There you have my wonderful break down. Next week, we have a big movie that tons of people can't wait for, even though there can't be any surprises, there's been so much written about him. I speak of course, of the new Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. I'm really looking forward to that one. There's also that Harry Potter flick too.  Until next weekend....