Horror sequels usually make money, but it’s rare to see a franchise’s third installment break the series opening record by $14 million, raking in a total of $54 million \u2013 $8 million of which came from Thursday night midnight showings.
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The ‘Paranormal Activity’ franchise is every studio’s dream. Each year, you make one movie for almost nothing. (The new installment, ‘Paranormal Activity 3<\/a>‘, is the most expensive so far on a production budget of only $5 million.) You don’t have to deal with demanding actors or directors, and the films gross huge numbers. Hell, you don’t even have to write a fresh new script. Tweak the concept a tad and you’re set. It’s like the ‘Hangover’ of horror movies \u2013 and this one just broke the record set by ‘Jackass 3-D’ for biggest October opening of all time.<\/p>\n With its cheap viral marketing campaign and a $15,000 budget (rumored to be around $4 million after Spielberg stuck his hand in it and changed the ending), the first ‘Paranormal Activity<\/a>‘ earned $19 million in the first weekend of its wide release. One year later, ‘Paranormal Activity 2<\/a>‘ debuted with $40.6 million. And now, another year later, ‘Paranormal Activity 3’ opens with $54 million. Compare that to the seven-film ‘Saw’ franchise and you’ll see a completely different trend. The ‘Saw’ respective openings were $18, $31, $33, $31, $30, $14 and $22 million. The third was installment was also the best ‘Saw’ opener, but still $21 million shy of what ‘Paranormal Activity’ has done.<\/p>\n Summit Entertainment is still using the shotgun method of finding its niche. The studio’s newest film is a swashbuckler mixed with fantasy and cheese. ‘The Three Musketeers<\/strong>‘ opened in fourth place with $8.8 million. This is a new low for campy action director Paul W.S. Anderson, his worst since the 1998 Kurt Russell sci-fi flick ‘Soldier’. His two ‘Resident Evil’ movies, ‘Death Race’ and ‘Alien vs. Predator’ all opened bigger than ‘The Three Musketeers’. Even his 1997 ‘Event Horizon’ had a better opening \u2013 and that’s not taking into account inflation and the jacked-up 3D ticket prices for ‘The Three Musketeers’.<\/p>\n Despite killing it overseas, ‘Johnny English Reborn<\/a>‘ opened in eighth place with $3.8 million here. That’s less than half as much as 2003’s original ‘Johnny English’. The first film opened with $9.1 million, but it looks like the Americans who fell for it the first time weren’t about to make that same mistake with ‘Reborn’.<\/p>\n Barely advertised ‘The Mighty Macs<\/strong>‘ opened just off the charts with $1 million from 975 locations. Perhaps the blame for this could be placed on a lack of marketing, the clich\u00e9d plot or the 46% Rotten Tomatoes<\/em> score<\/a>. Only one movie in the Top 10 has a lower per-screen average than ‘The Mighty Macs’: ‘The Thing<\/a>‘.<\/p>\n With its 56-screen limited opening, ‘Margin Call<\/strong>‘ was able to pull in $582,000. But the real limited release winners this weekend were ‘Martha Marcy May Marlene<\/strong>‘ and ‘Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey<\/strong>‘. On four screens, ‘Martha’ grossed $138,000 (that’s a $34,500 per-screen average), and on just one screen, ‘Being Elmo’ earned $25,000. So far, ‘The Catechism Cataclysm<\/strong>‘ isn’t on the chart, so we’ll have to wait until the final numbers are in this afternoon to see where it lies \u2013 which is never a good omen.<\/p>\n 1. ‘Paranormal Activity 3’ (Paramount) – $54,020,000<\/p>\n 2. ‘Real Steel’ (Buena Vista) – $11,319,000<\/p>\n 3. ‘Footloose’ (Paramount) – $10,850,000<\/p>\n 4. ‘The Three Musketeers’ (Summit) – $8,800,000<\/p>\n 5. ‘The Ides of March’ (Sony) – $4,900,000<\/p>\n 6. ‘Dolphin Tale’ (Warner Bros.) – $4,200,000<\/p>\n 7. ‘Moneyball’ (Sony) – $4,050,000<\/p>\n 8. ‘Johnny English Reborn’ (Universal) – $3,800,000<\/p>\n 9. ‘The Thing’ (Universal) – $3,115,000<\/p>\n 10. ’50\/50′ (Summit) – $2,800,000<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Horror sequels usually make money, but it’s rare to see a franchise’s third installment break the series opening record by $14 million, raking in a total of $54 million \u2013 $8 million of which came from Thursday night midnight showings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":24302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[743],"tags":[3973,178,3894,3971,3972,3970,1253,1525,1252,2000,3293],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23309"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23309"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24304,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23309\/revisions\/24304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Top 10:<\/h5>\n