Best scene in the movie, don't you think?
In the same way that some people rush to put up their Christmas decorations before the Thanksgiving turkey's even digested or trample Walmart personnel to death in a Black Friday shopping frenzy, audiences turned out en masse to see "Four Christmases," an unpleasant little family fable featuring the likable but freakishly mismatched Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn. The movie made an estimated $46 million from its Wednesday opening to Sunday evening, $31 million of that during the weekend proper. Presumably some in the audience were fleeing their own families; how's that for perverse?
The big disappointment, by contrast, was "Australia," Baz Luhrmann's $130 million epic: debuting in over 2,500 theaters, it pulled in a spare estimated $20 million, $14 million of it over the weekend, for a fifth-place showing. Tepid reviews may have been a factor, but the film's length may have had more to do with it; that and stars who aren't quite big enough to make a movie must-see on their own. The film opened the same day in Australia and grossed $5 million there, an unqualified hit by that country's terms.
Disney's strategy with "Bolt" -- take the lumps from "Twilight" during the first week and wait for family audiences to come out after Thanksgiving -- appears to have paid off nicely. The 3D animated film actually saw its second-weekend grosses show improvement rather than the standard nosedive, putting it just above "Twilight" in second place for the period. (The teen vampire flick has grossed $120 million overall, almost twice that of "Bolt.")
Two limited-release movies that are attracting huge audiences: "Milk," which debuted on 36 screens and averaged a monster $38,000 per theater on the strength of great reviews and Oscar buzz for Sean Penn, and "Slumdog Millionaire," which expanded to 49 screens in its third week and is still raking in a $28,000 per-theater-average. That, my friends, is word of mouth.
More BO numbers from Box Office Mojo and Leonard Klady at Movie City News.
