Thanks, largely, to young female moviegoers (60% women, 65% under 20), Warm Bodies takes the #1 spot at the box-office with $19.5 million. Summit clearly knew what they were doing, positioning the film against the Super Bowl and giving the non-football fanatics something to watch at the theater instead, which makes you wonder what Warner Bros. was thinking with Bullet to the Head, but more on that in a second.
Looking over reader predictions were low this weekend (seeming to match interest in most of the new releases as of late), Dennis did come rolling in with a nearly spot-on, $19.6 million prediction. Excellent work.
We’ll leapfrog over Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, which dipped 53.2% and fell to #2 in its second weekend and come to Silver Linings Playbook and the fire it’s starting at the box-office. Last weekend it fell only 12% and brought in $9.4 million and this weekend the potential Best Picture winner only fell 14% off that mark, bringing in $8.1 million. The film is likely to earn Jennifer Lawrence a Best Actress statue and if Harvey Weinstein has anything to say about it a lot more after that. These kinds of numbers at the box-office suggest the Oscar race isn’t over yet.
Bouncing out of the top five and landing in sixth is the weekend’s other new release, Sylvester Stallone‘s Bullet to the Head. Did WB release such a masculine movie on Super Bowl weekend in hopes it would fail? Granted, opening to $1.7m on Friday, $2m on Saturday and a meager $750,000 on Sunday doesn’t show anyone was really interested in the first place, but it’s such an unfair position for a film to face. Men aren’t thinking about movies over the course of these few days, they’re thinking about football. And the ladies? Clearly they’re watching zombies fall in love.
Bullet to the Head managed $4.5 million in its opening frame and even Arnold Schwarzenegger can laugh as his bomb, The Last Stand, at least made $6.2 million a couple weeks ago and was subsequently never heard from again. Well, I guess that’s not entirely accurate. In this, The Last Stand‘s third weekend, it made a whopping $265,000. I have to believe at least some of those tickets were double features ending with Stallone’s metaphorical “bullet”.
Prediction wise, Laremy was high again with a $6.6m number, but Jack wasn’t fooled with an on-the-money $4.5 million prediction.
Elsewhere, Stand Up Guys premiered in 659 theaters and brought in $1.5 million and the much-talked-about documentary The Gatekeepers brought in $66,700 from three theaters.
Next weekend sees the release of the best film of the year so far, Steven Soderbergh‘s Side Effects as well as the Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy comedy Identity Thief, a film people are so interested in I can’t tell you how many people I’ve heard say something to the effect of, “What’s the name of that movie where the woman steals the guy’s identity?” After I answer the reply typically is, “Yeah, that doesn’t look very good. What’s Jason Bateman doing?” Results could be interesting, especially if everyone simply takes my advice and goes to see the first screening of Side Effects they can.
This weekend’s top ten is below… Go enjoy the Super Bowl and stay tuned as we have plenty of trailers left to premiere over the course of the day.
