Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest continues to draw them in. This weekend the film filled Davy Jone’s chest with another $62 million making a total of over $258 million so far. Not too shabby for a crusty ole’ pirate’s tale.
Ving Rhames, Mena Suvari and Nick Cannon have signed on to “Day of the Dead,” a remake of the George Romero Classic horror film and cult favorite.
Superman Returns has broken all previous China box office records, garnering $4+ million in less than a week.
On the other end of the box office spectrum, the highly anticipated film adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s “A Scanner Darkly” has played to a nearly lights out crowd, taking in a paltry $1.2 million in its debut weekend. Despite the blockbuster cast of Keanu Reeves, Wynona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., and Woody Harrelson, the films dark premise simply couldn’t find a audience on its opening fare. That’s too bad because, not only is the premise a unique one, the filming style of this feature held out great imaginative promise as well. Perhaps it will see better success upon its eventual DVD release.
A Scanner Darkly was only in an indie theather near me. Given that, it had a decent crowd. Things like advertising and being in a mainstream theater might help.
Magess,
Looking at the box office totals, it only played in 216 theaters. The next closest on the list was “Nacho Libre” at 1,501 theaters. It’s no wonder it didn’t do well.
I have full intentions of seeing this movie, even if it does star “he-who-shall-not-be-named”. I haven’t read the original: I wonder if that will help or hurt.
I’ve been waiting for A Scanner Darkly to open here (the pit of cultural hell called Vegas), and it hasn’t shown up yet. Knowing this f***ed up town, it might show up at one theatre and play for a week. Whereas Pirates (is at EVERY multiplex on 90% of the screens, every half hour, twenty-four hours a day. (I want to see it too, but…damn.)
Me? Hey, I have no hate for KEANU. (Yeah, I said it.)
Especially after Something’s Gotta Give.
It was an absolute treat to see him in a romantic comedy after years of Neo (which I don’t mind) and Constantine and never smiling in a whole movie.
; )
Box office numbers on their own are useless. Its take per screen that really shows if a movie is popular (and even then, it should be percent of max seats).
Pirates pulling in another $64mil is nice, but its on a bazillion screens. It took in about $15K per screen.
Superman got about $3K
But Scanner took in almost $6K per screen, so it actually did better than Superman. I doubt it could pull those numbers in 3000 screens, but that’s not bad at all for the kind of publicity it got and nothing to shake a stick at.
It was also only on one screen here, in one of Calgary’s indie theatres.
Saw it opening night, and the theatre was about 1/3 full.
Not bad for a film with ZERO budget for promotion, hell it’s not even getting any guerella marketing. Unlike a certain soapy feature…
(I really hate being pedantic about this subject but: “Not to shabby” should be “Not too shabby”)
Great work on the reporting guys!
I just checked my local listings and found out that it’s only playing on one screen here in the St. Louis area, too. I’ve never been there before, but it looks like I’m going to have to, unless it there is a wider release next week. Anybody know if that’s suppose to happen?
I guess I’m going to have to step up my anal meter on the spelling of too. That’s my second hit this week on my baby finger not getting to that second o. 🙂