Weekend Box Office Report: March 20-22: I Knew It

Nicolas Cage wasn’t worried.  He knew that his latest action masterpiece, Knowing, would
come out on top.  It was written in
binary code or something on some scrap of paper that was buried in a time capsule
for over fifty years.  Does that
sound ludicrous?  You should see Knowing then.  And see it, you did,
to the tune of nearly $25 million.  The film’s future as the box office champ was sealed on Friday when Knowing took in in one day what Cage’s last number one “hit”, Bangkok Dangerous, took in all weekend.  Critics were less than enthused about Cages latest stagy offering but
when has that ever deterred fans from seeing one of his films?

Two other wide releases tried hard to top Cage but could
not.  If only they too had read
that code from fifty years ago, they would known it was never going to
happen.  Still, the Paul Rudd-Jason
Segal bromance, I Love You, Man, has nothing to be ashamed of with its second
place debut.  The film did similar
business to Rudd last film, Role Models, and Segal’s first starring effort, Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  With
good word of mouth, the film could experience similar strong holds as their
predecessors and find its way to a $60+ million gross.  Coming in for a somewhat disappointing
third place finish in Tony Gilroy’s follow up to Michael Clayton, Duplicity.  Sure a $14 million
gross for reasonably wide release is decent business but this picture stars
bonafide movie stars, Julia Roberts and Clive Owen.  Their charisma alone should have carried this to a much
stronger start.  Reviews have been
mixed so returns should dwindle fairly quickly, as should the two stars’ asking
prices.

In limited release news, Sundance favorite from this year, Sin Nombre, opened strongly, while Sundance favorite from last year, Sunshine Cleaning continued its successful expansion.  Sin Nombre walked away from Sundance with the cinematography
prize as the prize for dramatic direction and this weekend, opened to the tune
of a $12K per screen average on six screens.  Sunshine Cleaning, jumped its theatre count from 4 to 64 and
saw its returns explode over 200%.  The Amy Adams-Emily Blunt indie comedy is being well received and jumps
its count to over 250 next week.  Meanwhile, the largest per screen average of any film in release belongs
to Valentino: The Last Emperor.  The documentary about the great fashion designer opened to over $20K per
screen on just one screen in all of North America.

NEXT WEEK: The latest Renny Harlin action flick, 12 Rounds finds its way to 2,200 screens.  It’s been a whole week without a wide horror release so The Haunting in Connecticut steps in to fill the void next week on 2,600 screens.  And the Dreamworks Animation folks are
hoping for a big score with the big film, Monsters vs. Aliens (3,500 screens).

Weekend Top 10