The box office results for the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend sees a spirited battle between a newbie and a re-release in…wait for….3D. “Contraband,” the action laced flick from Universal, was able to overcome the nostalgia of “Beauty and the Beast” coming back to the big screen with the worthless gimmick attached. Meanwhile, “Joyful Noise” comes out a little flat. Here are the 3-day studio estimates:
1. Contraband ($24.1 million)
2. Beauty and the Beast 3D ($18.5 million)
3. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol ($11.5 million)
4. Joyful Noise ($11.3 million)
5. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows ($8.4 million)
6. The Devil Inside ($7.9 million)
7. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 2011 ($6.8 million)
8. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked ($5.8 million)
9. War Horse ($5.6 million)
10. The Iron Lady ($5.3 million)
Analysis
January movie habits are always a chore to predict. There isn’t too much being released that really gets the masses overly excited as the 2nd half of every year does. But one thing you can count on is the dwindling population that thoroughly enjoys going to a movie every weekend, will in fact go. And this is why studios release their low-to-moderate budget flick during this time.
And that leads us to Contraband. With a relatively small budget of $25 million, Universal Pictures may actually start the year off with black ink. If Contraband does not tank in weekend number two; and benefits from this holiday weekend, perhaps the decent start to 2012 will be a foreshadowing of things to come for the studio that has been dealing with a lot of duds as of late.
Since Disney has struggled of late with producing a winning product in theaters, why not take something from the past that financially and critically worked wonders and put it in 3D? So welcome back Beauty and the Beast. The 1991 film received a worthless upgrade; which probably only cost the studio no more than $5 million to convert the animated tale into 3D (the original production bill was just $25 million). Aside from marketing materials (don’t recall seeing many), any cash this Oscar-winning classic snags will just pad its worldwide total of $348 million (prior to this weekend’s take).
Joyful Noise did not perform terribly from a financial perspective (critically is another story), yet it still has some work to do. Much like the other newbies, this also rang up a $25 million production bill and will likely need some type of assistance after its theatrical run. This was clearly geared toward a niche market but the majority of that niche probably doesn’t venture to the theaters too often these days.
All the sequels (Mission: Impossible, Sherlock Holmes, and Alvin and the Chipmunks) currently hold the longest streak in the top ten with 5 weeks. MI: IV leads all of them with a worldwide total of $474 million.
Flop Alert: Surprisingly, none at the moment.
Sleeper Hit: Referring back to last week’s Sleeper, The Devil Inside; it should be noted that this dropped a whopping 77% from its opening weekend. That drop represents one of the worst in history from opening-to-second weekend. Fortunately for Paramount, this has reached $41 million domestically; and the total budget (production and marketing) was around $23 million. The last theatrical release to experience such a horrendous drop was 2009’s Friday the 13th remake (80%).
This Friday is chock full with another slate of new guys. Red Tails and Haywire add to the action genre. Same can be said for the fourth Underworld flick, also opening wide. And award contender, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close expands to all markets. Reviews will be right here my fellow Shockers!
By Joe Belcastro
