March 19th-21st Weekend Box Office: No Heads Out on Disney’s ‘Alice’

Posted by Nick Ondras on March 21, 2010 at 7:13 pm

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Nothing new this weekend at the movies appeared to have any power to haul Alice in Wonderland’s royal behind off of its box office hot seat at #1. Further taking in $34.5 million, Tim Burton’s scope bettered the runner-up’s total weekend gross by a good $12.7 million. The film, a distinct image of Lewis Carroll’s famed prose, has a complete sum of $285.8 million in only three weeks, besting Burton’s previous top-earner, 1989’s Batman. It’s on track to also become star Johnny Depp’s biggest film to date. Currently the crown is with 2007’s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End with $309.4 million. However Alice’s 17-day total came out to $265.8 million, whereas World’s End’s showed with $253.4 million. Either way, Disney has to be very happy with its little gothic director/celebrity duo.

A plethora of new releases this past weekend, although none of them quite as large as Alice in Wonderland. The highest theater count for any of the wide bows was 3,077, compared to the 3,739 screens Alice is still playing on. That former number went to Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Hotel for Dogs director Thor Freudenthal’s adaptation of Jeff Kinney’s best-selling novel, with $21.8 million in second place. This surely did better than Dogs did opening weekend, which managed $17 million on 194 additional screens. The flick didn’t do so well with critics, though. Wimpy Kid holds a 52% rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing. Still, I believe this has the strongest holding power out of any new faces in the top five. Hell, I’d like to see it.

A few hundred thousand dollars away lay the Gerard Butler/Jennifer Aniston romantic comedy vehicle The Bounty Hunter at #3. Starting off with $21 million, it almost stands with director Andy Tennant’s previous film Fool’s Gold, which came out at #1 with $21.6 million two years ago. It doesn’t hold a candle to Hitch’s opening of $43.1 million in 2005, which promotion advertised Bounty Hunter as being similar to. The last wide release Repo Men, starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker as members of a futuristic agency that repossess artificial organs, began with $6.2 million in fourth. What an extreme disappointment for Universal. It only cost $32 million to fund, though I don’t see it even making that back anytime soon.

She’s Out of My League, the Jay Baruchel-headlining comedy about a geek who meets the hottie of his dreams, finishes the top five with $6 million. Its domestic gross is up to $19.5 million in ten days.

Out of the top five-

  • Floria Sigismondi’s biopic of Joan Jett’s ‘70s all-girl rock band The Runaways premiered with a respectable $803,000 on 244 screens.
  • IMAX Spectacle Hubble 3D, narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, opened with $453,000 on 39 screens.
  • Writer-director Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg, starring Ben Stiller, failed to live up to Baumbach’s 2005 indie hit The Squid and the Whale’s debut of $129,834, starting off with $120,000 on only three screens.
  • Raymond De Felitta’s festival flick dramedy City Island began with $35,000 on two screens.

Here are the box office results according to studio estimates Sunday-

  1. 1. Alice in Wonderland (2010)…$34.5 million
  2. 2. Diary of a Wimpy Kid…$21.8 million
  3. 3. The Bounty Hunter…$21 million
  4. 4. Repo Men…$6.2 million
  5. 5. She’s Out of My League…$6 million
  6. 6. Green Zone…$6 million
  7. 7. Shutter Island…$4.8 million
  8. 8. Avatar…$4 million
  9. 9. Our Family Wedding…$3.8 million
  10. 10. Remember Me…$3.3 million

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