The “feel good” civil rights drama The Help fell just 28.4% and maintained its mastery of the box office for a second straight week with an estimated $14.3 million, but overall movie attendance plummeted thanks in part to Hurricane Irene as theaters posted their second worst weekend of the year—only the Super Bowl weekend was worse. 

Three new films debuted, but failed to make much of an impression.  Columbiana, the action film from producer Luc Besson starring Zoe Saldana, finished at #2 with an estimated $10.3 million followed by Guillermo Del Toro’s remake of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, which earned an estimated $8.7 million and finished in third place, while the Paul Rudd comedy Our Idiot Brother debuted weakly in fifth place with $6.6 million.  Overall on a weekend where Hurricane Irene wreaked havoc on the East Coast, attendance was down a whopping 23% from the same frame last year.

 

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): August 26 - 28, 2011
	Film	Weekend Gross	Screens	Avg./ Screen	Total Gross	Wk#
1	The Help	$14,333,000	2,778	$5,159	$96,630,000	3
2	Colombiana	$10,300,000	2,614	$3,940	$10,300,000	1
3	Don't Be Afraid of the Dark	$8,689,000	2,760	$3,148	$8,689,000	1
4	Rise of the Planet of the Apes	$8,650,000	3,374	$2,564	$148,456,000	4
5	Our Idiot Brother	$6,588,000	2,555	$2,578	$6,588,000	1
6	Spy Kids: All the Time in the World	$5,727,000	3,305	$1,733	$21,710,000	2
7	The Smurfs	$4,800,000	2,861	$1,678	$125,993,000	5
8	Conan the Barbarian	$3,100,000	3,015	$1,028	$16,576,000	2
9	Fright Night	$3,029,000	3,114	$973	$14,207,000	2
10	Crazy, Stupid, Love.	$2,905,000	1,577	$1,842	$69,529,000	5

 

Among the other holdover films Rise of the Planet of the Apes continued to display great legs. R otPotA earned an estimated $8.6 million and finished at #4 in its fourth weekend in theaters.  The franchise reboot has now earned $148.5 million, which put it well past Fox’s other major summer franchise renovation effort, X-Men: First Class, which earned $146 million domestically.  The Smurfs, the other late summer hit, pushed its North American total to $126 million.

 

On the other hand there is the sad case of Millennium Films attempt to reboot the Conan the Barbarian franchise.  After a disappointing debut last week, the new Conan film plummeted a steep 69.1% and finished at #8 with an estimated $3.1 million. So far the new Conan the Barbarian, which cost $90 million to produce, has earned just $22 million worldwide.  It appears highly unlikely that the movie will ever come anywhere close to earning the $200 million at the box office needed to break even.

 

Columbiana was the top new film but its tepid debut has to be a bit disappointing even allowing for the effects of hurricane Irene, which depressed moviegoing on the East Coast where an estimated 1,000 theaters were forced to close for at least part of the weekend.  Still Columbiana managed a rare feat for an action film—57% of its audience was female, though like most of this summer’s late season action films it had a hard time attracting younger viewers (65% was over 25).  There is some hope for Columbiana however in that it received a solid CinemaScore of “A-.”

 

That isn’t the case for Del Toro’s Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.  The horror remake did attract a younger crowd (52% under 25), but they gave the film a dismal “C” CinemaScore, which doesn’t bode well for the future.

 

The other new release, Our Idiot Brother, earned only $6.6 million, and became the latest “R” rated comedy to fare poorly at the box office.  But the film cost only $5 million to produce and the Weinstein Company has already made its money back on foreign distribution deals.  The film’s audience, which was 70% over 25, however only gave it a mediocre “C+” rating so it doesn’t appear that Our Idiot Brother will be the comedy equivalent of the micro-budgeted horror hit Paranormal Activity.