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The Martin Luther King holiday weekend, a relatively small one for Hollywood because many people work on Monday, begins.
UNIVERSAL: The studio made the fairly extraordinary decision to sit out the holiday movie season entirely, presumably because they didn’t think any of their product could compete. They did, however, spend a lot of money marketing CONTRABAND, which wouldn’t open for a month. The effort paid off with an extremely solid Friday that could lead to a 4-day weekend approaching $30M. But all that advertising was pricey, and the picture will have to achieve a substantial total to make it worthwhile. It should help that the movie is quite entertaining, leading to good word-of-mouth (although there are quite a few action movies arriving as competition in the coming weeks).DISNEY: The studio’s 3D re-release of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST had a well-chosen release date, a holiday when the holiday family movies (including Disney’s own War Horse) are running out of steam but the other studios aren’t getting involved. The result is a $25M+ 4-day weekend that will pay for the minimal cost of the 3D transfer and also feed sales of the new homevideo edition.
WARNERS: JOYFUL NOISE was hoping to hit the holiday’s family audience too, but so far it’s not working out so well. With a 4-day weekend unlikely to reach $15M, the picture will have to hope for good word-of-mouth (which the faith-based audience sometimes provides) to stay in theatres for a while. And the studio has stuck doggedly to its strategy on EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE, which will finally expand next week, and which is still earning a very good $15K in each of the 6 theatres where it started on Christmas Day.
WEINSTEIN COMPANY: THE IRON LADY expanded well to 800 theatres, and should have a per-theatre number for Friday-Sunday (plus a little extra for the Monday holiday) comparable to the one Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy had when it did the same expansion a week ago. The picture will be hoping, of course, for a Meryl Streep victory at the Golden Globes on Sunday. Meanwhile, the studio is playing a bit of a shell game with THE ARTIST, increasing the theatre count (to 216) just enough so that the weekend total (around $1.1-1.2M) stays steady, even as the per-theatre figure falls by 20%. MY WEEK WITH MARILYN, which lost almost one-third of its theatres this week, badly needs Michelle Williams to win the Comedy Actress Golden Globe. (Don’t ask how that movie is a “comedy”.)
SONY CLASSICS: CARNAGE expanded to 494 theatres, but will need major Golden Globe help to keep those screens very long. It’s headed for a $1500 per-theatre average.
HOLDOVERS: Nobody who saw THE DEVIL INSIDE (Paramount) last weekend could look at themselves in the mirror this week, and the result should be one of the 10-15 largest 2d weekend drops in history (and it would have been worse if Sunday hadn’t been part of a holiday weekend). That was by far the most dramatic drop, with the holiday movies aimed at adults looking at 30-40% declines, and the family movies getting a Sunday advanrage from the holiday for a 10-25% fall. YOUNG ADULT (Paramount), though, gave up the ghost (unless Charlize Theron pulls out an upset Globe win), losing more than half its theatres.
LIMITED RELEASES: PARIAH (Focus) expanded to 24 theatres and should do an OK $5K average. IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY (FilmDistrict) expanded to 18 and should do a less OK $3K in each. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN (Oscilloscope) returned from its holiday-week awards-eligibility run to 1 NY theatre, where the buzz on Tilda Swinton’s performance and local raves should get it to $50K over the long weekend.
Next week, apart from the Extremely Loud expansion, is all about action: Sony‘s 3D UNDERWORLD AWAKENING, Relativity‘s HAYWIRE (from Steven Soderbergh), and RED TAILS from Fox and George Lucas.
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