DISNEY - BOX OFFICE TUMBLES

If movie fans were not sitting at home watching the Oscars on television Sunday, they were not going out to the movies, either. Movie attendance on Sunday was even lower than studios had expected, with the top film, Sony's Vantage Point, winding up with more than $1 million below expectations on the final day of the weekend. The movie's weekend gross came to $22.87 million. The real shocker was that last week's winner, Fox's Jumper, jumped to third place, beaten out by the third week of Paramount's The Spiderwick Chronicles. Spiderwick took in $13.10 million versus Jumper's $12.71 million. Disney's Step Up 2 the Streets placed fourth in its second week with $9.61 million. Three other new films that debuted over the weekend performed disastrously. The best performer of the lot was New Line Cinema's Be Kind Rewind, which wound up with $4.05 million. But Witless Protection did not even make the top-ten list, earning only $2.11 million, and U2 3D was mostly DOD, as it debuted with just $1.03 million.

The top ten films over the weekend, according to final figures compiled by Media by Numbers (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date):
1. Vantage Point, Sony, $22,874,936, (New); 2. The Spiderwick Chronicles, Paramount, $13,100,192, 2 Wks., ($44,076,043); 3. Jumper, Fox, $12,708,768, 2 Wks., ($56,264,386); 4. Step Up 2 the Streets, Disney, $9,605,703, 2 Wks. ($41,238,093); 5. Fool's Gold, Warner Bros., $6,554,284, 3 Wks. ($52,717,413); 6. Definitely, Maybe, Universal, $5,217,775, 2 Wks. ($21,814,805); 7. Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins, Universal, $4,158,700, 3 Wks. ($35,667,115); 8. Juno, Fox Searchlight, $4,154,502, 12 Wks. ($130,431,948); 9. Be Kind Rewind, New Line, $4,050,655, (New); 10. There Will be Blood, Paramount Vantage, $2,687,229, 9 Wks. ($35,112,557).

26/02/2008