Weekend Box Office Commentary
Happy Feet and Casino Royale retained their top seats for the third weekend in a row, bringing their total earnings to $121 million and $116 million respectively, while Deja Vu remained in third place. The biggest opening was New Line's The Nativity Story, which took in an estimated $8 million, bringing it in at #4. Which surprises me a little bit. I didn't expect it to do Passion sized numbers, but I figured the Christians would turn out in force this weekend to see it. I guess I was wrong. I expect it will have great staying power over the holiday season though. It will probably end up as a slow burner.
The only other notable debuts were Fox Atomic's Hostel rip-off Turistas (apparently movies about tourists getting tortured with foriegn sounding titles are all the rage now) at #8, and National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, which debuted at #10 with a measley $2.2 million. Apparently the sequel no one asked for was also a sequel no one wanted to see. Why this wasn't a January release is beyond me. They give the direct-to-video worthy Taj a December release, a time usually reserved for prestige pics and Oscar hopefuls? It should have gone to the studio's dumping ground in January. But I don't think audiences would have noticed either way - check out its dismal 0% tomatometer rating on Rottentomatoes. Ouch.
Somewhere Ryan Reynolds is laughing.
The only other notable debuts were Fox Atomic's Hostel rip-off Turistas (apparently movies about tourists getting tortured with foriegn sounding titles are all the rage now) at #8, and National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, which debuted at #10 with a measley $2.2 million. Apparently the sequel no one asked for was also a sequel no one wanted to see. Why this wasn't a January release is beyond me. They give the direct-to-video worthy Taj a December release, a time usually reserved for prestige pics and Oscar hopefuls? It should have gone to the studio's dumping ground in January. But I don't think audiences would have noticed either way - check out its dismal 0% tomatometer rating on Rottentomatoes. Ouch.
Somewhere Ryan Reynolds is laughing.
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