Box Office Power Rankings: October 24-26, 2008
The theatrical success of High School Musical 3 begs a question: Was Disney too slow to capitalize on the success of the original, which drew an audience of nearly 14 million the first two nights it aired in January 2006? High School Musical 2, after all, got 17 million pairs of eyes with its American television premiere. Maybe it was about building the brand, but that seems like a lot of ticket cash foregone to me. With an average movie-ticket price approaching $7 (according to the National Association of Theatre Owners), the second sequel got about 6 million asses in seats in its opening weekend. Senior Year also topped this week’s Box Office Power Rankings by a wide margin, and it was the only release in the top 10 to be Rotten Tomatoes-approved “fresh.”
Oliver Stone’s W. didn’t win this week’s Box Office Power Rankings, but it did better in every measure than I expected: $10.5 million in box office (fourth place), $5,175 per theater (third), 55 on Rotten Tomatoes (fourth), 56 on Metacritic (fourth). Consistency can pay off, and all that led to a second-place overall finish, behind the just-ahead-in-every-category The Secret Life of Bees (third, first, second, third). It’s curious that the critical reception to W. has been so … bland. Nobody hated it, and only Roger Ebert gave it four stars.
Quarantine won this week’s Box Office Power Rankings, and my first thought was that, with Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores of 61 and 54, respectively, the horror flick would have done even better a few weeks ago. Sure enough, those scores would have secured an additional five points for Quarantine because of weaker competition. That got me thinking about dumping grounds – the conventional wisdom that early in the year and after the summer movie season, Hollywood drops its unwanted product on the market just to be rid of it. I decided to try to quantify the dumping ground.
In this campaign season, what can we learn from the performances of An American Carol and Religulous? The easy conclusion is that audiences aren’t real keen on such aggressively political material, with the two movies finishing ninth and 10th, respectively, in the weekend’s overall box office. The second easy conclusion is that conservatives are slightly hungrier for entertainment than people who don’t like religion. Neither is correct.
Late afternoon Tuesday, the Christian drama Fireproof had unofficially won this week’s Box Office Power Rankings, with a gross of almost $7 million and a per-theater average to make Eagle Eye sweat. By Wednesday morning, however, it was in fourth place. Call it the Curse of the Small Sample Size.
If you glance at the box-office top 10 this week, you might think that the supernatural romantic comedy Ghost Town was a bomb, finishing last among the four major new releases and eighth overall. But the movie’s title was almost a self-fulfilling prophecy, as Paramount/DreamWorks only exhibited it in 1,505 theatres – a sure sign the studio doesn’t believe in the movie.
Much has been 
Mamma Mia! isn’t a massive hit, but it has staying power. With $136 million in domestic receipts since its release on July 18, it’s at ninth place in the summer’s box-office race, yet it’s been a steady earner. This marks the movie’s eighth week in the box-office top 10 (and hence the Box Office Power Rankings), equal to Iron Man and The Dark Knight and one more than WALL•E, Kung Fu Panda, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. That’s pretty impressive however you cut it, but especially in the absence of a huge opening weekend.
If Tropic Thunder repeats as Box Office Power Rankings champion this weekend, it will match The Dark Knight with titles in four consecutive weeks. (Iron Man topped the charts for five straight weeks earlier this summer.) This points out one of the flaws of our system: Box Office Power Rankings have no sense of scale.
How badly has George Lucas damaged the Star Wars franchise? At Box Office Mojo, The Clone Wars’ revenues are being compared to Final Fantasy and TMNT – and after two weekends, 