Box Office Leaders

Surprise surprise! Or rather, there were no surprises last weekend with “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” reigning supreme at the box office.

With a five-day debut, the film saw a huge turn out from the very first day on Wednesday, earning $22.2 million by midnight of the same day and already hitting the critical $100 million mark by its third day on Friday. By the end of the five-day debut screening, the film already grossed $159.7 million. The worldwide figures are even more staggering with already $396.7 million under its belt during its short run.

There’s no magic involved, people’s anticipation each for each Potter film has been building, which probably accounts for the fact that this film has seen the fastest start out of any in the series so far. Despite the initial rush it looks like interest in the film is already starting to taper off.

May sure has been a pretty good month for the box office with big blockbusters debuting every weekend.

Early in the month, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” fired up the spring-summer blockbuster season with $87 million in ticket sales during its opening weekend. A pretty impressive feat considering that the film wasn’t shown in Imax screens, which surely would have further boosted its earnings.

The next weekend it was followed by the sci-fi blockbuster “Star Trek”, which paved new records for Trekkie films at a whopping $72.5 million in ticket sales. This film made more than twice the Start Trek film series record holder did!

“Angels and Demons” then edged “Star Trek” from the top spot earning $48 million on its opening weekend, which was pretty weak compared to the first two films’ debut showings. The real downer though was “Terminator Salvation”, which was expected to smash the weekend box office but was instead beat by the comedy “Night at the Museum”, which earned $53.5 million. Terminator did earn an respectable $43.0 million.

This weekend’s top spot went to Nicolas Cage’s sci-fi film, “Knowing”. The film made about $24.8m in ticket sales during its debut weekend. The movie, directed by “I Robot’s” Alex Proyas is about an astrophysicist (played by Cage) in a race against time to save the world, going by a code from a 1959 capsule that predicted what would happen.

The number 2 spot was claimed by the comedy film “I Love You, Man”, starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segel, whose bromance sure cracked up the moviegoers. The film made an estimated $18 million.

Third place went to “Duplicity” a spy-thriller starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen. Duplicity’s take home for the weekend was $14.4m. The last time Robert and Owen teamed-up was in the romantic drama “Closer”, where they starred alongside Natalie Portman and Jude Law.

“The Forbidden Kingdom” sure has runaway with the box office during their opening weekend with an estimated sales of nearly $21 million.

That “The Forbidden Kingdom” came out on top did not come as a surprise to anyone with the anticipation created by the mere fact that two martial arts legends, Jackie Chan and Jet Li, star in the movie.

Just a few days ago Steve Rothenberg, president of distribution at Lionsgate, was quoted to have said that they “will be very happy with a gross of $15 million or beyond, but tracking certainly indicates that we have a shot at doing in the high teens or better.” So I guess this makes them extra happy.

Coming in second at the weekend box office was another debut film “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”, which earned an estimated $17.3 million over the weekend.

The good ticket sales this weekend is drawing cheers in Hollywood, which has been waiting with baited breath due to the relatively low weekend box office showings so far this year.

“Vantage Point” topped the weekend box office with an estimated $24 million in ticket sales. It bumped “Jumper” from the number one spot, after earning only $12.7 million on its second week for a total 2-week run of $56.2 million so far (not bad!). A close third was the “Spiderwick Chronicles”, which earned $12.6 million.

I am quite sure that with sales as good as it is the “Vantage Point” producers are quite happy and have pounding hearts hoping for an equally good 2nd week. The movie, which is an action-drama about a presidential assassination, does deserve to be on the top of the box office for a few more weeks though. The (thankfully not literally, but almost literally) heart-stopping action keeps on replaying the same scene from a different person’s point of view, hence vantage point, revealing a new aspect of the plot in each repeated scene.