| What It Is | Ya Money | Per Screen | Total | |
| 1 | Twilight | $70,553,000 | $20,636 | $70,553,000 |
| 2 | Quantum of Solace | $27,400,000 (-59.4%) | $7,924 | $109,483,000 |
| 3 | Bolt | $27,000,000 | $7,395 | $27,000,000 |
| 4 | Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa | $16,000,000 (-54.3%) | $3,993 | $137,447,000 |
| 5 | Role Models | $7,229,000 (-35.2%) | $2,645 | $48,037,000 |
| 6 | Changeling | $2,643,000 (-37.9%) | $1,520 | $31,613,000 |
| 7 | High School Musical 3: Senior Year | $2,006,000 (-64.5%) | $850 | $86,821,000 |
| 8 | Zack and Miri Make a Porno | $1,700,000 (-46.0%) | $1,393 | $29,350,000 |
| 9 | The Boy in the Striped Pajamas | $1,673,000 (+252.7%) | $4,121 | $2,653,000 |
| 10 | The Secret Life of Bees | $1,275,000 (-45.5%) | $1,164 | $35,649,000 |
This just in: My brother and his girlfriend from London, so let’s make this snappy.
Twilight opened to $35 on Friday, and managed to double that number. Supposedly $7 Million of that was from the Thursday Midnight shows. Which then makes the fact that it only doubled the Friday number a little more palatable. But it’s still front loaded. Doesn’t matter, the film cost $37 Million, and I’m sure the marketing budget was kept reasonable seeing as how it was a pre-sold phenomenon. It should safely cross into the nine digit region by the end of Thanksgiving weekend, if not before. The sequel was greenlit on Saturday officially, so I guess this is Summit’s License to Print Money.
Quantum of Solace dropped almost 60%. That’s not good, but it’s not disastrous – if it maintained Friday’s 68% off take the film would be seen a little differently, and could conceivably lead to more goofy Bond. Word of Mouth has been a bit mixed on the film, so there’s that, but dropping sixty isn’t the worst sign of things for the film. But it may work against the sequel, when we get that. It’s probably best to think of Solace as a strike movie, which makes it slightly better, but only just. I thought it and Bolt would be wrestling over their numbers, and it’s likely that by late Monday the four hundred thousand that separates the two will dissipate. Bolt may have lost some business to Twlight. And it’s also not a Pixar animated film. Bet it cleans up on home video. Also, if word of mouth is good, it could play easily into January as the next big kids film is Bedtime Stories come Christmas (Come Christmas, incidentally, is my favorite “holiday themed” porn, acing Chasey’s Easter Basket Trick. And yes, I do categorize all my faves under subgeneres.) It was able to hold off the other animated film Madagascar 2, and as long as it can hold up above – again – could creak to $100, which is a modest win.
Role Models is still playing strong, and $60 is all but guaranteed at this point. Elizabeth Banks in that movie looks at Elizabeth Banks in Zack and Miri Make a Porno and makes fun of her alternate self. Still, Z&M is poised to break the $30 Million glass ceiling that Kevin Smith has always had. Hooray for that for him.
The rest of the list are films that are still in theaters. Next week offers three wide releases, though the first week of December – as usual – is light on films (Punisher: War Zone is it). If Slumdog Millionaire is the crowd pleasing would-be Oscar challenger that it might be, once it hits a few more screens it’ll probably hang out in the bottom 5 area for the next couple months. On 32 screens it’s already at #11, so that shouldn’t be a problem.