Originally scheduled for a November 4 release, Dreamworks shuffled the deck and delivered Puss in Boots in theaters on Halloween weekend, recognizing a horror film hadn’t already staked a claim on the date. As a result, it looks like an animated family film may end up with the best Halloween weekend opening ever.
After $9.6 million on Friday, a weekend north of $35 million is likely, which would be more than enough to top the current king of Halloween, Saw III, which took home $33.6 million on its opening weekend back in 2006. Inflated 3D ticket prices sure do help.
Of course, while we may be talking about a record, we aren’t exactly talking about a big number. Laremy I didn’t.
So, while Puss brought in inflated 3D dollars, Paranormal Activity 3 will come in second, dropping big from its $52.5 million opening weekend as expected, bringing in $6.6 million on Friday. The film will finish a distant second with Laremy’s $19.46 million prediction looking spot on.
In third is the In Time. The Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried starrer took in an estimated $4.3 million on Friday, which should carry over to about $13 million for the three-day.
In a distant fourth was the new Johnny Depp film, The Rum Diary, which brought in $1.84 million on Friday and will likely end the weekend around $5 million. After seeing the film on Thursday it’s a number I’m not at all surprised to see, this isn’t a film for everyone, which is the main reason it took so long to get a distributor and get it into theaters. That said, I did like it.
Finally, Sony’s decision to do a slow roll-out of their Shakespeare conspiracy feature, Anonymous, resulted in $320,000 from 265 theaters. Something close to $1 million for the weekend and a $3,773 per theater average. I really hope they’re able to get more people to see this movie, it’s quite good.
I’ve included the Friday top ten below and will be back tomorrow morning with a complete wrap-up.
- Puss in Boots – $9.6 million
- Paranormal Activity 3 – $6.6 million
- In Time – $4.3 million
- The Rum Diary – $1.84 million
- Footloose – $1.83 million
- Real Steel – $1.5 million
- The Three Musketeers – $1 million
- The Ides of March – $863,000
- Moneyball – $675,000
- Courageous – $525,000
