Weekend Box Office
Another weekend, another record breaker. Here's a brief rundown...
Ingesting a sumptuous $58 million from 3,230 venues, Hannibal claimed the biggest opening ever for an R-rated picture, ripping the title away from Scary Movie and its $42.3 million. Not only that, it established a new precedent for the normally quiet Winter/Spring season, displacing the previous record holder 1997's Star Wars: Special Edition ($35.9 million). Additionally, Dr. Lecter's return was tops in MGM's history and star Anthony Hopkins' career.
By comparison, The Silence of Lambs opened to $13.8 million over the long President's Day weekend in 1991. Moviegoers savored it for quite some time as it reached $130.7 million total.
Overall, Hannibal was the third best bow of all time. Although if inflation is taken into consideration, it's more like ninth (see Adjusted Openers).
Hannibal didn't cannibalize the competition though. Adding another $5.4 million to its coffers, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's total leaped to $60.3 million, bounding ahead of Life is Beautiful's $57.8 million to become the highest grossing foreign language picture of all time. Fueled by a flurry of Oscar nominations, the century mark is surely in the wire-fu epic's sights. However, it should be noted that, in terms of ticket sales, the true foreign language champ is still Fellini's La Dolce Vita from 1960. The $18 million it grossed back then would equal more than $120 million today.
Meanwhile, Sandra Bullock's Miss Congeniality inched past $100 million, her first unmitigated starring role to attain such heights.
Ingesting a sumptuous $58 million from 3,230 venues, Hannibal claimed the biggest opening ever for an R-rated picture, ripping the title away from Scary Movie and its $42.3 million. Not only that, it established a new precedent for the normally quiet Winter/Spring season, displacing the previous record holder 1997's Star Wars: Special Edition ($35.9 million). Additionally, Dr. Lecter's return was tops in MGM's history and star Anthony Hopkins' career.
By comparison, The Silence of Lambs opened to $13.8 million over the long President's Day weekend in 1991. Moviegoers savored it for quite some time as it reached $130.7 million total.
Overall, Hannibal was the third best bow of all time. Although if inflation is taken into consideration, it's more like ninth (see Adjusted Openers).
Hannibal didn't cannibalize the competition though. Adding another $5.4 million to its coffers, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's total leaped to $60.3 million, bounding ahead of Life is Beautiful's $57.8 million to become the highest grossing foreign language picture of all time. Fueled by a flurry of Oscar nominations, the century mark is surely in the wire-fu epic's sights. However, it should be noted that, in terms of ticket sales, the true foreign language champ is still Fellini's La Dolce Vita from 1960. The $18 million it grossed back then would equal more than $120 million today.
Meanwhile, Sandra Bullock's Miss Congeniality inched past $100 million, her first unmitigated starring role to attain such heights.
