Weekend Box Office
The Next Best Thing's title turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, as Madonna's first movie in three years opened in second place with a tepid $5.87 million from 2,007 theaters. These kinds of numbers were to be expected despite the hype. An unappealing ad campaign, scathing reviews and Madonna's annoying "earth mother" persona contributed to the failure.
My Dog Skip was panting down Madonna's neck with $5.86 million from 2,331 theaters. It expanded successfully after a modestly performing seven-week platform release. Positive word-of-mouth could propel it to becoming the sleeper family hit of the season, much in the same way last spring's October Sky was.
Drowning Mona, the third feature from Destination Films after duds Bats and Eye of the Beholder, managed a mediocre $5.8 million from 1,981 theaters. That's a bit better than one might expect for such a forced "quirky" comedy. Then again, Destination aggressively promoted it and likely burned up whatever financial upside there was to the picture's relatively low budget.
What Planet Are You From? was completely out of orbit, grossing just $3.0 million from 2,268 theaters. With a reported budget north of $50 million, Sony has yet another disaster on its hands. A sneak preview turned out to be a mistake, as bad buzz snowballed for an already tough sell. What was needed was a more aggressive, punchier ad campaign. Then again, the potential extra business still probably wouldn't have been enough to offset the extra cost. This was never going to be a hit given the low star power and the low-key treatment of a broad premise.
The Whole Nine Yards topped the chart for the third weekend in a row with $7.3 million and $38.3 million to date. Solid and stronger than one might have expected it to gross based on the premise and ad campaign. However, the arguably more impressive performance has been by the star-free and relatively low budget Pitch Black. It grossed $5.1 million, down just 29% for a $29.7 million total. An outstanding hold for a sci-fi or horror picture, genres which tend to drop in the 50% range.
American Beauty and The Cider House Rules had exceptional holds even for Oscar nominees, dropping just 13% and 1% respectively. In comparison, The Sixth Sense was down 23%, The Green Mile was down 44%, and The Insider was down 59% after dropping to just 200 theaters. Since the latter had grossed just about $27 million prior to nomination, it would seem that it stood to benefit the most. However, its studio, Disney, has seemed to resign itself to the financial failure (the budget was a reported $70 million), and it has no heat in terms of actually winning the big prize.
Hanging Up continued to perform in a fizzly fashion similar to other recent chick flicks such as Message in a Bottle and For Love of the Game, despite not starring Kevin Costner. It fell 50% to $3.7 million in just its third weekend. Its total stands at $31.5 million, and it might hang on to $40 million at most.
The Beach dived another 56% to $1.6 million, bringing the total to a disappointing $36.9 million. Fortunately for Leo (though unfortunately to many), the picture is posting near blockbuster numbers overseas where it has already grossed $54.6 million.
Overall box office totaled $82.8 million, down 8% from last weekend, but up 1% over the same frame last year when Analyze This topped the chart with $18.4 million en route to $106.8 million.
