The weekend box office went just as expected with Beverly Hills Chihuahua unfortunately coming out on top with $29 million and Rachel Getting Married earning the best per-screen average ($33,667) with an impressive $303,000 gross from only 9 locations. Also, with so many new films debuting, Flash of Genius, Blindness and How to Lose Friends and Alienate People couldn’t even open in the top ten — the latter placed as low as #19 — and An American Carol and Religilous only placed ninth and tenth, respectively. Still, for a documentary, Religilous‘ $3.5 million debut and $6,972 per-screen average are both honorable achievements. The film had the highest non-fiction debut of 2008, and it’s sure to be the highest-grossing non-concert doc of the year.
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist also debuted relatively well this past weekend, which made it a perfect time for Mandate Pictures to annouce that the film’s screenwriter, Lorene Scafaria, will make her directorial debut with the romantic comedy Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.
For awhile now I’ve noticed the headlines about Mamma Mia!’s incredible overseas business, but I’ve so far ignored them. Well, here’s the latest off-balanced tally: compared to its already hit-qualifying $143 million domestic gross, the musical has taken in close to $400 million extra from international markets. That’s nearly three-fourths of its total take, for those who like fractions.
200 projects developed by DreamWorks while living under Paramount’s roof will be divided up rather fairly between the two studios now that they’re separating. About one-fifth of those will remain joint efforts, of which one-half will be primarily developed by DreamWorks with Paramount having an option to co-finance and co-distribute. While some of these special-circumstance projects are rumored to be Spielberg’s directing and producing gigs, there’s still no news on what’s going on with the Tintin trilogy.
You could fill a small multiplex just with new releases this weekend, as eight movies either open nationwide or significantly expand today. And yet most moviegoers will still likely choose Beverly Hills Chihauhua over everything else. Meanwhile, Michael Moore fans are sure to go for Bill Maher’s first-person doc Religilous, Michael Moore haters are sure to go for the conservative fantasy An American Carol and teens who are too cool for talking dogs are certain to put Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist at #2 on the box office chart. Will adults just stay home rather than have to choose from the rest, which includes Appaloosa, Blindness, How to Lose Friends and Influence Alienate People and Flash of Genius?
A little bit JFK, a little bit Veronica Guerin: producer John Davis (I, Robot) will make a film about the conspiracy theory surrounding the death of columnist and TV personality Dorothy Kilgallen, who dug deep into the JFK assassination before she died mysteriously and suspiciously from a combo of drugs and alcohol.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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