Weekly Chart Review: 'Robots' Departs Theaters, 'Undiscovered' Sets New Low
A guide to the significant happenings at the box office for the week ending Sept. 8, 2005.

Overall Business

In total, all movies in release generated $133.3 million, led by Transporter 2's $22.9 million. Business was down two percent from last week, but up one percent from the corresponding week in 2004, when Hero remained on top in its second week.

Yearly box office stands at $6.15 billion, off nine percent from 2004's $6.77 billion total at the same point.

Related Charts: Year-to-Date Comparison, 2005 Grosses

End-of-Run

After 182 days of release, 20th Century Fox has pulled the plug on Robots. Playing at a peak 3,776 theaters, the picture made $128.2 million, significantly less than Fox's last computer-animated feature, Ice Age from 2002, which also had a mid-March release date. Among computer-animated features as a whole, Robots ranks No. 14 and below the format's $170 million average total gross.

Among sci-fi animated features, though, Robots shines as the second-highest grossing behind Lilo & Stitch's $145.8 million. Sci-fi in animation generally doesn't connect with audiences in theaters. The sub-genre contains some of the more spectacular commercial failures of recent memory, including Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and Treasure Planet. In fact, Robots and Lilo & Stitch are the only sci-fi animated features to cross $100 million, mostly because their focus was on animation's bread and butter—comedy and cute characters for kids—as opposed to adventure or science for older patrons.

Robots arrives on DVD on Sept. 27.

After two weeks, Lions Gate has stopped tracking Undiscovered. The romantic music drama grossed $1.1 million, a fraction of such similar pictures as From Justin to Kelly and Glitter.

On DVD since Aug. 30, Monster-in-Law was put to pasture theatrically by New Line. The Jennifer-Lopez-Vs.-Jane-Fonda comedy drew a solid $82.9 million in 119 days.

Buena Vista finally yanked The Young Black Stallion. The IMAX feature opened on Dec. 25, 2003, and corralled $6.8 million from a peak 51 theaters.

Releated Charts: Sci-Fi Animation, Computer Animation, DVD Release Schedule

Milestones

In addition to extraordinarily low grosses, Undiscovered stripped Gigli of a record: biggest second weekend drop for a wide release. Undiscovered plummeted 86 percent in its second weekend, compared to Gigli's 82 percent. Mitigating Undiscovered's descent was a loss of theaters, from 1,304 in its first weekend to 754 in its second.

Transporter 2 broke the Labor Day opening weekend record, grabbing $20.1 million for the four-day frame to top Jeepers Creepers 2's $18.4 million from 2003.

On its 51st day of release, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory chugged past $200 million, the second movie in the respective careers of director Tim Burton and Johnny Depp to reach that milestone. Meanwhile, Fantastic Four crossed the $300 million mark worldwide.



Related Charts: Biggest 2nd Weekend Drops, Top Labor Day Openings

RELATED ARTICLES

• 9/6/05 - 'Transporter 2' Drives to Labor Day Record


• 9/4/05 - Weekly Chart Review: 'Kingdom' Comes to an End

• 5/16/05 - 'Monster-in-Law' Claws to the Top

• 3/14/05 - 'Robots' Rivets, 'Passion' Fails to Rise Again


• Review - Robots