Some of you might be concerned that the gross for the second weekend was only 10% higher than the first weekend despite the fact the second featured the intrepid Kazakh reporter on 3 times as many screens.  But fear not.  This is due in part to two things: 1) All of the hardcore fans already went to the theaters in the first week to see the film…again and again I might add.  2) And most importantly: The Top Grossing 900 theaters in this country, generally account for nearly 90% of a movie’s overall box office. What this means is that every time you read of a movie opening wide on 2,000, 3,000, or even 4,000 screens, the studios are effectively wasting millions of dollars on the creation of film prints, for a fraction of the box office take.  Theaters ranked 1,000 and higher are for the most part playing the biggest hits in front of a dozen or so people, even for the Friday, 7:30pm showing.  So why do they do it? Several reasons…including ego.  Also, spreading the awareness of a film through every corner of this vast country helps with the eventual home video rental and DVD sales.  Moreover, studios are in the business of squeezing every last dollar out of a picture so they can negotiate more favorable deals when it comes to such ancillary markets as Foreign DVD sales, and Foreign Pay Cable sales, and Foreign Broadcast Television sales.  For example, did you happen to notice how Warner Bros. kept Superman Returns in theaters until it crossed the $200 million plateau?  It took 17 weeks of underperforming to do so, and no doubt it actually COST the studio money to keep it in theaters just so they can say they crossed the $200 million threshold…but they attained the elusive mark for promotion purposes, despite the fact this movie’s performance is a disappointment and it will be a long, long time before anybody sees a profit on it. 

Please forgive the digression…now back to the Weekend Round-Up:

The Santa Clause 3 and Flushed Away will be battling it out for second place with estimates floating in the $16.8 million range.  If you own one of these films in Moguls, this is where you are hoping that the studio that released your film is willing to fudge their numbers a bit so you can obtain that extra Top 5 point. (In far too many leagues, I own Flushed Away, so I am in favor of Disney maintaining their honor and reporting the performance of Santa Clause accurately, leaving room for Dreamworks/Paramount to take a few liberties so the film on my slate can earn second place!).

Stranger Than Fiction earns a respectable $14 million according to the pundits, but for Moguls it’s a bit of a disappointment considering how high it was probably drafted. Sure, it’s very clear this is a different type of movie than Talladega Nights, but Sony sold it as a Will Farrell comedy as best they could (perhaps even a bit misleadingly), and the 14 year old boys still stayed away.

As we warned you throughout this site, The Return bombed, finishing in 8th, three spots below Saw 3 in its third weekend, with an estimate of less than $5 million.  But even worse, The Good Year barely made the Top 10 with less than $4 million in receipts.  The lesson, as always, if you’re selling to the Over-25 Female quadrant, don’t put a misogynistic, aggressive, abusive, known philanderer in the starring role.

On the PTA front, Almodovar continues his PTA-winning ways with Volver earning more than approximately $170,000 on only 5 screens.  While this translates into an average of $34,000 or so, because we weight it in the Moguls game and require a minimum of 10 screens, its average for our purposes is $17,000. (The Sunday numbers are not official and these numbers will be adjusted accordingly on Monday when the final numbers are released).  Either way, Volver is sure to finish the weekend at the top of the PTA rankings.  Borat will continue its 4-category dominance with a second place finish in PTA, to go along with 2 first place finishes in Top 5, stellar reviews and nearly $70 million in Box Office to date.  The Queen looks to take 3rd place in PTA and there will be a battle for the last two spots between The Santa Clause 3, Flushed Away and Babel…but the final numbers will determine those awarded the points.

Lastly, for those that thought Nicole Kidman playing photographer Diane Arbus in the artsy fartsy Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus would be a recipe for Prestige (Review and PTA), you would be sadly mistaken.  The results this weekend scream ‘bomb’ with a Moguls-weighted PTA of $3000 and a stunningly low imdb.com review of 5.5.

Howard Roark’s turn-ons include long walks on the beach, sunsets, and warm embraces.  His turn-offs include pushy people and non-synchronic, cross-market capitalization of fiduciary liability.  If you care to share yours with him, he can be reached at Howard@fantasymoguls.com.