Whether it’s luck in picking popular projects or a certain star image that attracts audiences but once again a Nicolas Cage movie has topped the Box Office charts, taking home $45.5 million, a 30% improvement on the first NATIONAL TREASURE film and despite some bad reviews, it should see the franchise continue for at least one more movie.
It wasn’t quite the $57 million as estimated by the sequel’s huge Friday opening but overall numbers were down on Saturday and Sunday as people started to slow things down a bit and probably decided to do some last minute shopping as Christmas day approached.
By a whisker, the opening is Cage’s highest of all time… just beating out GHOST RIDER earlier this year.
Despite a big drop of 56%, Will Smith’s I AM LEGEND still took a massive $34.3 million and has now surpassed AMERICAN GANGSTER as the highest grossing movie in the last quarter of 2007. An impressive feat after just 10 days of release.
ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS remains popular in it’s third week, with an added $29 million to it’s already impressive and extremely suprising $89 million gross.
At four was CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR with a $9.62 million taking. Not quite the massive box office take that a Tom Hanks/Julia Roberts movie might have made a decade ago… but it’s subject matter here was never going to be one of mass appeal. Oscars and critical respect was more on the agenda here.
Just below the political satire was Tim Burton’s dark and gruseome take on SWEENEY TODD which made just around the same, despite playing on only half the venues of the above movie. A nice achievement for a movie on limited release and it could stick around for a while.
As expected Gerard Butler’s first post-300 movie P.S. I LOVE YOU was a big flop only generating $6.5 million and the big shocker of the week was how badly the Judd Apatow produced comedy WALK HARD fared. The musical parody tanked to a $4.1 million opening, WAY less than anything like KNOCKED UP and SUPERBAD and questions do have to be asked over the casting of John C. Reilly.
Overall box office up a massive $45 million on last year, and it should see studio’s take more of a risk in releasing big movies towards Christmas, despite the down time holiday period between Christmas/New Year.
| 1 | National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007) | $45.5M | $45.5M | |
| 2 | I Am Legend (2007) | $34.2M | $137M | |
| 3 | Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007) | $29M | $84.9M | |
| 4 | Charlie Wilson’s War (2007) | $9.62M | $9.62M | |
| 5 | Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) | $9.35M | $9.35M | |
| 6 | P.S. I Love You (2007) | $6.5M | $6.5M | |
| 7 | Enchanted (2007) | $4.15M | $98.4M | |
| 8 | Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) | $4.1M | $4.1M | |
| 9 | The Golden Compass (2007) | $3.98M | $48.4M | |
| 10 | Juno (2007) | $3.4M | $6.38M |
source – imdb, coming soon
2 Comments
I think the reason for the flop regarding “P.S I love you”, is because Gerard Butler isn’t that big of a star. He only really had “300″ that really got him well known by people…but to go from that directly to a REEEAAALLY sappy romance movie with none other than Hilary Swank…well, who IS going to see that?
Certainly not the “300″ fans. The majority of the audience members are probably couples ranging from young to elderly.
I’m not surprised ‘National Treasure’ is doing so well. It appeals to all ages. I’m afraid National treasure may outdo Sweeney Todd just because of this reason alone, even if Sweeney Todd is Tim Burton’s next masterpiece.
See? You can’t knock the Cage.