The box office results for the weekend of January 18th – 20th surprisingly has low-budget horror easily overcoming Hollywood’s elite. Mama easily took out the Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Last Stand and the star-studded Broken City. Meanwhile, the Oscar nominees held up strong once again. Here are the studio estimates:
1. Mama ($28.1 million)
2. Zero Dark Thirty ($17.6 million)
3. Silver Linings Playbook ($11.3 million)
4. Gangster Squad ($9.1 million)
5. Broken City ($9 million)
6. A Haunted House ($8.3 million)
7. Django Unchained ($8.2 million)
8. Les Miserables ($7.8 million)
9. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey ($6.4 million)
10. The Last Stand ($6.3 million)
Analysis
Apparently audiences felt like getting scared over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend and chose to play with Mama. The horror flick, produced for $15 million, is well on its way to seeing the black ink by the time next weekend closes out. Also surprising is how the lovely critics are quasi-supporting its throwback genre vibe, despite having storytelling flaws.
FLOP ALERT: Broken City and The Last Stand. The former is laced with star-power in Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, and Catherine Zeta-Jones but will likely experience a financial falter thanks to its $35 million production budget. And the latter, which marks Arnold Schwarzenegger’s return to movies in a leading role, is going to fall hard; for its production budget came in at $45 million. Financially, Ah-nold’s return is a dud.
Skyfall just squeaked by the $300 million domestic mark this past weekend; the first James Bond film to ever reach that rarefied air. And speaking of the coveted $300 million mark, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which currently holds the longest streak in the top ten with 6 weeks, could become the first Lord of the Rings installment not to reach that milestone. It’s current stateside total is at $287 million.
This Friday, another batch of wide-releases enter the crowded month of January as Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, Movie 43, and Parker all come to play. Reviews will be right here my fellow Shockers!
