I may have walked out of ‘Resident Evil: Afterlife,’ but that doesn’t mean everybody did. It was the only major studio movie this weekend and it locked down 2,000 of the country’s 3,203 3-D screens. That’s more about math than any sort of groundswell of popular opinion. I’m betting that Sony went out of the way to get all those screens because the studio knew that this was going to be a one-weekend warrior, without much in the way of staying power. Although, with the largest opening for the franchise ever ($28 million domestically and performing well overseas), we probably haven’t seen the last ‘Resident Evil’ entry. The franchise will be as undead as the zombies that populate it.
The rest of the Top 10 is dullsville, daddy-o. ‘Takers‘ remains surprisingly strong. It secured the #2 spot with another $5.9 million. George Clooney’s internationally-flavored thriller ‘The American,’ which surprised many (including me) by landing atop the box office last weekend, slipped to third place (down 56%). That surprised no one. The movie, which I still haven’t seen, is supposed to be leisurely paced and lean on the action. Those aren’t exactly hallmarks of crowd-pleasing American entertainment.
The rest is pretty much what you’d expect. ‘Machete‘ is down to #4 with $4.2 million, while ‘Inception‘ still hangs tough in the Top 10 with another $2.9 million.
There are a couple of interesting movies in limited release, like ‘Catfish,’ a haunting is-it-really-a-documentary? that I’ll be reviewing this week if I can figure out if it was real or not; and ‘Never Let Me Go,’ the new Mark Romanek film based on the acclaimed novel by by Kazuo Ishiguro. (I’ll be seeing that tomorrow. Again: review forthcoming.)
Bottom line: there will be interesting things coming out – as long as you can hang on that long!
Top 10:
01 ‘Resident Evil: Afterlife’ (Sony) – $28 million
02 ‘Takers’ (Sony) – $5.9 million
03 ‘The American’ (Universal) – $5.8 million
04 ‘Machete’ (Fox) – $4.2 million
05 ‘Going the Distance’ (Warner Bros) – $3.8 million
06 ‘The Other Guys’ (Sony) – $3.7 million
07 ‘The Last Exorcism’ (Lionsgate) – $3.5 million
08 ‘The Expendables’ (Lionsgate) – $3.3 million
09 ‘Eat Pray Love’ (Sony) – $3 million
10 ‘Inception’ (Warner Bros) – $2.9 million
