David Fincher’s Facebook-themed The Social Network, which is already generating Oscar buzz, took the weekend box office crown with an estimated $23 million. Two new horror movies that were hoping to grab a little pre-Halloween real estate, Case 39 and Let Me In failed to generate much excitement and debuted in seventh and eighth places respectively.
After rebounding last week the total of the top ten films was off 4% from the same weekend last year when Zombieland opened with $24.7 million, and down 7% from 2008 when
| Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): October 1 - 3, 2010 | ||||||
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| Film | Weekend Gross | Screens | Avg./ Screen | Total Gross | Wk# |
| 1 | The Social Network | $23,000,000 | 2,771 | $8,300 | $23,000,000 | 1 |
| 2 | Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole | $10,855,000 | 3,575 | $3,036 | $30,047,000 | 2 |
| 3 | Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps | $10,100,000 | 3,597 | $2,808 | $35,876,000 | 2 |
| 4 | The Town | $10,000,000 | 2,935 | $3,407 | $64,307,000 | 3 |
| 5 | Easy A | $7,000,000 | 2,974 | $2,354 | $42,428,000 | 3 |
| 6 | You Again | $5,552,000 | 2,548 | $2,179 | $16,437,000 | 2 |
| 7 | Case 39 | $5,350,000 | 2,211 | $2,420 | $5,350,000 | 1 |
| 8 | Let Me In | $5,300,000 | 2,020 | $2,624 | $5,300,000 | 1 |
| 9 | Devil | $3,672,000 | 2,392 | $1,535 | $27,399,000 | 3 |
| 10 | Alpha and Omega | $3,000,000 | 2,303 | $1,303 | $19,025,000 | 3 |
Aaron (The West Wing) Sorkin’s clever script, Fincher’s stylish direction and a great young cast that includes Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield (the new Spider-Man) have made The Social Network a hit with critics (it has earned a 97% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes). Like a typical Oscar candidate, The Social Network appealed to a broad audience--its opening weekend audience was 53% female and 55% over 25. Most importantly, they seemed to like the film, giving it a B+ CinemaScore. It should be interesting to see if attendance at the movie, which cost $50 million to produce, holds up over the coming weeks, and whether its appeal translates to the increasingly important overseas markets.
Zack Snyder’s Legend of the Guardians 3-D animated feature, which opened disappointingly last weekend, performed better, dropping just 32.6% and adding $10.9 million to its coffers as it remained in second place. It’s too early to tell if Legends has the kind of extraordinary staying power that helped How to Train Your Dragon overcome its dismal debut and become a hit, but its second weekend’s performance provides a glimmer of hope.
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which topped the box office last week, obviously got some strong competition from The Social Network. Oliver Stone’s Wall Street sequel dropped 47% as it brought in an estimated $10.1 million. Michael Douglas will likely get some Oscar consideration for his role in Money Never Sleeps, which will likely remain locked in a duel for the dollars of discriminating moviegoers over the next few weeks with Ben Affleck’s The Town, which earned almost $10 million in its third weekend, and newcomer The Social Network with its trendy subject matter and solid ensemble cast of young actors.
The teen comedy Easy A has shown some legs falling just 34% in its third frame, while Disney’s comedy You Again also slipped by just 34% in its second.
The Renee Zellweger chiller Case 39, which has been on the shelf for sometime (never a good sign for a horror movie or any other sort of film) debuted in seventh place with a very disappointing $2,420 per theater average.
The remake of the powerful Swedish vampire movie Let Me In, which was directed by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) and stars Chloe Moretz (Kick-Ass), has done surprisingly well with the critics for a remake of a foreign film (87% positive on Rotten Tomatoes), but didn’t connect with audiences as it earned just $5 million while averaging only $2,624 per venue. While the opinions of critics, either for or against, probably mean less with a horror movie than with a film of any other genre, Let Me In, which has been adapted into a comic book by Dark Horse (see “Dark Horse Teams Up With Hammer Films”), has a solid storyline and the potential to do some serious damage, at least on DVD, if not in theaters.