Absolute Killing At the Box Office

October 20, 2003

After a slow start to October, the last two weekends have shown amazing growth especially when compared to last year. Overall the box office was up 4.5% from last week and an amazing 25% from last year.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre just missed becoming the second biggest opener in October as its $28.1 million was $1 million less than Sunday's estimates. Reviews for the film also suffered dropping to just 36% positive. With poor reviews, a weak internal multiplier, fanboy effect and the horrow genre The Texas Chainsaw Massacre will have trouble hitting $70 million. However, it only cost $13 million to make and even with an advertising budget closer to $30 million, this movie will make a profit during it's domestic run. Needless to say, there is a sequel in the works. But given how the sequels to the original performed, this is probably not a good idea.

Kill Bill: Volume 1 held up better than expected to walk away with $12.4 million and a second place finish. That's a drop of just 43.8%, not a bad result normally, and very good considering the rest of the year.

It turns out The Runaway Jury won't quite turnaround John Grisham Hollywood career. Its opening weekend of just $12.1 million was weak, and with reviews that were good, but not great, it probably won't have the legs to succeed.

The School of Rock added another $11.0 million to push its total past $50 million. It is now tracking ahead of Freaky Friday's weekend numbers, but with school kids in school its weekday numbers are really dragging it down.

Helped by great reviews, including 100% from the cream of the crop, Mystic River landed in fifth place with $10.4 million. But with a per theatre average of just $7,120 and the MPAA screener ban, that's probably not enough to make it a serious Oscar contender.

After doing well in its native country of Ireland, Veronica Guerin came crashing down this week. Opening in less than 500 theatres, it was only about to make $611 thousand or roughly $1300 per theatre. That was much lower than expect, and even the mediocre reviews don't explain it.

As expected, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl cross $300 million on Friday. It now sits behind Star Wars: Attack of the Clones on both the domestic and worldwide charts.


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Filed under: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Freaky Friday, Mystic River, School of Rock, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Kill Bill: Volume 1, Runaway Jury, Veronica Guerin