So this weekend (October 1-3) at the box office not really a big improvement from last week. "The Social Network" came in at the number one spot and brought in around $23 million. "Legend of the Guardians" took the number two spot, bringing in $10,855,000 beating "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" by a whopping $755,000, big deal. "The Town" and "Easy A" both stayed put in the fourth and fifth place, with $10 million and the latter film bringing in $7 million. Two horror movies that were released this weekend, both were huge disappointments. "Case 39" and "Let Me In" both failed to attract a mass audience with "Case 39" coming in sixth place with $5.5 million and "Let Me In" coming in 7Th with $5.3 million. "Case 39" was panned by critics and "Let Me In" was actually met with favorable reviews. In 9Th and and 10Th place were the very forgettable "Devil" and "Alpha and Omega" with box office figures that I don't really care about reciting. "Resident Evil" got knocked out of the top ten list bringing in around $2.8 million and "Inception" only raked in $870,000 and for the first time, was not in the top ten either. When a movie doesn't clear $1 million at the box office it's time to pack up the bags and start thinking about the Red Box. But Christopher Nolan doesn't have anything to be ashamed of. "Inception" opened with $62.7 million and world wide raked in over $774 million, and since Mr. Nolan was snubbed an Oscar nomination for "The Dark Knight" it doesn't take a rocket scientist to determine who is getting a nomination this year.
So why was it kind of disappointing at the box office? Well, first the top five movies combined made almost $10 million less than last week's top five. "The Social Network" which is probably one of the most anticipated movies of the year, only raked in $23 million. Audience surveys showed that it was nearly a split ratio of men and women and most people liked what they saw. Alot of people are talking about "The Social Network" being a top contender at the Oscars next year. I don't know, I thought it was a really good movie and I think that it has enough of what I call "social relevance", but I think it's too soon to make that type of assumption just yet. Anytime a movie's subject matter relates to any type of current issue in society, you can pretty much give it the Oscar. "There Will Be Blood", "Slum Dog Millionaire" and "The Hurt Locker" all kind of support my theory in some ways. There are a number of things that you have to consider when you think about a movie winning the Best Picture or Best Director award. Box office performance and the reputation of the producers and director can have a great influence on whether the movie will win or not. David Fincher was nominated for Best Director for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" so he does that in his favor, but if you want my opinion, at this point in the year I think Christopher Nolan is the top contender for either award. But December is the time when alot of the other contenders for the Oscars really start to show their faces so, I guess we will just have to wait and see.
So far "The Social Network" raked in about $23 million, so if the producers of this movie are rooting for a Best Picture nomination then they are really going to have to step up their game with marketing to attract more people to see it. I think that it should have been distributed in limited release during its opening weekend, to see how attendance would be, then eventually open it in wide release. It's better for box office revenue to be consistent as opposed to kind of just slowly tapering off when a movie does not make the kind of money that producers had originally anticipated; Especially if you are a producer looking for an Oscar nomination. At the same time, audiences might get interested later and start seeing "The Social Network" keeping the revenue flowing, but October is obviously the month when horror movies peak at the box office, so it could go either way for "The Social Network"
A movie can do average or poorly at the box office and still win the Oscar, look at "The Hurt Locker" last year and "Crash" in 2005. But both of those movies were kind of the under dog and had what I also like to call the "circumstantial win". If "The Hurt Locker" was not directed by Katherine Bigelow and if "Crash" didn't have a production budget of $6.5 million then I don't think either would have even been nominated. But you know what they say "The Oscar loves a come back." look at who won the Best Actress award last year.
So in summary, "The Social Network" did not take in the figures that alot of people expected and "Case 39" and "Let Me In" were total let downs at the box office. Let's wait to see what happens with "The Social Network" over the next couple weeks before we start spitting out Oscar possibilities and Wes Craven's new movie "My Soul To Take" comes out this Friday. Yeah! Wes is usually pretty good about getting people to come out to the movies so hopefully he can work his magic. Hopefully.
