May 26, 2012

Cloudy with a Chance of Box-Office Success

by Rebecca Pahle | Published September 21, 2009

Four of the top five films this past weekend were new releases, with the top spot going to family animated 3-D extravaganza Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, which earned $30.1 million. In the number two spot was Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant, which earned $10.5 million—less than half of Cloudy’s box office earnings, but considering Cloudy is about food falling from the sky and The Informant is about a whistleblower in the corn industry (a considerably less exciting-sounding topic), The Informant actually did fairly well for itself.

Coming in at number four and five were Love Happens and the much-anticipated Jennifer’s Body. The two films couldn’t beat out Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself, which came in at spot number three, despite the fact that Perry’s film is in its second week and saw a decline in earnings of more than 57 percent since it was in the number one spot last week. It looks like cannibal cheerleaders isn’t really a marketable movie subject after all. Sigh.

Other new films this past weekend were Jane Campion’s Bright Star, about poet John Keats, and Paris. Next week sees the release of Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis; The Invention of Lying, written and directed by Ricky Gervais and first-time director Matthew Robinson; Pandorum; and the musical re-tread Fame.