The animated rats of Pixar's Ratatouille easily spoiled Bruce Willis' return to the screen (after a 12-year hiatus) as the blue collar cop John McClane. Ratatouille earned an estimated $47.2 million, well below the debuts of recent Pixar films Cars ($60 million), The Incredibles ($70 million), and Finding Nemo ($70 million). Brilliantly directed by Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles) Ratatouille has utterly charmed the critics, but it lacks a traditional kid-friendly subject as well as any pre-adolescent characters, so it should be interesting to see if the film's inherent quality can give it the kind of 'legs' that Pixar pictures have traditionally shown.
Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth John McClane film, posted the best opening in the series, but back in the 1990's films were not nearly as 'front-loaded' as they are now -- the second and third Die Hard films collectively earned only about 20% of their theatrical total during their opening weekend. Though it wasn't able to exterminate Pixar's rats, Live Free or Die Hard's $31 million weekend and $48 million five-day total vindicate Fox's revival of the straight action thriller, which depends more on great stunt work than on computer-generated effects. Will Live Free or Die Hard still pack them in when facing the effects-heavy competition of the Transformers? Find out here next week.
Last week's 'winner' Evan Almighty dropped 52%, but still finished third adding over $15 million to its total, though it certainly won't come close to making back its enormous $175 million cost at the domestic box office. The Stephen King-derived 1408, which cost just $25 million to produce, dropped just 48% (which qualifies as a great performance for a horror movie these days) and brought its total to over $40 million.
The second FF movie dropped 55% in its third weekend earning $9 million and bringing its cumulative to $114.8 million. It appears that Rise of the Silver Surfer has almost no chance of reaching the $154.7 million earned by the first FF film in 2005. It also appears that neither Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End ($295.7million), which fell to eighth, nor Shrek the Third ($313.8 million), which dropped to number eleven, will be able to catch Spider-Man 3($333.6 million).
The Nancy Drew movie also dropped out of the top ten, but still added nearly $2 million bringing its theatrical total to $21 million. Michael Moore's Sicko surged to number 9 in spite of being in only 441 theaters, thanks to a robust $10,234 average second only to Ratatouille's $11,986.
