The good news is that Stomp the Yard was finally kicked out of the number one spot this weekend. The bad news is that it was replaced by Epic Movie. It's kind of like finding a cure for the common cold, only the cure is chicken pox.
2 out of the 6 idiots who made the Scary Movie franchise a mega-hit showed up to make Epic Movie a momentary box office champ. Number one is nice, but it doesn't mean quite so much when you're only making $19 million. Stomp the Yard meanwhile, was swept quickly down the chart to number 5. It may hang on another week, but two weeks from now don't be surprised if it's vanished from the top ten entirely.
Meanwhile, Night at the Museum simply refuses to run out of steam. Even though it's been out for seven weeks, Ben Stiller's family comedy was still the week's widest released film while landing spot number 3. Wedged between it and Epic Movie is Joe Carnahan's newly released shoot-em-upSmokin' Aces with a respectable $14 million.
Jennifer Garner and Kevin Smith's rom-com Catch and Release also arrived this weekend, and promptly flopped. Good reviews for Kevin Smith's performance weren't enough to compensate the bad reviews given to everything else attached to the movie. But at least Catch and Release made it into the top ten. The weekend's fourth new movie, Blood and Chocolate couldn't even manage that. It's out of sight (and soon to be out of mind) way down at #15. The werewolf romance movie only earned $2 million in 1,200 theaters.
Next week it's another batch of medicore early-year releases. Epic Movie has a shot at repeating as champ, but only because there's no real competition from films like The Messengers and Because I Said So.
Here's our full breakdown of this weekend's early box office estimates:
January 26-28, 2007
THTRS = Number of Screens
* Denotes new release.
Click on title to read CB Review
| 1. | Epic Movie * | $19,200,000 - Total: $19,200,000 | LW: N WR: 1 THTRS: 2801 |
| 2. | Smokin' Aces * | $14,262,000 - Total: $14,262,000 | LW: N WR: 1 THTRS: 2218 |
| 3. | Night at the Museum | $9,450,000 - Total: $216,738,000 | LW: 2 WR: 6 THTRS: 3241 |
| 4. | Catch and Release * | $8,000,000 - Total: $8,000,000 | LW: N WR: 1 THTRS: 1622 |
| 5. | Stomp The Yard | $7,800,000 - Total: $50,653,000 | LW: 1 WR: 3 THTRS: 2115 |
| 6. | Dreamgirls | $6,618,000 - Total: $86,651,000 | LW: 3 WR: 7 THTRS: 2785 |
| 7. | The Pursuit of Happyness | $5,000,000 - Total: $152,947,000 | LW: 5 WR: 7 THTRS: 2688 |
| 8. | Pan's Labyrinth | $4,505,000 - Total: $16,253,000 | LW: 7 WR: 5 THTRS: 823 |
| 9. | The Queen | $4,000,000 - Total: $41,241,000 | LW: 9 WR: 18 THTRS: 1830 |
| 10. | The Hitcher | $3,598,000 - Total: $13,398,000 | LW: 4 WR: 2 THTRS: 2836 |
