Gore Verbinski’s 2D animated feature Rango easily topped the weekend box office with an estimated $38 million followed by the fate-based thriller The Adjustment Bureau with $20.9 million, and Beastly, a teen-skewing adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, which brought in an estimated $10.1 million.

 

Overall the total of the top ten films was down $37% from last year when Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland opened with $116.1 million, but up 17% from 2009 when Watchmen bowed with $55.2 million.  While not a stellar performance, the first weekend in March provided some hope that Hollywood could crawl out of its 2011 slump.  Box office totals were down 13% in February compared with the same month in 2010, and dollars earned by theatrical films have declined by 22% over the first two months of the year compared with 2010.  As for the number of admissions, the news is even worse. February 2011 had the lowest total of theater patrons of any February since 1995.

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): March 4 - 6, 2011
	Film	Weekend Gross	Screens	Avg./ Screen	Total Gross	Wk#
1	Rango	$38,000,000	3,917	$9,701	$38,000,000	1
2	The Adjustment Bureau	$20,945,000	2,840	$7,375	$20,945,000	1
3	Beastly	$10,115,000	1,952	$5,182	$10,115,000	1
4	Hall Pass	$9,015,000	2,950	$3,056	$27,001,000	2
5	Gnomeo and Juliet	$6,912,000	2,984	$2,316	$83,694,000	4
6	Unknown	$6,620,000	2,913	$2,273	$53,129,000	3
7	The King's Speech	$6,501,000	2,240	$2,902	$123,817,000	15
8	Just Go With It	$6,500,000	2,920	$2,226	$88,200,000	4
9	I Am Number Four	$5,702,000	2,903	$1,964	$46,440,000	3
10	Justin Bieber: Never Say Never	$4,325,000	2,254	$1,919	$68,876,000	4

 

Rango, which features the vocal talents of Johnny Depp, has a “PG” rating and skews older than the typical modern computer-animated feature.  Females made up 54% of the audience and the same percentage was over 25.  Given its $135 million price tag and an extensive marketing campaign, Rango is certainly not a guaranteed money maker, but Depp is a big draw around the world and animated features released in the early spring tend to have pretty good “legs.”  While critics loved Rango (88% positive on Rotten Tomatoes), it appears that audiences, which gave the film a mediocre “C+” CinemaScore, were not nearly as impressed.

 

The Adjustment Bureau, which stars Matt Damon and is based on a Phillip K. Dick story, also did well with the critics (69% positive), and not so well with audiences, which gave the film a “B” CinemaScore.  The film drew an older crowd with 73% of the audience, which was 53% female, over 30.

 

The teen romance Beastly opened in fewer than 2,000 theaters and thanks to a well-targeted marketing campaign, managed to average $5,182 per theater.  Reviewers hated the film, which could manage just a 21% positive rating, but its young female audience gave Beastly a “B+” CinemaScore.

 

The Farrelly brothers’ comedy Hall Pass, which ended up nosing out Gnomeo & Juliet for the box office crown last week, dipped a respectable 33% to $9 million, but its opening was so tepid that the film will have a hard time cracking the $50 million barrier.  Facing new animated competition from Rango, Gnomeo & Juliet suffered its biggest decline (48.4%).  The Disney garden gnome film looks to end up just shy of $100 million domestically. 

 

The King’s Speech enjoyed a solid post-Oscar bump, dropping just 11.4% and bringing its cumulative to nearly $124 million.  The other Oscar-aided films The Fighter, Black Swan, and True Grit are about done.  The films earned about $1 million a piece and have amassed $92 million, $105 million, and $168.6 million respectively.

 

The 1980s comedy Take Me Home Tonight bombed.  It opened in 2000 theaters, earned just $3.5 million, and bowed outside the top ten at number 11.  Nicholas Cage’s Drive Angry, which crashed and burned in its debut last week, dropped 58.2% in its second weekend.