Weekend Box Office Report: April 11-13: The Box Office Goes to the Prom

Weekend Top 10

It’s that time of year when all the young, soon to be
graduating girls and boys toil over their dresses, rent their tuxes and try
desperately to lose their virginity if they haven’t already in the back seat of
their rental car.  That is, they
hope to do all that before they are sliced up into bloody bits and tossed in
the dumpster out back.  Welcome to Prom
Night, this week’s box office champ that
surpassed industry expectations to debut on top of the chart with a grand total
of $22.7 million.  This is the
biggest take for a horror film since last fall’s Saw IV.  It’s
a shame really; I thought we might finally be done with this teen horror
trend.  I guess they can greenlight Prom Night 2 now, if they
haven’t done so already.

Opening in second place with a take of $10 million less is Street
Kings.  I make no effort to disguise my disdain for Keanu
Reeves.  With rare exception, he
brings very little to the table but I was under the impression that he was a
top box office draw already.  This
would enable him to pick and choose his projects, I’m sure.  How on earth did he or his handlers
rationalize that it would be good for his career for him to take to the streets
in this latest role, gangsta style? 

The Top 10’s third and last new entry is the disappointing
seventh place finish for the Sundance alumni, Smart People.  Despite capitalizing on Ellen Page, post-Juno and Sarah Jessica Parker, pre-Sex and the
City movie, the film only managed a
mediocre $4 million take.  Sure it
played on the least amount of screens in the Top 10 but its modest per screen
average and poor reception from audiences has pretty much sealed its fate.  Maybe it would have done better if it
weren’t so dumb.

Below the Top 10, two specialty films debuted to stellar
numbers.  Each played on four
screens in all of North America and each managed a per screen average of five
digits.  Overture’s The Visitor was the more successful of the two, pulling in $88K
while Fox Searchlight finally brought it’s crowd pleaser documentary, Young
@ Heart to the people to the tune of
$52K.  Both expand their runs to
over 25 screens next week.

I don’t know why I do this or why I feel compelled but last
week, I made a point of ridiculing George Clooney (whom I do love) after Leatherheads debuted to tepid response.  Well, since then, the projected gross
came in even lower and the film actually only debuted in third place, not
second, and this week, it drops off over 50%.  I guess I’m just like everybody else and I like watching the
big guys fall hard.

NEXT WEEK: Three biggies hit the multiplexes.  Al Pacino tries out 88 Minutes on 2000 screens.  Judd Apatow tries to get over the bomb that was Walk
Hard with Forgetting Sarah
Marshall.  And Jackie Chan takes on Jet Li in The Forbidden
Kingdom.  On the smaller front, the man who took on fast food in Super
Size Me, is taking on the War on Terror
with Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?