Weekend Box Office Report: September 26 to 28: Eagle Eye Candy

Weekend Top 10

A few years back, a little knows actor with a squeaky clean
face headlined a remake of Hitchcock’s Rear Window for the MTV generation.  The film was called Disturbia and it
opened past all expectations to debut at number one and then stayed there for
three consecutive weeks.  Now, we
all know how rare that is.  The kid
whose face drove hordes of young ladies into the theatres was Shia LaBeouf and
before Steven Spielberg made LaBeouf his personal pet project, Dreamworks fast
tracked another LaBeouf collaboration with Disturbia director, DJ Caruso.  That movie was Eagle Eye and it has
finally made it to theatres.  Only
now LaBeouf is Hollywood’s hottest young actor so the question wasn’t whether
they would be able to repeat the business Disturbia did.  The question was how far it would beat
it.

Just like Disturbia, Eagle Eye surpassed expectations,
surging to almost $30 million in its opening weekend, very high numbers for
September standards.  Reviews have
been poor but since when did reviews stop anyone from enjoying their favorite
eye candy.  Longevity will prove
LaBeouf’s staying power with this picture but a robust $8300 per screen average
on 3500 screens is a great starting point.

Richard Gere and Diane Lane reteamed for the third time and
proved that romantic audiences still crave more from this attractive, older
couple.  Adapted from the Nicholas
Sparks novel, Nights in Rodanthe may have pulled in less than half of what Eagle Eye did but it held its own and found its audience.  Whether that audience was able to find
its way out of the auditorium with the tears in their eyes clouding their
vision is another question altogether.

Here’s a question for you.  What the heck is Fireproof?  This little movie starring 80’s sitcom idol turned born
again Christian, Kirk Cameron, not only managed to open on 800+ screens but it
opened in third place on Friday to finish fourth for the weekend.  It almost managed a higher per screen
average than Eagle Eye.  Perhaps
I’m a pretty ignorant but I never even heard of this movie before Friday.  Given the poor reception it has
received from critics and audiences alike, I probably won’t be hearing about it
for much longer but a $6 million opening weekend for a movie that cost half a
million to make is certainly commendable.

The week’s only other Top 10 debut was a disappointment for
auteur director, Spike Lee.  His
WWII drama, Miracle at St. Anna opened to under $3K per screen and lacks the
critical praise that would encourage growth in the coming weeks.  That’s what you get for making a bad
movie, Spike.  Seriously, it’s bad.

On the artier side of the street, The Duchess scored an
excellent expansion.  The Keira
Knightly star vehicle added 48 screens and saw its business jump over
200%.  Appaloosa held up well in
its second week with a solid $10K per screen but no screens were added yet so
its gross still dipped.  Things are
sure to pick up next week when it goes wide.  Two other high profile indie releases debuted to disappointing
results.  Well, one was
disappointing; the other was disastrous.  Choke, the Fox Searchlight hopeful starring Sam Rockwell, earned just
over $3K per screen to debut outside the Top 10.  And proving once again that American audiences are still not
willing to face films about their war, The Lucky Ones, in which three soldiers
take a road trip while on leave, made under $500 per screen on 425
screens. 

NEXT WEEK: Holy crap, what isn’t coming out next
weekend?  To name just a few, Blindness goes wide, Flash of Genius opens on 1000+, HHow to Lose Friends and Alienate People will try to get people to like Simon Pegg and Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist finds Nick & Norah falling in love with each other while
we fall in love with them.  Oh
wait, I almost forgot … the Bill Maher religion mockery,Religulous opens on
Wednesday and goes wide on Friday, Appaloosa takes the West to the masses and
the Jonathan Demme masterpiece, Rachel Getting Married dips its toes into 8
shallow pools.