film weekend screen total
1 Iron Man 2 $133,600,000 $30,502 $133,600,000
2 A Nightmare on Elm Street $9,170,000 (-72.1%) $2,752 $48,530,000
3 How to Train Your Dragon $6,760,000 (-36.3%) $2,251 $201,093,000
4 Date Night $5,300,000 (-30.1%) $1,939 $80,854,000
5 The Back-Up Plan $4,345,000 (-40.1%) $1,447 $29,415,000
6 Furry Vengeance $4,000,000 (-39.6%) $1,332 $11,621,000
7 Clash of the Titans $2,305,000 (-60.6%) $1,069 $157,808,000
8 Death at a Funeral $2,100,000 (-49.1%) $1,231 $38,323,000
9 The Losers $1,800,000 (-69.4%) $735 $21,450,000
10 Babies $1,575,000 $2,949 $1,575,000

This just in: celebrating the person you came out of.

There are two types of people who are disappointed with Iron Man 2’s opening weekend gross: assholes, and those that predicted it would be a barn-burning record-smasher. Though I could probably fall into either category, I was right about the opening all along in that I never thought it had a chance at doing The Dark Knight numbers: the cultural energy wasn’t there. There is surely someone who was on the film who would say “well, we’d have the record if we went 3-D” but that person is also likely an asshole. By Friday-Saturday-ish the film will be over $200, though it may need more momentum than it has to get to $400. This may not be super front-loaded, but doing 3x opening is not guaranteed. The bigger win for the title would be strong international numbers, but it ain’t there yet. The only griping to be doing is by people with unreasonable expectations, so there’s that.

A Nightmare on Elm Street can lay claim to not falling 80% after opening, which is what happened with the Friday the 13th remake. It only fell 72.1%, I think these films are opening weekend pictures now, that everyone knows what they are. The Crazies (which only dropped 56%) may have benefited in that regard from not as many people knowing the original. To quote a genius “you either want to see it or you don’t.” and I get the impression that you either want to see it as soon as possible (partly because it’ll mean a full house, which will add to the presentation), or not at all.

How to Train Your Dragon got over $200, and still has some life left in it, but it’ll be dead by Shrek, even if it still has a screen count. Date Night crossed $80, though there are two rom-coms next weekend. But it really isn’t until the beginning of June that they’ll be a number of theater cleaning titles, so Date Night may persist in the multiplex.

Babies didn’t leave much of an impression. Not like the opening Stevie Wonder’s Uptight (Everything’s Alright). That’s an opening. The summer season has started and I can’t wait to get excited about some summer movies – maybe it’ll happen in June.