A Teddy Bear Rules the Box Office as the Deck Starts to Clear

By Todd Allen

Sea change at the box office with weekend, with three new films catching on and some lingerers falling off.  Ted takes the prize and the Avengers exit the top 10, perhaps to cede the masked market for Amazing Spider-Man.

First a quick look at the top 10.

Ted, Magic Mike and the latest Medea picture all managed to get a nice audience in their debuts.  If Magic Mike was really only a $7M budget, Stephen Soderbergh is already finding dollar bills stuffed in the strangest places.  People Like us, on the other hand, barely beat out the Avengers — even with more screens.

Speaking of the Avengers, it only took 9 weeks to get it out of the top 10.  It lost another 473 screens, but was still averaging $2,399/screen.  Better than Men in Back 3 (which still has more screens).  Better than People Like Us.  Better than Snow White and Thor.  Better than Abe Lincoln’s axe-wielding escapades.  It’s starting to wind down a little bit, but the number of screens has a lot to do with that.  Avengers is at roughly $606.3M domestic.  Depending on how fast it continues to bleed screens, it will probably wind up in the $610M – $630M range.

Brave was down 48% and Madagascar 3 was down 40%, so the family fare seems to be holding up well.  Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter crashed 63% with a low per screen average, so I guess that one didn’t go over so well.  We’ll see if it hemorrhages next week like Rock of Ages and That’s My Boy did in their third weekend.

Amazing Spider-Man opens Tuesday on 4000+ screens, so a lot of films are going to get trimmed early this week.  With all the SF/F films about this summer, and Avengers lingering around, it’s pretty obvious what Spidey’s going to be judged against.  A July 3 release gives it free reign over the July 4 box office.  There weren’t any new action movies or SF/F targeted films this weekend.  We’ll see if there’s any genre fatigue as Spidey slips in before the highly anticipated Dark Knight Rises.  An advertising campaign to buy your advance Dark Knight tickets while Spidey’s run-up ads only serves to illustrate how tight this movie season is.

On Thursday, it’s joined by Katy Perry: Part of Me (which could split the teen audience) and the Oliver Stone’s Savages turns up next Friday, what looks to be a staggered release schedule of a week.