There was no question The Golden Compass was going to be the biggest movie this weekend. The question was, how big would it be? Given the film's massive media blitz and names like Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig attached, one would have expected the movie to perform pretty well. No doubt New Line was counting on it, what with the $180 million they spent to get Pullman's children's fantasy story to the screen. Few people would probably have imagined the movie would get such an icy financial reception.
I have to admit I expected it to do better. With only $26 million over the weekend, it ranks as one of the lowest openings for a big-budget children's fantasy book adaptation, just beating out last year's abysmal Eragon which took in just $23 million in its first weekend. I fully expected The Golden Compass to arrive somewhere closer to the $40 million mark, but it could very well be that America is showing some fatigue over all these fantasy flicks.
The question that must now be addressed by the folks at New Line is what to do with the other two stories left in the "His Dark Materials" trilogy. The Golden Compass has set a pretty high standard in the way of cast and budget. Historically, fantasy franchises tend to get more and more expensive as they go along while making less and less money. If Compass disappears quickly (which is very likely to happen in the face of other holiday fare rolling out in the next few weekends) New Line will take a heavy financial hit and the prospect of losing money on two more movies might be a tough sell.
All eyes will be on the studio to see if they'll gamble on finishing the story or if they'll cut their losses and run. The sting has to be especially painful for director Chris Weitz who crafted a movie that suffers from a choppy storyline that spends too much time setting up the future movies and too little time being a movie that is itself interesting to watch. Without the next two films, this first one is pretty much an artistic waste of time.
New movies which fell in the category of smaller release showed real promise this weekend. The critically acclaimed Atonement, which has already banked over $30 million in foreign markets, saw the inside of American theaters for the first time this weekend. It rolled in nearly a million dollars on just 32 screens for an impressive $25,000 per theater. Indie golden child Juno topped that with $60,000 per screen in just 7 theaters. Both movies will test the waters further with slightly wider releases next week.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE TOP TEN
December 7 - 9, 2007 |
LW = Last Week WR = Weeks Released
THTRS = Number of Screens
* Denotes new release.
Click on title to read CB Review |
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| 2. | Enchanted | $10,706,000 - Total: $83,865,000 | LW: 1 WR: 3 THTRS: 3520 |
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| 3. | This Christmas | $5,000,000 - Total: $42,760,000 | LW: 3 WR: 3 THTRS: 1879 |
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| 4. | Fred Claus | $4,660,000 - Total: $65,589,000 | LW: 6 WR: 5 THTRS: 3185 |
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| 5. | Beowulf | $4,400,000 - Total: $75,983,000 | LW: 2 WR: 4 THTRS: 2976 |
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| 7. | August Rush | $3,525,000 - Total: $25,148,000 | LW: 7 WR: 3 THTRS: 2310 |
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| 8. | Hitman | $3,475,000 - Total: $35,810,000 | LW: 4 WR: 3 THTRS: 2418 |
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| 9. | Awake | $3,301,000 - Total: $10,716,000 | LW: 5 WR: 2 THTRS: 2023 |
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| 10. | Bee Movie | $2,612,000 - Total: $121,028,000 | LW: 9 WR: 6 THTRS: 2707 |
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