“Cloverfield” Thaws January Record

It would appear that all the secretive, pre-theatrical release hype done by producer JJ Abrams and director Matt Reeves over their monster destroys New York film “Cloverfield” has paid off. The movie opened this weekend shattering all previous January box office records.

“Cloverfield” debuted with a $41 million dollar take from Friday through Sunday surpassing one-time record holder, the 1997 “Star Wars - Special Edition” release.

The Reeves/Abrams’ monster-fest was definitely targeting the young male demographic while the second place movie of the weekend, “27 Dresses” was shooting for the younger female moviegoer. It captured a little over $22 million in just three days.

“This is almost like a summer weekend,” said 20th Century Fox distribution executive Chris Aronson. “It’s almost a counter-programming move where you have two pictures aimed squarely, at least initially, at different audiences, and they both succeeded.”

Another thing that paid off for Abrams was featuring a relatively unknown cast of young actors and the use of hand-held cameras, something that is starting to catch on again since 1999’s “The Blair Witch Project.” A lot of Matt Damon’s successful film “The Bourne Ultimatum” was also shot using the newer, more sophisticated hand-helds that give the audience a feel for actually being their and seeing events from the eyes of the movie characters.

The rest of the estimated box office lineup for the Top Five films included only one other genre-related film — Cage’s “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” remained a top grosser at number 5.

We will have the final Top Ten weekend films for you later.