It's Thanksgiving long weekend, one of the best holidays in terms of box office drawing power. However, none of the new releases seem like they have what it takes to really draw in moviegoers. On the other hand, New Moon broke a number of records last weekend, and it has a slim chance at breaking a few more this weekend. Even if it doesn't, it should top the top film from last year, Four Christmases, which should lead to another gain year-over-year. ]]>
There were two movies that cracked the $100 million level on this week's international chart, including the new number one film, The Twilight Saga - New Moon, which opened with $124.22 million on 6,578 screens in 24 markets over the weekend for a total opening of $136.01 million. Its best opening came in the U.K. where it pulled in $19.38 million on 497 screens, while it also cracked $10 million in a number of major markets, some of which reached the mark if you include midweek numbers. In France, it made $17 million on 751 screens, which was the ninth best American release in that market. In Spain, the film made $15.16 million on 634 screens, which includes the third best Wednesday opening in that market. Australia and Italy had nearly identical openings with the former pulling in $14.85 million on 530 screens and the latter earning $14.34 million. Brazil was also impressive with $11.22 million on 411 screens. ]]>
As expected, Up dominated new releases on this week's sales chart as it earned first place with $88.13 million in consumer spending at retail and 5.30 million units. This instantly places it fourth on the overall chart for 2009. ]]>
New Moon broke all manner of records over the weekend, which was great news for Summit, and for the industry as a whole. New Moon made more all by itself than all other movies combined pulled in last weekend and the overall box office was $259 million, the second biggest weekend on record. Compared to last week, we saw a 85% increase, while compared to the same weekend last year, 2009 grew by 57%. Year-to-date, 2009 has now pulled in $9.20 billion, which is just shy of 8.0% higher than last year's pace. Additionally, it is just ahead of 2002's final tally, making 2009 the sixth biggest year so far, and we have more than a full month ahead, including two major holidays. Simply amazing. ]]>
It's the week before Black Friday, which is widely reported as the busiest shopping day of the year. (It's not. Christmas Eve is the busiest shopping day of the year; however, on Christmas Eve a lot of the purchases are last minute food items.) If a studio wants its product to be part of Black Friday, this is the last Tuesday they can release the DVD or Blu-ray. Because of this, I'm a little surprised the week isn't busier than it is. The biggest release of the week is Angels & Demons, while there are a couple of Christmas releases that are also selling well. However, none of those come close to being the DVD Pick of the Week. Arguably the best of the best is Funny People, which isn't the best movie coming out this week, but it is a good movie and its Blu-ray is absolutely loaded. ]]>
Last month the Marvel Animation - 6 Film Set was released on DVD, and while it took a while, the screener finally arrived. The set includes the six direct-to-DVD animated films based on a variety of popular Marvel comic books starting with Ultimate Avengers - The Movie, which came out in 2006. There was quite a bit of buzz surrounding these movies when they were first announced, but did they live up to the hype? Are they worth checking out? Picking up? Is the box set the better deal, or should you stick with one or two of the individual titles? ]]>