*All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.
After spending only seven weeks at the top of the box office, “Avatar” was humiliatingly defeated by “Dear John” and doomed to obscurity forever by dropping to second place.
The new weekend victor earned a phenomenal $32.4 million to end James Cameron’s epic reign and finally give 2010 something new to talk about. The result is better than the $28.3 million start of “He’s Just Not That Into You” on this same weekend last year and boosts the star power of Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried.
Seyfried has had an interesting career filled with hits (“Mamma Mia!”) and misses (“Jennifer’s Body”), but avoiding the glory or the blame that comes with both. This victory clearly belongs to her, though, and who would have thought watching “Mean Girls” that in five years, she would have a career and Lohan would not?
“Avatar” dipped 25% to $23.6 million in its first post-Oscar nominations weekend. The running total is now $630.1 million and $700 million should be a piece of cake, particularly if a Best Picture win comes in early March. If so, Cameron would have the only two films to hit that mark in the last 26 years, but he shouldn’t get too comfortable with that stat since I just heard Taylor Lautner is going to be in the “Stretch Armstrong” movie.
John Travolta’s “From Paris With Love” came in third with an even more pathetic than expected $8.1 million. “Battlefield Earth” opened with twice that in 2000 and the only thing keeping this from being labeled an instant catastrophe is the prospect of foreign grosses picking up the slack.
“Edge of Darkness” fell 59% to $7 million and will give studios pause before handing out any more $20 million paychecks to Mel Gibson. “When in Rome” also fell more than 50% as nothing seems to be sticking from the month of January. Only “The Book of Eli” seems to have made any impression, slowly creeping towards $100 million, even though I don’t know a single person who saw it.
“Crazy Heart” expanded to 819 screens and came up with a slightly disappointing $3.7 million. “Dear John” took away some of the adult audience but there still should have been enough room and buzz to get this a little higher. Matching the $27.8 million of “The Wrestler” is now questionable.
Finally, “Sherlock Holmes” became the 10th film of 2009 to cross the $200 million mark, so congratulations to those guys.
This week I finally caught up with “Fish Tank” and was extremely disappointed. I thought it was boring, generic and half-hearted in its ideas and execution. Not even the heavily praised performance of Katie Jarvis felt all that spectacular to me. I’ll stick to Ken Loach and Shane Meadows thank you very much.
What did you guys see? Here are the weekend’s top domestic grossers, courtesy of Exhibitor Relations:
Comments
37 responses to “SUNDAY CENTS: Dear James, Suck it! Signed, ‘Dear John’”
Lindsay Lohan? It’s pretty easy to have a better career than that….
I find it more impressive that she made it over Rachel McAdams…seriously how did she let herself go like that? Family Stone, Time Traveler’s Wife a useless role in Sherlock Holmes…
isn’t 23 some odd million still the best 8th weekend ever? Also Benito, at least McAdams has Malick lined up now.
Third biggest adjusted, behind Titanic and E.T.
Agree with you over Seyfried. It’s kind of weird to believe that she is on a better position that the other Mean Girls co-stars. Lohan is over, Chabert is MIA (only TV stuff) and McAdams has not lived up to the expectations.
P.S. With this opening, Lasse Halstrom got his “Get out of Movie Jail” card. He will seize the opportunity or will return to make Oscar bait films?
geha, his Oscar bait films were just as shitty as this one probably is, so I hope not. He needs to go home, make some interesting films again.
Chad, interesting, it’s actually kind of impressively high for adjusted.
Burma: Well said.
In regards to Dear John – I think the star power is more to do with the *seminal* work of Nicholas Sparks, he also being the author of Notebook, which also starred, one Rachel McAdams and was also a big hit with the female viewer but in my case made me want to physically hurt someone .
Before we say Seyfried has arived, lets see what her next movie does.
Suprised you did not like Fish Tank, one of the best movies of 2009. I have to say the last act was a but over dramatic turn and jarred with the rest of the movie but despite the flaws, it probably was for me the best Brit movie of 2009 and I would say Arnold is worthy to be up there with Loach and Meadows.
Love Loach…haven’t seen anything I like in Meadows work yet.
Maybe after the Oscars the numbers will pick up for Crazy Heart. But, I still think it’s one of those films most people won’t watch until it hits DVD.
I always did think Seyfried was very talented. In fact, I think she is the one most responsible for MaMia’s success.
Channing and Amanda are well on their way now, with Mamma Mia and GI Joe also in their corner of worldwide hits. You’re right though, Lindsay Lohan has to be wondering what the hell went wrong…this is the type of film she would’ve taken had she not derailed her career by acting like a nutcase.
Amanda Seyfried did fantastic work on “Veronica Mars” as well. And, I don’t watch “Big Love”, but I hear she’s great in that too. She’s slowly becoming a big star.
I always thought Seyfried was the most genuinely entertaining of the young ladies in Mean Girls. The others just seemed to take themselves too seriously… like like they were approaching it as drama, but like, “HEY LOOK AT HOW FUNNY I AM PRETENDING TO BE A DITZY HIGH SCHOOL GIRL HARDY HAR HAR HAR DON’T YOU SEE WHAT A FUTURE I HAVE IN COMEDY?”
Seyfried just looked like she had fun with it. She seems like a very low maintenance actress for her generation.
Well, I finally saw An Education. My fingers are crossed that somehow Sandra and Meryl split enough votes for Carey to squeeze through.
Oh, and @ Nicolas Mancuso, Big Love is the most amazing show on television and Amanda Seyfried is awesome in it. I believe she’s leaving the show though to focus on her film career.
Also, grr, I meant to type “NOT like they were approaching it as drama” in #12.
Seyfried’s career is being managed very well, and it helps that she’s genuinely talented. I mean, her career isn’t really going the Oscar-nom route as of yet, but with turns like Chloe on their way, I can see it happening sometime soon.
And I agree- who knew Karen would be the Plastic with the breakout career? I thought she’d be typecasted to death after that, but nope, all’s good.
Am I the only one who’s worried that Seyfried is getting incredibly overexposed? I can’t remember the last time I went to a movie and didn’t see her in at least one preview, usually two.
I like Seyfried. I like her a lot! She just nailed Tina Fey’s script in “Mean Girls” — hilarious stuff. She’s one starlet I’m glad to see is doing well.
“Precious” was *finally* released here in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. About time! I loved it, although now I’m baffled the buzz is solely around Mo’nique. Sidibe deserves the Best Actress Oscar, not a doubt in my mind. I loved Mulligan, and Streep was wonderful as always, but the best female performance of the year was Gabby Sidibe.
She’s my shining star for 2009!
Edge of Darkness couldn’t dethrone Avatar but Dear John did? Damn. Oh well, I laughed when I found this out.
“After spending only seven weeks at the top of the box office, “Avatar” was humiliatingly defeated by “Dear John” and doomed to obscurity forever by dropping to second place.”
I LOVE YOU
On the plus side, perhaps this will be the last box office report we hear poor Chad Hartigan whining about Avatar… But I’m not betting on it!
“The result is better than the $28.3 million start of “He’s Just Not That Into You” on this same weekend last year”
That means it’s even better than “He’s Just Not That Into You,” right? I’ll have to reserve a place on my Best of 2010 list.
So Dear John hath slain the blue beast.
I know a certain man name James who’s probably getting in touch with his old friend, Jack, right about now.
At least I would if my box office behemoth got relegated to second place by a romantic film starring Channing Tatum.
…ummm. not a surprise.
The Proposal-not about SaBu.
Twilight-not about vampires.
Dear John-not about love letters.
Box Office?-all about ABS of reynolds, lautner, and tatum.
I made it out to see three movies this weekend: Crazy Heart, Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire, and An Education
Crazy Heart was decent (was expecting something more like Walk the Line, and less like Leaving Las Vegas / The Lost Weekend).
Precious was fantastic, and An Education was, for me, exactly the type of movie that I love to go see.
After walking out of a back-to-back double feature of Precious and Education, my friend and I kind of casually said something to the effect of: “The race is between Streep and Bullock? Who cares about them? Sidibe and Mulligan were FREAKIN’ UNBELIEVABLE!”
For me, that’s where the actress race SHOULD be… but sadly, that world doesn’t exist.
A lot of people like Amanda, I can see her being a Reese Witherspoon type.
I think if they would’ve advertised Jennifer’s Body around Amanda it would’ve made more.
Rachel McAdams never delivers, her only good performance was in Mean Girls.
Surprised to hear your disappointment with Fish Tank. I’ll be seeing it next weekend, and I’m pretty excited.
Fish Tank is a two hour episode of Skins with better performances.
Ouch
David: THANK YOU. Although I LOVED Streep and liked Bullock, Sidibe and Mulligan were so much better it ain’t funny. And Sidibe is easily my choice to win.
“Before we say Seyfried has arived, lets see what her next movie does. ”
Her next movie is “Chloe”, an ‘erotic thriller’ from Atom Egoyan that’ll surely go into limited release and even if it is in wide release then it will be sold on Neeson/Moore to adults, not Seyfried.
As much as I adore Amanda Seyfried this victory has less to do with her and more to Nicholas Sparks. I am sorry people, girls like his novels. PERIOD. Just like girls like Twilight books. Lets see if Letters from Juliete opens that well too.
But I am veru happy for her, at least she seems to be ambitious than Macadms.
Think the numbers may be a less reliable indicator due to the winter storm that hit this weekend through heavily populated areas in the mid-Atlantic that shut down theaters all day Saturday and scared off attendance on Friday and Sunday. Are these figures ever broken down by region and age groups? (Does Crazy Heart play better in San Antonio than Seattle? Were folks over 30 more likely to stay home Fri and Sun?) Also, hey, there was the Super Bowl…
YES! Someone else mentioned Veronica Mars!
A.J.: I sure did! If only more people had mentioned “Veronica Mars” while it was airing… So sad to see Kristen Bell doing things like “When in Rome” and “Couples Retreat”…
It really is! Maybe Burlesque will be good? …I guess we’ll have to wait til next year
26-You CLEARLY have not seen The Notebook or State of Play.