Box Office: Holiday Doesn’t Hurt “Locker”; “Moon” Flies In Expansion
by Peter Knegt (July 5, 2009)
A scene from Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker." Image courtesy of Summit Entertainment.
With fairly few specialty newcomers finding their way to theaters this holiday weekend, Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” had no trouble hanging on to its place at the top of the iW BOT. The Iraq War thriller - likely riding its Oscar-buzz worthy reviews - expanded from 4 to 9 screens this weekend, and found a $126,000 three-day gross. While its $14,000 per-theater-average is less than half its near 2009 high opening, it remained the highest average of any film - “Transformers” and “Ice Age” included - currently in theaters. This comes after some fantastic mid-week numbers, where it grossed $20-30,000 a day, often placing it in the overall top twenty despite being in just a tiny fraction of its competitors’ screens. The film’s true test comes next weekend, where it leaves the specialty safety net that can be New York and Los Angeles for smaller markets, 17 of them to be exact. As of Sunday, the Summit Entertainment release’s total stood at $365,000. “Locker”‘s closest PTA competition came care of some fantastic fourth-week numbers from Duncan Jones’ “Moon.” The film went from 21 to 47 screens and actually saw its average rise from $5,933 to $6,383. Its $300,000 gross put the Sony Pictures Classic sci-fi drama just short of the million mark at $983,000. Crossing that mark (and the $2 million mark) this weekend weekend was the third weekend of another Sony Classics’ release - Woody Allen’s “Whatever Works.” The film had a aggressive expansion from 35 to 355 screens, and totaled $1,067,000 over the three-day weekend, bringing its total to $2,017,000. Though that’s still a far cry from “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”‘s $23,216,709, “Works” has already outgrossed last year’s lesser known Woody output, “Cassandra’s Dream,” and should overtake the $3 million range grosses of “Melinda and Melinda” and “Anything Else” by next weekend.
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Moon is just a brilliant film, truly moving and in all ways the ideal indie sci-fi film. Why this thing is only pulling $6,000 a screen is a mystery to me. It’s really a tragedy, that such a well executed film is languishing in the art houses. Why can’t Sony give this film a little juice? Would it kill them to advertise the thing? Or manage the reviews a little better? Next time they release a sci-fi film they should make sure that the reviewers the give early access to have actually seen sci-fi before.