After a couple of lackluster weekends, Ben Affleck’s Boston-based crime caper film The Town and Sony’s high school comedy Easy A took the top two spots at the box office and produced something of a revival at the September box office. The total of the top ten films was up 3% over last year when Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs opened and 17% over the same frame in 2008 when Lakeview Terrace debuted.
The Town, which earned a stellar 94% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, brought in an estimated $23.8 million and attracted an audience that was older (75% were 25 and up) and male (55%). In addition to directing, Affleck leads a stellar cast that also includes John Hamm (Mad Men), Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) and Blake Lively (Gossip Girl). Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): September 17 - 19, 2010 Film Weekend Gross Screens Avg./ Screen Total Gross Wk# 1 The Town $23,800,000 2,861 $8,319 $23,800,000 1 2 Easy A $18,200,000 2,856 $6,373 $18,200,000 1 3 Devil $12,584,000 2,809 $4,480 $12,584,000 1 4 Resident Evil: Afterlife $10,100,000 3,209 $3,147 $43,991,000 2 5 Alpha and Omega $9,200,000 2,625 $3,505 $9,200,000 1 6 Takers $3,000,000 2,139 $1,403 $52,346,000 4 7 The American $2,756,000 2,457 $1,122 $32,856,000 3 8 Inception $2,015,000 1,305 $1,544 $285,178,000 10 9 The Other Guys $2,000,000 1,827 $1,095 $115,431,000 7 10 Machete $1,700,000 1,704 $998 $24,336,000 3
With the college and pro football seasons in full swing it’s not easy to get that audience into theaters, but the “R-rated” The Town had a very clever TV marketing campaign that was marked by astute buys on TV sports venues and made great use of the Eminem song “Not Afraid.”
In contrast, Easy A, which took second with an estimated $18.2 million, attracted an audience that was 67% female and 50% under 18. The “PG-13” film about a “good” girl who benefits from rumors of wild sexual escapades, stars Emma Stone and earned a solid 84% positive rating from review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
The other two new movies didn’t fare as well. M. Night Shyamalan’s horror film Devil (only 41% positive on RT) about a group of people trapped in an elevator with Satan (unfortunately the Church Lady wasn’t one of them) was not available for pre-screening by critics, which is never a good sign. The fact that the film received just a “C+” CinemaScore, also doesn’t bode well, but Devil did perform considerably better than the 3-D animated feature Alpha and Omega, which earned just $9.2 million and finished in fifth place. It is now clear that 3-D alone is not enough to insure box office success.
Last week’s winner Resident Evil: Afterlife slipped 62.1% in its second frame, which is not atypical for a poorly-reviewed horror film. Christopher Nolan’s Inception, which dropped just 28.1% and actually moved up from 10th to 8th place in its tenth weekend, performed the best of any of the holdovers.
