The "plague thriller" Contagion easily topped the weekend box office with an estimated $23.1 million, but it led the weakest session of the year by far—a weekend that included the worst performance ever by a widely released film. Even The Help, which has shown the best “legs” of the summer, was off 40%, though it did manage to earn an estimated $8.6 million in its fifth weekend at the box office and bring its total to $137 million.
Contagion is typical of the more adult skewing fare that typically makes up a higher percentage of fall releases. Its audience was evenly split between the genders, but a whopping 81% was over 25. Critics, who gave Contagion an 82% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, liked Contagion more than audiences, who gave it an anemic “B-“ CinemaScore, which is anything but a predictor of robust box office health.
| Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): September 9 - 11, 2011 | ||||||
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| Film | Weekend Gross | Screens | Avg./ Screen | Total Gross | Wk# |
| 1 | Contagion | $23,135,000 | 3,222 | $7,180 | $23,135,000 | 1 |
| 2 | The Help | $8,691,000 | 2,935 | $2,961 | $137,093,000 | 5 |
| 3 | Warrior | $5,607,000 | 1,869 | $3,000 | $5,607,000 | 1 |
| 4 | The Debt | $4,905,000 | 1,874 | $2,617 | $21,993,000 | 2 |
| 5 | Colombiana | $4,000,000 | 2,354 | $1,699 | $29,779,000 | 3 |
| 6 | Rise of the Planet of the Apes | $3,875,000 | 2,887 | $1,342 | $167,836,000 | 6 |
| 7 | Shark Night 3D | $3,533,000 | 2,848 | $1,241 | $14,797,000 | 2 |
| 8 | Apollo 18 | $2,913,000 | 3,330 | $875 | $15,001,000 | 2 |
| 9 | Our Idiot Brother | $2,761,000 | 2,396 | $1,152 | $21,420,000 | 3 |
| 10 | Spy Kids: All the Time in the World | $2,506,000 | 2,544 | $985 | $34,227,000 | 4 |
The next best newcomer, the mixed martial arts movie Warrior, also got a solid 82% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and its audience gave it a fine “A” CinemaScore grade. The problem was a distinct lack of punch at the box office where it brought in a mere $5.6 million from more than 2,100 screens. As might be expected 66% of Warrior’s audience was male, though somewhat surprisingly 51% was over 25, an indication that it could have room to grow with the younger male demographic if it can build solid word of mouth over the coming weeks.
Some holdovers did OK. The nazi-hunting thriller The Debt dropped 50%, but still finished fourth with $4.9 million, just ahead of Columbiana, which ended up in fifth with an estimated $4 million. Next came Rise of Planet of the Apes, which dropped out of the top five for the first time in its six-week box office run.
Some holdovers basically stunk it up. In their second weekend of release Shark Night 3-D and Apollo 18 dropped 58% and 66.5% respectively.
But a couple of newcomers managed to come up with legendarily bad openings. The Adam Sandler-produced Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star earned a mere $1.45 million from 1,500 theaters, but that was a stellar bow compared with the horror film Creature, which opened at 1,507 venues and earned a paltry $331,000. This is the worst opening ever for a nationwide release. Creature averaged somewhere between two and three patrons per screening over the weekend—now that's a record that will be tough to beat.
