Weekly Movie Post – Sept. 22, 09

If anyone is surprised that a super-hyped animated family movie took the top spot at the theatres this past weekend, they shouldn’t let you handle anything with an electrical current. According to box-office site, The Numbers. com, the safe bet Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs took the top spot with over $30.3 million in revenue. In fact, it was a solid weekend for new movies since they all fell within the top five spots; although some did not perform to expectations.

The new Steven Soderbergh movie starring Matt Damon movie, The Informant!, came in second at the box office with almost $10.5 million. September isn’t really known to be a huge month at the theatres and it’s not too surprising that there wasn’t two $30 million movies this weekend but people had higher expectations for this film. The big family movie helped slay this film since budgets are tighter and if some families are restricting themselves to one movie a week, it’s more likely to be one that the entire family can enjoy. The Informant! only took in a third of what Meatballs took in and less than half per theatre ($9716 vs $4177). The Informant! had good reviews so it’ll be interesting to see how it performs this upcoming weekend; although it opens against the new Bruce Willis movie, Surrogates, and the musical Fame.

Love Happens, the new Jennifer Aniston/Aaron Eckhart film did pretty poorly taking the fourth spot with an opening of $8 million. Although it was handicapped in that it opened in less than 3000 theatres. It actually took in more per theatre than The Informant!. This was Jennifer Aniston’s worst opening for a major studio film since Rock Star in 2001. Jennifer’s Body with Megan Fox took came in fifth with $6.8 million despite a huge advertising blitz. The film had the biggest decline from Friday to Sunday seeing it’s revenue drop by 50 %. It’s the season for creepy films so this movie might not stay in theatres for long.

As predicted on this site last week, I Can Do Badly All By Myself saw a decline of almost 60% from last week but it was still good enough to take third place with almost $9.9 million. The only other notable thing about last weekend’s chart is that Inglourious Basterds is still in the top ten after a month of release. The movie took in $3.8 million which is good for the seventh position. Don’t expect to see it in the top ten next week as it is most likely going to lose a sizeable amount of screens this coming weekend. All in all, it looks like the there’s going to be some good movies to choose from this weekend.

Movie Reviews This Week

Inglourious Basterds
(500) Days of Summer
Funny People
District 9
Adam

Theatrical Releases This Friday

The Boys are Back (Clive Owen)
Coco Before Chanel (Audrey Tautou)
Fame (Kelsey Grammer)
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (Jesse Bradford)
The Invention of Lying (Ricky Gervais, Jennifer Garner)
Pandorum (Dennis Quaid)
Surrogates (Bruce Willis)

DVD Releases Today

Easy Virtue (Jessica Biel, Colin Firth)
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner)
Observe and Report (Seth Rogen, Anna Faris)