I Guess that Snowstorm Really did Hurt the Box Office

January 31, 2005

January ended on an amazing note, with most of the top five beating expectations. This led to huge increases of 26.4% from last weekend and 29.6% from last year. But there is some bad news. Firstly, last weekend the box office was pushed down because of the snowstorm and secondly, last year the box office was pushed down because of the Super Bowl. However, even taking those into account this was still a good weekend, and 2005 is off to a great start - up more than 12%, for an early $75 million lead on 2004.

Poor reviews couldn't prevent Hide & Seek from capturing top spot this weekend with $22.0 million. At 2.82, the internal multiplier is good for a suspense movie and suggests enough legs to pay for its entire production budget and a good chunk of its P&A budget as well.

The biggest proof that the weather caused the box office to slump last weekend was the performance of Are We There Yet? this weekend. The filmed suffered through just a 12% second weekend drop-off, landing at $16.4 million. The film probably lost about $3 million last weekend and added a similar amount this weekend. And even with normal drop-offs, from now on the film will still become a financial success.

Even though Million Dollar Baby beat box office expectations with $12.3 million, it still finished one place lower than expected. How well the film does for the rest of its run depends a lot on how many Oscars it can win, but even if it gets shut out, the film should earn enough to make a profit by the time the film hits the home market.

Better than expected holdovers helped Meet the Fockers and Coach Carter finish practically tied for fourth spot with $8.0 million each. That was just enough for Meet the Fockers to top The Incredibles for fourth place for the year and 29th place all-time.

There's no way to describe Alone in the Dark's performance in polite terms. Critically speaking, this film will most likely go down as the worst movie of the year, possibly one of the worst of all time. Financially, it isn't doing much better, as it opened with just $2.8 million, below almost all of the worse case scenario predictions. And even with better than expected legs, this film will go on to lose money.

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Filed under: Meet the Fockers, Million Dollar Baby, Coach Carter, Hide and Seek, Are We There Yet?, Alone in the Dark