Weekend Box Office Report: October 24 to 26: Saw Gets Schooled

Weekend Top 10

For years now, it wouldn’t be Halloween if it wasn’t Saw to
begin with.  The consistent
Lionsgate moneymaker would come out on or around Halloween, rake in the quick
dough and get out before Thanksgiving came creeping.  They’ve always opened at number one and have somehow managed
to hold on to their core audience each year despite each installment being less
interesting than the last.  There
was some concern the franchise was losing its edge on the market but no one
would have guessed last year, it would be outdone by a bunch of squeaky clean
teens singing and dancing it up at the prom.

After the record breaking cable success and subsequent
soundtrack success of the first two High School Musical installments, Disney
got the bright idea to launch the latest in the series in theatres.  Clearly, there was money to be made
exploiting these attractive young people and their limited singing and dancing
talents.  And money they did
make.  High School Musical 3: Senior Year opened to $42 million, the third biggest October opening in
history, behind Scary Movie 3 ($48 million) and Shark Tale ($47 million).  When the film opened to $14 million on
Friday, it seemed as though the film would easily surpass these two hits but
Friday accounted for 33% of the full weekend take while people expected the kid
friendly pic to soar even higher on Saturday.  Still, it was an impressive haul and it won’t be long before
we start hearing about “Community College Musical”.

The Saw V folks don’t have anything to cry about.  With an estimated budget of just over
$10 million, who cares if your $30 million take is slightly less than Saw IV’s
opening weekend?  This sequel
continues to perform year on year but its legs get shorter and shorter in the
long term, and not because they were hacked off.  It also wouldn’t be Halloween it seems if it weren’t for Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.  The film was re-issued yet again this year in 3D and in many cases with
brand new digital projections.  The
film was also recently released on DVD though so this year’s ritual only
mustered an average of $1,310 per screen for a total of $372K.

The art house scene was all a bustle this weekend.  Fall is like the art house’s
summer.  The most notable debut was
Clint Eastwood’s Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie in a role that might
finally nab her another Oscar nomination.  Playing on a mere 15 screens, the film pulled in half a million dollars,
for a stellar per screen average of over $33K.  The next highest average of any film playing is a bit
surprising.  Adapted from the
popular Logo series, Noah’s Arc: Jumping the Broom appealed to gay audiences
desperate for fare.  On just five
screens across the nation, the film collected $32K per screen.  Meanwhile, Charlie Kaufman’s first time
at bat as a director, Synecdoche New York, was unleashed on 9 screens worth of
unsuspecting people, for an average of $19K.  The film has been getting mixed reviews so the future is as
unpredictable as well, a Charlie Kaufman film.

NEXT WEEK: Zack & Miri Make a Porno.  The title says it all folks and they do
it on over 3000 screens. The Haunting of Molly Hartley will try to scare audiences away from Saw V.  Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla has been
struggling in limited release but hopes wider audiences will go for his
supposed return to form.  And
Angelina and Clint go wide (from 15 to over 1800 screens) with Changeling.