Saturday, December 19, 2009

The Rest of the Steeple Chase

Now with candy-coated Add Ons.

Atop the list, Avatar vacumes up a large number of box office greenbacks, but other animated features remain in the derby ...

The Princess and the Frog drops 50% (as a Disney mucky muck speculated it would) and drop to #2, collecting $3.4 million for a $36 million domestic accumulation .

The Blind Side (#3) scoops up $3.2 million for a $158 million domestic total.

And Christmas Carol loses momntum and stereo screens, sliding to #7 and a $951,000 take. Dickens's novella currently owns $128.3 million in box office receipts.

Add On:At the wire, Avatar collects $73,000,000, and #2 The Princess and the Frog drops 49.5% (the norm for most features in this week's Top Ten) to now stand at $44.8 million after two weekends.

Christmas Carol (#7) has taken in $130.4 million domestically, while Planet 51 (#15) has 38.5 million in the till and The Fantastic Mr. Fox (#17) owns $17.4 million.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you know what Disney was expecting Princss and the Frog to make? The blizzard on the east coast will probably slow down 2nd weekend momentum, and once the Squeakquel hits next weekend, it's all downhill from there.... Seems like a pretty disappointing take after all the hype; which sucks as I'm sure many were hoping for the return of traditional animation to make a bigger splash...

Rodger Perry said...

Damn storm has me stuck in a hotel right now. It normally takes me 2 hours to go between Richmond and D.C. today it took 4 hours to get to almost the halfway point when I was finally forced to seek shelter.

I think the storm will keep most of the East coast out of the theaters, but I still have faith the TPTF will be a sleeper and start to generate more popularity after the word spreads during the coming months.

Anonymous said...

Avatar was stunning!

r

Anonymous said...

I haven't seen the big budget Delgo yet. May go next week on Christmas break.

the storm has affected a 50 million person area so sales in general may be down for getting out. huge snow storm. I love an early winter.

Anonymous said...

At first glance, I thought Steve said, Atop the list, Avatar sucks....

Steve Hulett said...

Regarding TP&TF steep drop on weekend #2: I'm sure the east coast storm impacted box office.

It's also a good bet that Avatar is hurting the second picture in the marketplace. And yeah, Alvin and Co. will also damage returns.

I'm going to wait and see what the Sunday totals look like before I take to my bed. (And I've hcanged "suck" to "vacume" for clarity's sake.)

Anonymous said...

vacuum

Anonymous said...

$12.5 second weekend for TPATF. Ouch.

I hope this doesn't deter Disney from trying to release more traditionally animated films. That was the main reason I wanted this movie to do well - to keep 2D animation in business....

One thing I'm thinking is maybe they could drop the whole "princess" theme for some 2D animated films. I know quite a few parents of boys who say their sons had no interest of seeing a princess movie.

Anonymous said...

On the "princess" theme, I'll go one step further. I don't think girls go to see a "princess" movie either.

Somewhere along the way, people got "traditional fairytale" confused with "princess." Nobody went to see Snow White or Cinderella because they were "princesses." They went because these were traditional tales, well told.

Today, moron executives are so hellbent on making "princess" animated movies that they've even tried to contort and twist Pocahontas and Mulan into "princesses." This is all the height of stupidity. You don't see Pixar making "princess" movies.

Anonymous said...

You guys above talking about the "Princess" movies are both right.

Frog was sold on the prospect of its power to push doll and dress-up merchandise, which sells and sells when the actual film is long since out of theaters and off DVD front displays. The "princess" market has been a gigantic juggernaut for the WDC corporation, and the thinking imho on the CEO's part is that Disney Animation is obsolete save for making something to feed the princess doll market. it was a last-ditch effort to make Disney feature animation justify itself.

If it doesn't work this is Disney FA's future: look for nothing but sure-thing/merchandise-tiein projects like Pooh done on a boutique basis, all CG films to be made only by Pixar(what company needs TWO studios making the same product?), and you can bet NO risks or artistic excitement in Burbank.

Anonymous said...

In retrospect it might have been better to allow the DTV sequels to continue to feed the princess merchandise monster and make something other than princess movies as features....wouldn't Up as a 2D feature been a better return to 2D (as someone elsewhere suggested)?
IMO it would've been even better in 2D than in CG (not something you can say abouty many Pixar films)

If the only way for Lasseter to get a 2D feature made was to sell it as a tool for the princess juggarnaut then it sounds like 2D is doomed. How long before audiences give up on princess movies (again!) before the sales of dolls and crap no longer outweigh the costs to make these films?

Anonymous said...

Lasseter didn't especially want to make a 2D film-he hasn't been into that since his Calarts days.

Yes he loves "traditional" Disney animation-who doesn't? And sure, he was happy to get old pals John & Ron on board with a film the company wanted to sell dolls with. But he doesn't need to be the savior of 2D nor is he in a position to make those calls. That's up to Iger who is NOT a sentimental guy. And since it looks like the little girls are buying dolls based on a 70 year old film(Snow White) there probably are merchandising reasons to keep on making princess films. New little girls are born every day, remember.

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