Weekend Box Office Report: January 16 to 18: Paul Blart, Box Office King

Ah, January – the only time of year where a movie about an
overweight mall cop can pull in over $30 million in its opening weekend and a
film about a dog hotel can open, period.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop, the Kevin James vehicle, surpassed all
expectations this weekend to debut atop the chart.  Of course, that last statement implies that people had
expectations to begin with.  James
even managed to take down Clint Eastwood, pulling in $10 million more than Gran Torino did in its second weekend of wide release.  Neither actor has anything to complain about, mind you.  James has proven in one single weekend
that he can open a major film release and Eastwood has proven that the man is
still one of the most impressive box office draws in Hollywood, at least when
he is front of the camera and flaunting a shotgun.

The rest of the Top 5 continues to impress as four out of
the five earned north of $20 million.  The Martin Luther King holiday weekend saw a 31% increase over last year
and that is only for the three-day regular weekend period.  My Bloody Valentine 3D led the pack,
charging right off the screen and into third place.  The film’s average was slightly less than last week’s horror
entry, The Unborn but still played solidly.  Mind you, The Unborn dropped off 50% this weekend so I’m not
sure My Bloody Valentine will still be around come Valentine’s Day. The Top 10 saw one other entry this week, the wide expansion of the Daniel Craig starring, Defiance.  The film earned a stable but unimpressive average of just over $5K for an eighth place finish.  The awards contender has seen little support so far and is not expected to surprise at the Oscars.  

Pulling in the highest per screen average of any film in
release this weekend was Notorious, the life and death story of the Notorious
B.I.G.  This was only one of many
reasons for the Fox people to celebrate this weekend.  Last week’s Golden Globe winner for Best Motion Picture
(drama), Slumdog Millionaire, narrowly surpassed fellow competitor, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, to sneak back into the Top 10 with a resurged five
figure average.  The film is a lock
for a bunch of Oscar nominations so Slumdog’s millions will continue to roll in
for weeks to come.  Also, Fox
Searchlight’s The Wrestler, fresh from winning two Golden Globes including Best
Actor (drama) for Mickey Rourke, continued its slow expansion with an addition
of 84 screens and saw another surge of over 100%.

In other Golden Globe news, Kate Winslet’s double win helped Revolutionary Road continue to expand solidly, increasing 22% over last
week.  Her Supporting Actress win
for The Reader did not fare as well though.  The film continues to perform decently but lost 90 screens
this week and saw its returns fall off 9%.  Awards season still has another month to go so some of the
contenders need to pick it up.  The
Golden Globe winner for Best Foreign Language Film , Waltz with Bashir, fought
the film’s controversy to increase 18% over last week.  And the Golden Globe winner for Best Motion
Picture (comedy), Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, tacked on another 50
screens and surged 112% despite its home video release being just a couple of
weeks away.

NEXT WEEK: We shall see how this Thursday’s Oscar nominees
shape the contender grosses, if at all.  This is especially true for Revolutionary Road, The Wrestler, Frost/Nixon andSlumdog Millionaire, as all four jump into aggressive
expansions in hopes that their film will be receiving many a nod this
week.  Even The Dark Knight returns
for awards season, reappearing on over 200 screens and ensuring that it will
cross the $1 billion mark internationally.  As for brand new wide releases, look for Brandon Fraser in Inkheart, which seems awful close in premise to Journey to the Center of the Earth to me, and the latest installment in the now Kate Beckinsale-less
franchise, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans.  Or don’t look for them; they don’t sound worth looking for
to me.

Weekend Top 10