The other big release this weekend, the Johnny Depp / Angelina Jolie romantic crime thriller The Tourist, came in second with $17 million. While that's slightly less distressing than the numbers for Narnia, somehow, some way, The Tourist still cost $100 million to make. $100 million! For what? The 8 mile-per-hour boat chases? The roof tiles Johnny Depp cracked as he gingerly jogged across Venetian roofs? Angelina Jolie's lip injections?
So while it was kind of bummertown all around for the big studio releases, things were all rainbows and sunshine in indie land, especially when it came to Black Swan, which expanded to 90 theaters this weekend, and still raked in a crazy $37,000 per-screen average. That was good enough for a $3.3 million take, and 6th place on this week's list. The King's Speech, which continues to sit on less than 20 screens despite being entirely awesome (saw it this weekend--loved it), did a little less than that, with $592,000, and a $31,000 per-screen average. 127 Hours continued to hover around the number 13 mark with just under a million, as it has the past couple of weeks.
While it didn't make the list this weekend, The Fighter opened in limited release on four screens, and took in $320,000, which is an absurd $80,000 per-screen average. That's kind of nuts for a movie that, at least on paper, looks like a pretty standard boxing movie. But when you've got a cast that good, and a ton of good buzz, I guess that'll get butts in seats. Also opening in limited release this weekend was Julie "Spider-Man Would Make a Great Broadway Musical" Taymor's adaptation of The Tempest. Reviews have been middling, which, for a Shakespeare adaptation, can be a bit of a killer, since the people who would go see something like that are the people who actually read movie reviews--translation: snobs. In this case, the movie did a mediocre $45,000 on five screens.
Travel through the wardrobe, or whatever the shit it was those kids traveled through in this latest movie, and check out the full list below.
Box Office Results: 12/10 - 12/12
 | 1. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader $24.5 million / NEW |
 | 2. The Tourist $17 million / NEW |
 | 3. Tangled $14.6 million / $115.6 million |
 | 4. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I $8.5 million / $257.7 million |
 | 5. Unstoppable $3.8 million / $74.3 million |
 | 6. Black Swan $3.3 million / $5.6 million |
 | 7. Burlesque $3.2 million / $32.6 million |
 | 8. Love and Other Drugs $3 million / $27.6 million |
 | 9. Due Date $2.6 million / $94.9 million |
 | 10. Megamind $2.5 million / $140.2 million |
Dropped Out: Faster, The Next Three Days, The Warrior's Way
Source: Box Office Mojo
I have no negative feelings concerning the failings of the latest movie.
Last I heard about it, talks around the grapevine was that it wasnt going to get funding because of the poor return making it difficult for them to even make another one. Looks like they conned somebody into more money that wont get a return. I can't even imagine how they did that.
Leaving the christian part out of it (as I'm agnostic these days) I still find the Narnia stories to be great as stories alone and I think it is sad it isnt working out as a movie. The BBC production got up to the Silver Chair (wow, the BBC version either isn't on the site or it's named differently then I recall and I don't want to check my dvd collection right now) and I really liked those adaptations better to be honest, but I always did kinda want to see them get to the end of the series. That's definitely not happening with this one.
Oh wells.
Well she was born in France but I think she still has full citizenship in England. She's still considered English. I don't know, citizenship can get real muddy sometimes.
Even if tangled does really well overseas it will have to have despicable me's staying power to break even.