After many straight weekends of disappointments at the domestic box office, Hollywood finally got to jump for joy again… well, at least Sony, which released both the #1 and #2 grossing movies, did. Those movies were the animated family comedy “Hotel Transylvania” and the high-concept sci-fi film “Looper,” which sold an estimated $43 million and $21.2 million worth of tickets, respectively. Provided Disney’s similarly targeted black-and-white 3-D gamble “Frankenweenie” doesn’t get in the way (it shouldn’t), the former film should play pretty well through Halloween, even though this critic loathed it and thinks that word-of-mouth will be subpar. The latter film, on the other hand, should generate spectacular word-of-mouth, as evidenced by James Frazier’s straight “A” review. “Hotel Transylvania” and “Looper” appear to be on their ways to $140 million and $55 million totals, respectively… Not too shabby.
Another big surprise was Universal’s musical-comedy “Pitch Perfect,” which scored sixth place and $5.2 million from a meager 335 theaters, in a special early release designed to generate word-of-mouth for next weekend’s wide launch. The studio couldn’t have hoped for any more than half that, so the unorthodox distribution pattern seems to already be working. $15 million next weekend isn’t out of the question; in fact, there’s even a small chance that the pic could do $20 million.
Check out the full top 10 chart below…
No. | Title | Weekend | Per Theater Average | Total |
1 | “Hotel Transylvania” | $43.0M | $12,840 | $43.0M |
1 | “Looper” | $21.2M | $7,086 | $21.2M |
3 | “End of Watch” | $8.0M | $2,878 | $26.2M |
4 | “Trouble with the Curve” | $7.5M | $2,344 | $23.7M |
5 | “House at the End of the Street” | $7.2M | $2,320 | $22.2M |
6 | “Pitch Perfect” | $5.2M | $15,522 | $5.2M |
7 | “Finding Nemo 3-D” | $4.1M | $1,541 | $36.5M |
8 | “Resident Evil: Retribution” | $3.0M | $1,260 | $38.7M |
9 | “The Master” | $2.7M | $3,207 | $9.6M |
10 | “Won’t Back Down” | $2.7M | $1,074 | $2.7M |
Source: Box Office Mojo