Despite a 60% drop from its opening frame, Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail earned an estimated $16.5 million, which was more than enough to overcome the heavily-hyped Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience and top the box office for the second week in a row, while success at the Oscars propelled Slumdog Millionaire to #3, its best finish yet.  The video game-inspired Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, which stars Kristin Kreuk (Smallville) debuted in the 8th spot, but the film, which opened in only 1,136 theaters, posted the fourth best per theater average in the top ten.  On a basically quiet weekend as the studio’s caught their collective breath before the expected major debut of Watchmen on Friday, the overall box office total was still up a solid 11% from last year.

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): Feb. 27 - Mar. 1, 2009 

Rank

Film

Weekend Gross

Screens

Avg./Screen

1

Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail

$16,500,000

2,052

$8,041

2

Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience

$12,700,000

1,271

$9,992

3

Slumdog Millionaire

$12,150,000

2,943

$4,128

4

Taken

$9,950,000

3,089

$3,221

5

He's Just Not That Into You

$5,875,000

2,858

$2,056

6

Paul Blart: Mall Cop

$5,600,000

2,698

$2,076

7

Coraline

$5,252,000

2,063

$2,546

8

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

$4,650,000

1,136

$4,093

9

Confessions of a Shopaholic

$4,490,000

2,534

$1,772

10

Fired Up

$3,800,000

1,811

$2,098


Since last year’s Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds 3D Concert Movie (in which the Jonas Brothers appeared) earned a surprising $31 million during its opening weekend, some analysts were predicting that the Jonas Brothers film would open in the $40 million range, so the estimated $12.7 million bow, which represents a solid debut for an ordinary concert movie, has to rank as a major disappointment for the teenage rockers.  The audience for the Jonas Brothers movie was overwhelmingly (85%) female and young (75% under 25).

 

After three strong weekends Henry Selick’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline dropped 54% and fell from second to 7th place while earning an estimated $5.25 million.  So far Coraline has brought in $61.1 million, which is more than Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit made in its entire run.

 

While Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, which has tie-in manga, anime, and toy merchandise, did post a solid per-theater average, it took in less than 40% of the total earned by the 1994 Street Fighter movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme.  Critical reviews don’t mean much in the “video game adaptation” genre where young males form the core of the audience and  the stylistically-challenged Uwe Boll has managed to carve out quite a directorial career for himself, but Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li’s “0” rating on Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t bode well for the film’s box office longevity.  Still it’s too early to write off this Street Fighter film entirely.

 

With no big new releases to lead the way the overall box office was aided by strong performances from a number of holdover titles including in addition to Slumdog, 2009’s two surprise hits, the kidnapping thriller Taken, which finished in 4th as it drove its cumulative to $107.8 million, and the comedy Paul Blart: Mall Cop, which moved up from the seventh spot to #6 in its 7th week of release and brought its leading 2009 total to $128.1 million.