Weekend Box Office
Rules of Engagement won the weekend by default amidst modest competition from newcomers. Its modest 27% decline to $10.9 million is indicative of positive word-of-mouth and its decidedly older skewing demographic that tends to take its time to see a picture.
Sandra Bullock again showed that she is one of the few actresses that can open a picture, as her rehab comedy 28 Days grossed $10.3 million from 2,523 theaters. She has been on a minor roll since Speed 2 sunk, with her three previous pictures, Hope Floats, Practical Magic and Forces of Nature opening with $13-14 million each. 28 Days' opening was significantly lower, but its material was less appealing and there were no major co-stars this time out.
The God squad was in the partially full house, as Keeping the Faith got off to a decent $8.1 million start from 2,152 venues. The Edward Norton-directed romantic comedy scored a promising 97% approval rating and could hold up well in the weeks to come. What blunted the opening was direct competition from other date-crowd appealing flicks like 28 Days and Return to Me. What's more, as opening day loomed, the ad campaign resorted to too much slapstick, featuring a woman demanding that Ben Stiller punch her. Though the scene of Norton stumbling about and catching fire in his priest robes and then extinguishing it in the holy water helped.
Like the stock market last Friday, American Psycho, with its uninspired title*, was slaughtered on its opening. $5 million from 1,236 theaters is a disappointment given the hype and especially the inherently front-loaded nature of this love-it-or-hate-it material. Indicative of this was its dismal 51% approval rating and its minute 8% Saturday bump-up. Last November, Psycho distributor Lion's Gate capitalized on controversy more successfully with Dogma, garnering an $8.7 million opening en route to $30.7 million. New Line's Boiler Room had a similar setting and demographic appeal and opened to $5.7 million from 1,335 theaters in February looking to end its run with about $17 million.
Where the Money Is was where the money wasn't. $2.5 million from 1,538 theaters was all that the Paul Newman starrer could muster. It primarily appealed to older women, an audience that neither rushes out on the first weekend nor is that big to begin with. Also contributing to the low gross was USA Films' low-profile promotional campaign and erratic scheduling shifts from April to May to April, etc.
Among holdovers, Erin Brockovich enjoyed yet another drop of just 28% to $7 million. It will cross the century mark on Tuesday, the first picture of the year to do so. Benefitting from the paucity of significant competition for teens, sleeper Final Destination continued its leggy run, dropping just 20% to $3 million and $38.2 million to date. However, this figure was slightly inflated by the Frequency sneak preview that was included its gross.
Return to Me was noticeably affected by direct competiton for the date crowd from 28 Days and Keeping the Faith. It added 313 theaters, but fell 36% to $5 million despite strong word-of-mouth. The total stands at $15.3 million, but the picture's drops should start to level out some allowing it to finish in the neighborhood of $30 million.
Overall box office totaled $81.6 million, down 4% from last weekend and down 1% from the same frame last year when Life topped the chart with $20.4 million en route to a $64 million total.
* Tangent: What is up with all these pictures with "American" in their title anyway? Come on people, let's be a bit more original here. Granted American Psycho is just taking its name from the eponymous novel, but still. They could have renamed it with something more evocative, perhaps even an ironic use of one of the '80s songs the main character ruminates on. Other recent titles include American Beauty, American Pie, American History X, American Pimp, and American Movie. In addition to the lack of originality, most filmmakers seem to use it to rather pretentiously imply that their picture goes to the core of what America is all about. Beauty and Psycho seem to be the most pernicious example of this.
