There's not much to party about as Garry Marshall's ropey rom-com tops the worst US box office in three years
With more entertainment options than ever before, young audiences ? the target demographic of any studio ? can elect to stay away when Hollywood's latest offerings don't cut the mustard. So, while New Line's ensemble rom-com New Year's Eve has taken the US top spot, it does so in the weakest box office weekend in North America since September 2008. Fox's comedy The Sitter opened in second place. Neither movie distinguished itself and neither will be around for long.
By contrast several others are in it for the long haul. The Muppets, Arthur Christmas, Hugo and The Descendants are all widely acclaimed movies that are benefiting from great word of mouth. Each dropped off at the box office by slight margins at the weekend, registering as much as an 11% drop in the case of Arthur Christmas. If you consider that your average summer popcorn movie slides anywhere from 50-60% in its second weekend, this is pretty good stuff.
In the case of The Muppets, audiences are catching up with it to see what the fuss is about. The critics loved it ? not that this matters much for a wide release ? and many of those who saw it on the opening weekend are raving about it. At this rate it won't have much trouble crossing $80m; question is, does it have the staying power to cross the talismanic $100m mark?
Arthur Christmas comes from the venerable Aardman Animation stable, and despite the hook-up with Sony Pictures Animation it's taken only $33.5m after three weekends. It's notoriously hard to crack the glorified cartoon market unless you're Pixar or DreamWorks, so Arthur has held well, but going much higher than $50m will be a challenge.
Hugo is an unusual case. Some critics are calling it a masterpiece and it's certainly up there as one of Martin Scorsese's greatest works. However, it lacks genuine thrills and is simply too refined to strike a chord with children: it's like trying to distract a kid from his PS3 with an impeccably crafted music box. Hugo has only amassed $33.5m after three weekends. This will be giving distributor Paramount and producer Graham King something to think about ? a production like this doesn't come cheap.
That said, critics are lapping it up and it won a few more awards at the weekend, among them a best director prize from the Boston Society of Film Critics. On that note, Terrence Malick won two ? from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the San Francisco critics. It was a good weekend for The Tree of Life, actually, claiming best picture from the San Fran reviewers, too. Unsurprisingly the movie's cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki is cleaning up everywhere.
The final movie that has been holding particularly well is The Descendants. It wasn't designed to gross $50m at the box office but awards specialist Fox Searchlight can work miracles with the right movie. This one's percolating nicely on $24m after four weekends and at no point has it played in more than 876 theatres ? so far. The distributor is rolling it out steadily. It's an old trick: get the accolades and keep the theatre-count low so it sells out every weekend and becomes a must-see. This one could go far ? and the LA critics have just anointed it best picture, while over in Boston they gave the best actor trophy to Brad Pitt.
Final mention must go to Tomas Alfredson's very fine Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The cast and crew were in LA last week pressing the flesh and getting out in front of Academy voters. Focus Features orchestrated a sensational limited release in which the espionage tale amassed $301,000 from just four theatres. Word of mouth on this is excellent ? Gary Oldman was just named actor of the year by the San Fransisco critics ? and I reckon TTSS could become an awards-season dark horse.
North American top 10, 9-11 December
1 New Year's Eve, $13.7m
2 The Sitter, $10m
3 The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn ? Part 1, $7.9m. Total: $259.5m
4 The Muppets, $7.1m. Total: $65.8m
5 Arthur Christmas, $6.6m. Total: $33.5m
6 Hugo, $6.1m. Total: $33.5m
7 The Descendants, $4.8m. Total: $23.6m
8 Happy Feet Two, $3.8m. Total: $56.9m
9 Jack and Jill, $3.2m. Total: $68.6m
10 Immortals, $2.4m. Total: $79.9m
? This article was amended on Tuesday 13 December 2011. Brad Pitt was awarded best actor by the Boston Society of Film Critics, not George Clooney as we originally said. This has been corrected.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/dec/12/new-years-eve-box-office
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