“‘Saw VI’ is slashed by ‘Paranormal’ while ‘Cirque du Freak,’ ‘Astro Boy,’ ‘Amelia’ flop”
Via First Look at the LA Times:
It was a gory weekend at the box office for pretty much every movie except “Paranormal Activity.”
Paramount Pictures’ ultra-low-budget horror film more than doubled its nationwide theater count to 1,945 theaters and continues its winning ways, selling a studio-estimated $22 million worth of tickets in the U.S. and Canada.
Going into the weekend, Hollywood executives with access to pre-release polling had assumed that “Paranormal” would be in a tight race for №1 with “Saw VI,” the latest entry in Lionsgate’s bloody annual franchise. But “Saw VI” opened to the lowest number of any film in the series, grossing just $14.8 million. After the first “Saw,” which opened to $18.3 million, the next four sequels all started with more than $30 million.
Meanwhile bad news for other flicks most notably Amelia:
Fox Searchlight’s “Amelia,” which had a number of financiers including the studio and Gateway Inc. co-founder Ted Waitt and cost about $40 million to produce, opened to an anemic $4 million. The true-life tale of the pioneering female aviator, which starred Hillary Swank and was directed by Mira Nair, drew mostly negative reviews, which apparently hurt it with the intended audience of discriminating adults. Though “Amelia” played in fewer theaters than the other new movies, it’s unlikely to gross more than $10 million domestically and will certainly be a money loser for those involved.
Ouch. To put in perspective, those production vs. B.O. numbers are worse than for Ishtar ($30M cost v. $14M revenues), which came to be viewed as the paradigmatic “box office flop” — wrongfully so in my opinion.
Maybe Ameila takes over that unfortunate sobriquet.