Jan 11 2009
Movie Audiences Make “Gran Torino’s” Day
Gran Torino opened big at the box office this weekend, finishing comfortably ahead of its competitors. Here, Clint Eastwood attends the movie premiere late last year. (picture courtesy of AFP/Getty Images File/Alberto E. Rodriguez)
He may not have had any major Golden Globe nominations this weekend, but Clint Eastwood’s latest double-duty outing (as actor and director) had little competition at the box office, giving the legendary star the biggest opening of his career.
Gran Torino- a tale of a grumpy, unhappy man and Hmong immigrants- earned an estimated $29 million from 2,808 U.S. and Canadian theaters, fending off challenges from the Anne Hathaway-Kate Hudson chick flick Bride Wars and horror entry The Unborn.
Like previous Eastwood films The Bucket List and Million Dollar Baby, Torino enjoyed several weeks of limited engagements before opening wide. The film also has fared well critically, with an average score of 72 (based on 33 reviews) at www.metacritic.com.
Bride Wars pulled in an estimated $21.5 million from 3,226 theaters, while The Unborngrossed an estimated $21.1 million from 2,357 multiplexes. Both flicks have fared miserably with critics, with Metacritic averages of 25 and 31, respectively.
Two-weekend champ Marley & Medropped to No. 4, with an estimated $11.4 million, bringing its cume to nearly $124 million. Jennifer Aniston’s ex- Brad Pitt- was next in line with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which dropped to an estimated $9.5 million, for a to-date tally of roughly $94.3 million.
Opening in ninth place was Not Easily Broken, which despite opening in just 724 theaters, earned an estimated $5.6 million. Like Bride Wars, women comprised most of the audience, and also didn’t score all that well with critics, averaging a 42 at the Metacritic site.
Several bankable-male holiday-release vehicles continued to tumble. Adam Sandler’s Bedtime Stories will become another $100 million-plus hit for the comedian, though it tumbled another 58% to an estimated $8.6 million. Tom Cruise’s Valkyrie dipped roughly 53 percent to $6.7 million (and $71.5 million to date), while Jim Carrey’s Yes, Man was right behind with an estimated $6.2 million (roughly $89.4 million cume).
However, the most disappointing bankable-male release this season undoubtedly is Will Smith’s Seven Pounds. Down another 61 percent or so, the film has grossed nearly $67 million to date- rather lackluster for the man whose last eight films each earned more than $100 million at the domestic box office.
Meanwhile, Slumdog Millionaire- which won each of the four categories it was up for at the Golden Globe Awards (including Best Picture- Drama)- dipped just 21 percent to an estimated $3.7 million ($34.1 million to date).
Two films whose actors won Globe prizes remain in limited release- Best Actress winner Kate Winslet’s Revolutionary Road pulled in an estimated $1.4 million from 135 theaters ($3.2 million to date), while Best Actor winner Mickey Rourke’s The Wrestler collected $864,000 from play at 60 locations. Incidentally, Winslet also picked up the Best Supporting Actress tropy for The Reader, yet another film that continues to play in lesser release (it grossed an estimated $1.35 million from 507 theaters over the weekend, bringing its cume to $5.5 million).
Aside from box office grosses, the biggest buzz in the movie biz is next week’s announcement of Oscar nominees. Will The Dark Knight emerge as a best Picture contender? As widely expected, the late Heath Ledger won Best Supporting Actor at the Globes- and Oscar likely will follow suit. The film- which was shut out of the Best Picture race at the Globes- is as deserving of a nomination as Ledger was.
But, if for some reason Knight falls short of an Oscar nomination, it and everyone involved always can find comfort in the film’s $531 million-plus box office haul.
Take that, Slumdog Millionaire.
(CORRECTION: In a post from last week- http://entertainmentdissected.today.com/2009/01/07/it-may-not-be-soap-strong-but-benson-still-worth-a-look/- I wrote that Soap had been nominated for the Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy each of its four seasons; it actually was not nominated fo the prize in its second season).
