Mission: Impossible--Ghost Protocol added 3,000 non-IMAX venues and vaulted to the top spot during its second weekend in theaters.  M:I 4 gave Tom Cruise his first number one film since the third film in the series opened at #1 in 2006.  The Christmas weekend was off to a slow start with the total of the top ten films down 22% from last year when Little Fockers debuted with $30.8 million, and down a mammoth 62% from Christmas of 2009 when Avatar remained at #1 with a brilliant $75.6 million total.  Studio analysts blame much of the weekend’s poor performance on the fact that Christmas Eve fell on Saturday this year, thus neutering what is traditionally the strongest movie-going day of the week.  Hollywood is still hopeful that business will pick up this week—the national holiday on Monday, December 26th certainly shouldn’t hurt.

 

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): December 23 - 25, 2011
	Film	Weekend Gross	Screens	Avg./ Screen	Total Gross	Wk#
1	Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol	$26,535,000	3,448	$7,696	$58,970,000	2
2	Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows	$17,800,000	3,703	$4,807	$76,554,000	2
3	Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked	$13,325,000	3,734	$3,569	$50,265,000	2
4	The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)	$13,000,000	2,914	$4,461	$21,400,000	1
5	The Adventures of Tintin	$9,125,000	3,087	$2,956	$17,132,000	1
6	We Bought a Zoo	$7,800,000	3,117	$2,502	$7,800,000	1
7	New Year's Eve	$3,005,000	2,225	$1,351	$32,342,000	3
8	Arthur Christmas	$2,700,000	1,804	$1,497	$44,200,000	5
9	The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1	$2,100,000	1,603	$1,310	$270,900,000	6
10	Hugo	$2,025,000	1,236	$1,638	$43,652,000	5

 

Mission: Impossible--Ghost Protocol has earned $59 million so far and has earned the best reviews of any film in the franchise so far.  It now appears that M:I 4 will have a very good chance to best the $134 million total of the previous film in the franchise, and could conceivably challenge for franchise supremacy if everything falls just right.

 

The prognosis is not nearly as rosy for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, which dropped 55% from its opening weekend total.  So far the Holmes sequel is running 45% behind the first Robert Downey Holmes movie, but that film had the advantage of opening on Christmas Day. 

 

The third Alvin and the Chipmunks movie Chipwrecked is also running well behind the previous film in the franchise (down 40% so far), but it dropped just 43% during its sophomore frame, so there is plenty of hope at Fox that the film can make up some ground during the next week with the kids out of school for winter break.

 

A trio of new films opened to less than stellar numbers, but given the strange nature of this particular Christmas weekend, it is too early to write them off.  The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is an American remake of a Swedish film based on Stieg Larsson’s mega-popular Millennium trilogy, which almost single-handedly established the Scandinavian Noir genre.  The “R-rated” Dragon Tattoo appeals to an older audience, and it has earned strong reviews (85% positive on Rotten Tomatoes), so it is premature to dismiss the prospects of this film, which should have a built-in audience.

 

Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin opened in 5th place with an estimated $9.1 million.  The movie has earned $17.1 million domestically in five days of release, but it has already brought in $240 million overseas.  Spielberg’s Tintin movie will have plenty of serious competition for its youthful target demographic over the next few weeks, but it has already earned solid reviews (74% on Rotten Tomatoes, not bad for a mo-cap animated feature), and is off to solid start here in spite of the fact that Herge’s Tintin graphic novels have never sold well in the U.S.  Almost three million North American moviegoers have been exposed to the franchise so far.  Even if Spielberg’s Tintin film ends up well below $100 million domestically, sales of Herge’s graphic novels, which are a key part of the children’s literature canon in almost every developed country except the U.S, are bounded to be affected very positively.

 

The weakest of the three new entries was Fox’s family film We Bought a Zoo, which came in at #6 with an estimated $7.8 million.  While the studio is undoubtedly disappointed with the movie’s opening, it is way too soon to declare the film a failure—this is the kind of movie that could develop strong legs if it strikes the right chord with its family audience.

 

Check back next week to see if this year’s Christmas season movies rebound during the week, and how the new films War Horse and The Darkest Hour open.