Thick Fog Foils Box Office
October 17, 2005
How bad was the weekend box office?
Here's a clue... the number one film would have placed fifth during the same weekend last year.
It goes without saying that there was a significant drop-off at the box office this weekend, down 16.2% from last weekend, but more importantly down 9.6% from last year.
The Fall movie session has now brought in a total of $705.8 million, up by just 3.1% from last year, while the year-to-date total has hit $6.733 billion, down 6.5% from the 2004.
I don't see it getting much better next weekend either.
The Fog missed expectations by a significant margin, with just $11.8 million over the weekend.
That was still enough for the remake to earn top spot on the box office charts.
The film wasn't reviewed for critics, which turns out to be a smart decision, as it earned just one positive review over the weekend. That, plus the horror genre should lead to really short legs, but the film should still show a profit before it hits the home market.
The lone bright spot on this week's chart was Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which beat expectations, albeit by a narrow margin, with $11.5 million. So far the film has $33 million, and it should become a midlevel hit before it leaves theatres.
Cameron Crowe has quite a solid reputation, both at the box office and with critics.
However, Elizabethtown's performance hurt both aspects, as it could only manage an opening of $10.6 million and a Tomatometer of 32% positive.
Add in a production budget of $54 million and there's very little here to make the studio happy.
Flightplan continues to outperform, adding $6.5 million to its $70 million running tally.
With the combined success of this film and The Forgotten, I predict there will be plenty more stories about single moms whose kids disappear.
In Her Shoes was able to make one more appearance in the top five thanks in part to a sub-40% drop-off, but it was mostly due to weaker than expected competition.
The film did make $6.1 million over the weekend and now has $20.1 million overall, but that's not nearly what the studio was hoping for.
Finally, we have Domino, which couldn't reach lowered expectations, with a seventh pace, $4.7 million opening.
Terrible reviews plus very low per theatre average will result in this film nearly disappearing from theatres by the end of the month and being just a bad memory shortly after that.
Filed under: Flightplan, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, In Her Shoes, The Fog, Elizabethtown, Domino