The majority of today is going to be spent considering the awards race after the Producers Guild awarded Argo last night and the Screen Actors Guild will be handing out their awards tonight (we will be live-blogging starting around 3 PM PST by the way). This morning, the box-office gets a brief moment of our time as Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters took the #1 spot with an estimated $19 million and the Movie Godz wept.
Budgeted at $50 million, I think Paramount is happy to use Hansel & Gretel as a movie marketing tool more than anything else, taking the opportunity to earn back a few dollars while previewing four minutes of G.I. Joe: Retaliation, hoping the sequel will more than make up for the money lost on the lackluster fairy tale-turned-actioner.
The final number came in well under Laremy’s predicted $27 million, but looking over the reader predictions it seems John Debono knew something Laremy didn’t as his $18.6 million prediction may end up spot on once actuals are released Monday afternoon.
The film will likely fade quickly as audiences came away with a “B” CinemaScore, but who knows, maybe it will make a few dollars overseas and Paramount can wash its hands and break even after delaying it for nearly a year.
Looking at other new releases, we find Jason Statham‘s Parker down in fifth place with a measly $7 million, which Laremy almost nailed in his predictions, but he was doubly wrong on Movie 43, which boasted one of the largest ensemble casts ever and turned in a mere $5 million over the weekend. Parker did fine with cinemagoers, scoring a “B+” CinemaScore, but don’t expect to hear much about Movie 43 ever again as that “D” CinemaScore isn’t likely to get people buzzing.
Of course, with Movie 43 already scoring $8.5 million in Russia, that $6 million budget doesn’t seem like such a bad investment for Relativity.
On a side note, if you take a look at the weekend’s all three new releases, the most exciting stat of all is the fact you can add up their respective RottenTomatoes scores — Movie 43 (5%), Hansel & Gretel (15%) and Parker (37%) — and still come up with a “rotten” score of 57%. Kudos to all three, that’s tough to do.
Looking at the reader predictions for the weekend’s weaker new releases, Jimmy B nailed Parker‘s $7 million tally, while Chris Etrata was all over Movie 43‘s failures with a $4.8 million prediction, making it the closest on the board.
In other news, Mama scored a second place finish, dipping only 55%. Budgeted at only $15 million, the film is now over $48 million domestically and Universal should expect more internationally on the Guillermo del Toro-produced thriller. One can only wonder how much more it would make had it actually been good.
Additionally, Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained is lighting the foreign box-office on fire, racking up $42.9 million this weekend, up to $111.5 million internationally and $257.8 million worldwide. Inglourious Basterds finished its global run at $321.4 million, but Django is looking to topple that.
Next weekend I’m not expecting either Bullet to the Head or Warm Bodies to light the box-office on fire and personally expect Sylvester Stallone‘s Bullet to land with the same thud as Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s The Last Stand, which after one week is already out of the top ten.
The weekend top ten is directly below…
