Treasure on Top, Call Surprises, but Juno is Real Winner
January 8, 2008
The first weekend of 2008 was stronger than expected with the overall box office earning $140 million. This is 25% lower than last weekend, but that's to be expected. More importantly, it's 6% more than the same weekend last year and that's a great start to the new year.
National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets complete its hat trick and landed within a rounding error of Thursday's predictions with $20.06 million over the weekend. This lifted its running total to $170.87 million, less than $2 million away from topping the original's final box office, something it might have managed to do by the end of Monday. Even with little in the way of new openings this upcoming weekend, it will likely cede its crown, but it is already a massive, massive hit and on an inevitable path to $200 million.
Wow. Juno climbed into second place this weekend with a better than best case scenario weekend total of $15.86 million while its total has now hit $51.67 million. Even if it was shut out of the rest of the award season, the film is still on track for $100 million in total. And with the second best per theater average in the top ten, it has room to expand and then there's no telling where it could end up.
I Am Legend finished in third place less than $200,000 behind Juno with $15.72 million for the weekend and $228.06 million in total. It also passed The Bourne Ultimatum for sixth place for the year.
Alvin and the Chipmunks were just a hair behind adding $15.55 million to its total of $176.28 million. At this point $200 million is all but guaranteed, but so is massive declines in weekday numbers and it won't get much further than that.
One Missed Call was able to beat all expectations and earned almost as much on Friday as it was expected to earn all weekend.
And by the time Sunday ended it had pulled in $12.51 million.
However, the future is not as rosy.
The film continues to earn zero positive reviews and it has the worst daily drop-offs in the top ten, which indicates poor word-of-mouth.
Add in a genre that is very hard on a film's legs, and this one could see a 60% drop-off next week and it could be out of theaters before February gets underway.
Filed under: I am Legend, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Juno, One Missed Call