Friday Dailies

1. Moneyball - $3.9 million

2. Dolphin Tale - $3.5 million

3. The Lion King 3D - $3.3 million

4. Courageous - $3.1 million

5. 50/50 - $2.9 million

9/30 - 10/2 Estimates:

1. Dolphin Tale - $14.245 million

2. Moneyball - $12.5 million

3. The Lion King (3D) - $11.057 million

4. 50/50 - $8.858 million

5. Courageous - $8.8 million

6. Dream House - $8.209 million

7. Abduction - $5.65 million

8. What's Your Number - $5.6 million

9. Contagion - $5.04 million

10. Killer Elite - $4.855 million

11. Drive - $3.337 million

12. The Help - $3.006 million

Take Shelter - $56,200 ($18,733 pta in 3 theaters) 

10/1-3 award/specialized box office analysis

(For all the newcomers here, this is a continuation of my posts at the old thread. What you'll get here is far more accurate about how good grosses are and better at predicting their impact than the studio-influenced reporting by the trade papers, general media and other blogs - already this week there is an example of this, and likely the cutting and pasting from other sources done here will also include wrong analysis).

New releases -

First off, though it has nothing to do with the Oscars, hardly anyone noticed that Jim Sheridan - the director of My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, The Boxer and In America, not only had a film released this week - Dream House - but it wasn't even screened for the press! Totally humiliating for him.

Take Shelter (Sony Classics)

Variety is already out with their article describing this film's opening grosses - $56,000 in 3 NY/LA theatres, $18.7 PSA - as strong. No, they're not. They are very mediocre, and don't bode well for the film's future.

At this point of the year, and with the reviews this film got (90 on Metacritic, near the very top of the year), any PSA under $30,000 should be considered disappointing. This had virtually no competition; it had good sized ads; significant separate articles touting Michael Shannon, and yet something around 5,000 people bothered to see it.

Just for compaison - just about a year ago, Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger opened in NY/LA, had a PSA of $26,000, was called strong - and it went on to a poor $3.2 million national gross, which was around what I predicted based on the opening.

From what I hear, Shannon should be a strong best actor nominee contender. And based on his familiarity - his previous nomination, currently on Boardwalk Empire, and his performance here - he could still factor with SAG (Sony Classics has a poor track record with the GGs). But this film needed a better opening his boost his chances.

Once again, the idea of waiting until October or later to release a film that premiered at Sundance in January is risky. It works sometimes (Precious, to a lesser extent Blue Valentine). But more often it is too late, as seems to be the case here.

The other significant openings - Kenneth Longeran's long delayed Margaret (his first film since You Can Count on Me), Sarah Palin - You Betcha! and Nat'l Geographic's Benda Bilili - were all total disasters.

Holdovers -

Moneyball - it fell only 36%, which is encouraging. However, its 2nd week falloff is a bit bigger than The Social Network's 2nd FSS last year, and of course it started from a lower gross. This looks like it will end up around $75 million or so, which should, based on its older male demographic appeal, be enough to keep it relevant through Oscar season.

Among limited specialized expansions, My Afternooons With Margueritte and Machine Gun Preacher continue to be weak. Weekend, a British gay-relationship film, which was decent in its NY exclusive, added 5 more screens, for a very ordinary 8000 PSA (I believe it is also VOD already). IFC also expanded Black Power Tapes Mix to ll from 5 theatres, for a minor 4000 PSA.

Thanks for continuing this over here. It's one of the more important things written on goldderby.

Thanks LKM. I was going to continue with it even if it meant just emailing it to some people from GD and other blogs, but it seemed with all the effort involved over the last few years this was the right place for it, particularly as we head into awards season.

This year is the grimmest ever for specialized. My fear is that all but a small handful of films are going to underperform in their openings over the next few months, and this will continue the long-term trend toward fewer Oscar-quality film being made or at least made for theatrical distribution.

I can't find any reports on Take Shelter's cost (either its initial budget or what Sony Classics paid to buy it). But generally speaking, based on precedents, and including the money involved in marketing a film like this and any Oscar campaign, for both parties, it is likely a domestic theatrical gross of way above $5 million - probably closer to $10 - will be needed as part of the overall revenues to make this successful.

Another comparison - Get Low opened to a $22,000 PSA and ended up over $9 million, without a Duvall Oscar nomination. If Take Shelter takes a similar trajectory, it would get up to $8 million or so, likely adequate. Get Low though had three advantages Take Shelter doesn't - three better known actors, much less competition as is expanded (it was a summer release), and more of a cross-country appeal. Its reviews, though favorable, weren't as good as Take Shelter's. It did survive a long-wait - it premiered at Toronto 09, wasn't released for nearly a year.

So the jury is certainly not in yet on Take Shelter - perhaps initial grosses will stabilize and it will open better elsewhere. But so far, no way can these grosses be called strong. They simply aren't.

Scott, wonder what you thoughts are on Shame. I think it will end up being one of the finest if not best film of the year but doesn't have a release date yet. I think once it's reviewed and seen, reviews and word of mouth wil make it a must see for urban types. If it's released too late in the year (say mid or later December) wonder if that could reduce its Oscar chances as the likely nominee list becomes crowded with higher profile films already released in the fall.

Also, in light of Courageous' $8 million weekend versus $2 million production budget, makes me wonder if Shame should be similarly marketed to the evangelicals, as a cautionery tale of sex in the city and poor parenting.

It will open by the end of the year in NY & LA, and shortly after that broaden out.

I guess the comparison for starters should be Blue Valentine, but with several (negative caveats):

1) far less star power

2) NC17 rating will cut if off from many theatres, though the majority of top specialized ones - whether indie or big chain - will still play it

3) British, not American (not sure how much difference this makes, but Blue Valentine felt accessible in terms of its plot, not sure this will so much)

One possible asset - Fassbender seems like a real possibility to win 2 or 3 of the top 3 critics' groups best actor award, and the film as well likely will get better reviews than Blue Valentine.

With all that, my guess is it will gross a good deal less than the $10 million or so BV got up to.

(Cute comment on Courageous, and good catch on a major development - the studios are all looking hard for low-budget faith based wide releases).

Weekend Report: 'Dolphin Tale' Leaps Into Lead by Ray Subers
Dolphin Tale  .

  October 2, 2011

On strong word-of-mouth, Dolphin Tale managed to leap over Moneyball and The Lion King (in 3D) to take first place on its second weekend in theaters. Estimates had faith-based movie Courageous trailing 50/50, though it ultimately leveraged a stronger Sunday to come out ahead when actuals reported. Dream House disappointed in its debut, while What's Your Number? tallied one of the worst numbers for a super-saturated (3,000+ theaters) release ever.

Dolphin Tale eased just 27 percent to $13.9 million, which brought its 10-day total to a solid $37.2 million. It had a better hold than Soul Surfer and was about even with last Fall's Secretariat, albeit with a much higher total than either of those movies at the same point. Still, it couldn't hold a candle to The Blind Side (which actually improved in its second frame), though that was a holiday weekend so it isn't an apples-to-apples comparison.

Moneyball dipped 38 percent to $12 million. That's steeper than The Social Network's 31 percent decline, though it's still very solid in its own right. The Brad Pitt baseball drama has scored $38 million through 10 days in theaters.

After ruling the charts for the past two weeks, The Lion King's 3D re-release fell 52 percent to $10.6 million and had to settle for third place. That week-over-week decline is a fairly steep, though it's not entirely unexpected considering the Blu-ray hits stores on Tuesday and most advertisements pegged the re-release as a two-weeks-only affair. The movie's total has now reached $79.2 million, which brings The Lion King's overall total to $407.7 million. On Saturday, it passed Spider-Man to move in to the Top 10 all-time, and it should be able to climb a few more spots before the end of its run. Thanks in part to The Lion King's impressive performance, Walt Disney Pictures passed the $1 billion mark on Saturday, making it the sixth straight year that the studio reached this milestone.

Sherwood Pictures' Courageous was the only one of the new releases to improve from estimates to actuals, and it passed 50/50 in the process to take fourth place. The movie debuted to $9.1 million from just 1,161 theaters for a strong per-theater average of $7,806. That's up from the studio's last movie Fireproof ($6.8 million), though the average was off just a bit. The opening ranks fifth all-time for a Christian movie, and only trails The Passion of the Christ and the three Narnia movies. Courageous scored a rare "A+" CinemaScore, and the audience was 53 percent female and 77 percent over the age of 25.

Made outside of Hollywood without any major stars, Courageous managed to fly under most radars (including my own) until very recently. It's unfair to ignore the vast majority of church-going Americans for whom typical Hollywood fare isn't of great interest, though, and Sherwood Pictures has impressively found a way to mobilize this subset of the population. It will be interesting to see if Courageous can hold as well as Fireproof did when it went on to earn $33.46 million, or nearly five times its opening weekend, in 2008.

50/50 opened to $8.6 million from 2,458 theaters, which is the lowest debut ever for a Seth Rogen movie. Considering the grim subject matter, though, that's not an entirely awful start, and an "A-" CinemaScore should translate in to decent word-of-mouth in coming weeks. The audience was 54 percent female and 57 percent under 30 years old.

50/50 had a hot young cast, and strong reviews and word-of-mouth, but all of that only goes so far. The marketing was ultimately too lukewarm: by attempting to off-set the cancer plotline and dreary gray palette with random jokes and the uplifting tagline "Beat the Odds," the movie's story and characters were diluted and instead it came off as a somewhat sad buddy comedy. It could hang on well moving foward, though it will be tough to match star Joseph Gordon-Levitt's 2009 hit (500) Days of Summer ($32.4 million).

Dream House scared up a meek $8.1 million. That's just a fraction of haunted house movies like The Skeleton Key ($16.1 million) and The Amityville Horror ($23.5 million), and it's even off a bit from Dark Water ($9.9 million). The movie received a "B" CinemaScore and the audience was 54 percent female and 62 percent under the age of 25. Hispanics were the largest ethnic group in attendance at 38 percent, which tends to be the case with supernatural thrillers.

The combined star wattage of Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz and Naomi Watts couldn't save Dream House from a vague marketing effort that failed to firmly place the movie in a genre (it seemed to fluctuate between supernatural and psychological thriller) or generate any kind of scares. It doesn't help that it wasn't screened for critics and ultimately wound up with a terrible 5 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Between this and July's Cowboys & Aliens, it's starting to appear like Craig isn't much of a draw outside of the James Bond franchise.

Abduction fell 49 percent to $5.6 million for a total of $19.1 million. Killer Elite dipped 47 percent to $4.9 million and it's total reached $17.5 million.

What's Your Number? wound up in eighth place with a terrible $5.4 million. That's the fifth-worst debut ever for a movie in more than 3,000 theaters, and is just over one-third of the opening of star Anna Faris's The House Bunny ($14.5 million). The movie received a decent "B" CinemaScore, and the audience was 63 percent female and 63 percent over the age of 25.

A brief mea culpa: I gambled by predicting over $14 million for What's Your Number? this weekend and clearly got burned. Honestly, though, it was hard to look at any of the relevant metrics and forecast an opening below $10 million, and there were likely some odd intangibles in play here. Perhaps it's that star Anna Faris has cooled off a bit in the three years since The House Bunny. Or maybe the title's bluntness about sex turned some viewers off. Or it could be that What's Your Number? just looked like an uninspiring retread following a Summer chock-full of successful female-oriented movies like Bridesmaids and Bad Teacher. As is often the case, all of these factors probably added up in one way or another to generate one of the worst wide release debuts in quite some time.

Discuss the Weekend Report on Facebook, Twitter, and in Box Office Mojo's forums.

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• 'Lion' Remains 'King,' 'Moneyball,' 'Dolphin Tale' Go Extra Innings

This Timeframe in Past Years:
• 2010 - 'Social Network' No Wallflower in Its Debut
• 2009 - 'Zombieland' Livens Up Horror Comedy Genre
• 2007 - 'Heartbreak Kid' Gets Hurt, 'Game Plan' Tops Again
• 2006 - 'Departed' Out-Muscles 'Massacre'
• 2005 - 'Serenity' Moseys to Tame Start

What a lovely long "break" from "Scott".

Here's a list courtesy of Box Office Mojo, of the top 24.

• WeekendWeekend Box Office

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