Wall Street Tops Box Office In A Slow Pace of Action

Last weekend Michael Douglas and director Oliver Stone reteamed for the financial crisis drama Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and scored the best openings of their careers with $19M topping a sluggish box office that saw the top ten fail to break $90M for the fifth consecutive weekend. The PG-13 film marking the return of corporate raider Gordon Gekko (a role that won Douglas the Best Actor Oscar) averaged a decent $5,333 from 3,565 theaters for Fox. Stone's previous best opening was $18.7M for World Trade Center which bowed on a Wednesday in August 2006 while Douglas beat his previous high (in a lead role) of $17.1M for the kidnapping thriller Don't Say A Word which bowed this very weekend in 2001 when it led a box office resurgence just weeks after the 9/11 attacks. Word was also the last number one hit for Douglas.
Co-starring Shia LaBeouf, Carey Mulligan, and Josh Brolin, the Wall Street sequel was met with mixed reviews from film critics who didn't love it as much as the first one which opened in December 1987, just two months after the stock markets crashed. The new Gekko pic marked Fox's first number one opener of 2010, something the studio was waiting some time for. It did, however, top the first five weekends of the year with 2009's Avatar. Wall Street played to an older crowd with 65% of the audience being over 30 while males and females were evenly split. Formidable competition for review-reading adults came from last week's acclaimed champ The Town which held up quite well in its sophomore frame.
Warner Bros. landed in second place with the opening of its 3D adventure film Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole which bowed to $16.1M from a very wide 3,575 theaters. The PG-rated kidpic based on the popular book series averaged $4,507 per location which was not too strong considering the higher ticket prices at the more than 2,400 3D locations including 193 IMAX 3D sites. Reviews were mixed and starpower from the voices of Geoffrey Rush, Helen Mirren, and Sam Neill did little to excite families. Plus, how many owl movies soar at the box office?
The book series did not come with as large of a built-in fan base as other literary properties have had when making the move to the multiplexes. The Ga'Hoole launch amounted to about half of the bows from last fall's book-turned-kidpics Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Where the Wild Things Are which opened to $30.3M and $32.7M, respectively.
Strong word-of-mouth is helping Ben Affleck's bank robbery thriller The Town become that elusive type of film that all studios want - the durable box office winner with legs. The Warner Bros. hit suffered the smallest decline among all wide releases dipping only 35% to $15.6M in its second weekend for a solid ten-day score of $48.7M. That puts the Boston-set drama not far behind the pace of the studio's Martin Scorsese winner The Departed which dropped 29% in its sophomore outing with a $57M take in ten days. Town lags by just 15% in terms of gross sales. The critically acclaimed film also scored the weekend's best per-theater average among wide releases with $5,409 in its sophomore session edging out Wall Street and others. Affleck and company should easily be able to make off with $90M in the end and may even reach nine-digit territory.
The high school comedy Easy A followed in fourth with $10.6M dropping a respectable 40% in its sophomore frame. With $32.7M in ten days, the Sony release could be headed for $55-60M.
Opening one spot below was another female-driven comedy that mines high school for laughs - You Again. The PG-rated pic starring Kristen Bell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sigourney Weaver, and Betty White debuted with $8.4M from 2,548 locations for a mild $3,300 average. Despite the starpower, the Buena Vista release was affected by direct competition from Easy A which still pulled in a sizable number of young women. Even the male-driven dramas Wall Street and The Town have been seeing about half of their business come from females. Critics gave You Again unfavorable marks.
The M. Night Shyamalan production Devil fell 46% in its second weekend - not too bad for a horror film - and grossed $6.6M. After ten days, the Universal release has collected $21.9M and should finish with $32-35M.
Falling 51% in its third weekend was Sony's 3D zombie sequel Resident Evil: Afterlife with $5M for the frame and $52.1M total. International markets brought in an additional $24M boosting the overseas cume to an impressive $150.7M for a stellar global tally of $203M and counting. Afterlife is now the top-grossing Resident Evil pic both domestically and worldwide, thanks to higher 3D ticket prices and continued fan interest in the franchise.

#	Title	Sep 24 - 26				Weeks		Cumulative	Distributor
1	Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps	$ 19,011,188				1		$ 19,011,188	Fox
2	Legend of the Guardians	16,112,211				1		16,112,211	Warner Bros.
3	The Town	15,605,171				2		48,692,072	Warner Bros.
4	Easy A	10,600,497				2		32,714,215	Sony
5	You Again	8,407,513				1		8,407,513	Buena Vista
6	Devil	6,605,960				2		21,859,425	Universal
7	Resident Evil: Afterlife	4,954,791				3		52,073,588	Sony
8	Alpha and Omega	4,735,271				2		15,164,944	Lionsgate
9	Takers	1,622,302				5		54,885,175	Sony
10	Inception	1,247,006				11		287,053,292	Warner Bros.
11	The Other Guys	992,812				8		116,966,981	Sony
12	The American	896,382				4		34,607,381	Focus
13	Eat Pray Love	704,613				7		79,040,038	Sony
14	Machete	642,832				4		25,733,677	Fox
15	Despicable Me	582,585				12		245,514,665	Universal
16	The Expendables	564,081				7		102,070,047	Lionsgate
17	Catfish	452,580				2		811,280	Universal
18	Nanny McPhee Returns	394,275				6		28,226,225	Universal
19	The Last Exorcism	344,675				5		40,773,301	Lionsgate
20	Get Low	317,164				10		8,317,497	Sony Classics