Weekend Box Office Report: February 27 to March 1: In Your Face, Jonas Brothers!

Last year around this time, a certain teen queen unleashed
her “Best of Both Worlds” concert to theatres in 3D.  Having been billed as an exclusive one-week engagement,
little girls everywhere came out in droves to catch Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus
do her split personality thing up on screen to the tune of over $30
million.  A year has passed and the
smart folks at Disney decided to get another teen sensation back on the screen
in 3D, only to find that audiences would opt to watch a man in grandma drag go
to jail instead.

No, The Jonas Brothers: 3D Concert Experience could not
topple Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail at the box office this weekend.  This is even after Perry’s most successful
film to date suffered a 60% drop over last week.  Worse yet, the young Jonas siblings opened on almost twice
the screens as Montana/Cyrus did and made less than half the cash.  There was no urgency to catch the show
opening weekend with some looming empty threat that the film would only be
playing for a week, mind you.  (It
should be noted that as soon as Montana brought in the green last year, the
one-week engagement was extended indefinitely.)  It was a solid showing but it seems to me that there must
have been a lot of little girls who just decided to stay home.  Besides, the Jonas Brothers that big
and in your face, 3D styles, would be pretty frightening, I think.  For a boy band, they’re really not that
cute … or profitable apparently.

Last week’s winner of 8 Oscars, including Best Picture, Slumdog Millionaire, saw its already impressive gross improve another 45% this
week.  Albeit not my pick for Best
Picture of the year, this is clearly the people’s favorite.  In its 16^th week in
theatres, it shows no signs of stopping.  It is Fox Searchlight’s first Best Picture winner and it is now their
widest release to date.  The Danny
Boyle film has plenty more market internationally to conquer, home video sales
still ahead and it will certainly surpass The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to become the highest grossing Best Picture nominee from this year.

A couple of other big Oscar winners saw serious gains this
week too.  Both added hundreds of
screens to capitalize on their Oscar visibility and both saw promising results
well into their domestic runs.  Audience favorite, Kate Winslet, took home the Best Actress Oscar for The Reader and the Weinstein Company sleeper hit saw its grosses increase 10%
over last week for a grand total of just over $27 million.  Not bad for a movie that seemed doomed
to fall away into obscurity until it garnered five surprise Oscar nods.  Focus Features’ Milk earned Oscars for
Best Original Screenplay (Dustin Lance Black) and Best Actor (Sean Penn) did
even better, increasing 37% over last week and bringing its cume over $30
million 14 weeks into its domestic run.  Both other Best Picture nominees,The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Frost/Nixon saw its returns dwindle this week as neither garnered any
serious screen time during the telecast.

You don’t have to be an Oscar winner to perform well in
limited release though.  Foreign
Language Oscar losers, The Class and Waltz With Bashir continued to see their
grosses grow despite missing out on the crown.  And in completely non-Oscar related news, Joaquin Phoenix’s
supposedly last film, Two Lovers, tacked on about 60 screens and soared over
500% and critical darling, Gomorra, improved over 140% over last week with an
average that would rival any title in the Top 10.  You don’t want to mess with the Gomorra boys.

NEXT WEEK: Everyone will be watching to see if The Watchmen is worth all of this overblown hype as it opens on over 3500 screens.  Given that there are no other wide
releases expected next weekend, I guess people think it’s going to be big.  The question now is how big but my
question is rather why anyone cares at all.

Weekend Top 10