From the Box Office: Sept. 14 – Sept. 16

It was another disappointing box office weekend for Hollywood, the second-worst weekend of the year.

The two new major releases, Sony’s “Resident Evil: Retribution” and Disney’s re-release of “Finding Nemo” in 3D simply did not live up to expectations. The main bright spots this weekend, however, came from limited release films “Arbitrage” and “The Master,” which wowed audiences and scored impressive debuts.

The fifth “Resident Evil” was this weekend’s leader at the box office, taking in $21.05 million from 3,012 locations, lower than the last “Resident Evil” movie, which took in $26.7 million. The disappointing figures can be attributed to both the slow marketplace and the film’s terrible ratings, which consisted of a “C+” rating on CinemaScore and 30 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. While the film cost an estimated $65 million to produce, Sony hopes the film will explode overseas and follow the footsteps of the last film, which earned a whopping $236 million overseas and had a production budget of $60 million.

Coming in at second place was Disney’s re-release of “Finding Nemo” in 3D, which earned a decent $16.7 million. While impressive for a nine-year-old re-issue, it is less than Disney’s re-release of “The Lion King” in 3D, which opened at $30 million this weekend last year. The good news is that this re-release moves the film up the global chart, and will eventually push it past the $900 million mark and beyond. It is currently at $892 million worldwide.

The biggest news from this weekend’s box office came from Paul Thomas Anderson’s limited release film, “The Master,” which earned an astonishing $736,311 from just five theaters. That’s a per-screen average of $147,262, which is the highest average ever for a live-action movie. The Weinstein Company plans to move to more than 600 locations on Friday, which is atypical for most buzz-worthy art-house movies that gradually platform. Yet given the immediate success of this weekend’s debut, the film should continue reaping the benefits on a wider scale.

The second limited release film that saw success this weekend at the box office was Roadside Attractions’ film, “Arbitrage,” which collected just over $2 million from 197 locations, which is an average of $10,163 per theater. It is worth noting that the film debuted in limited release in both theaters and on video-on-demand platforms, which reveals that VOD can become a viable release platform.

– Compiled by Ian Tecklin, contributing writer, ijteckli@syr.edu

Published on September 20, 2012 at 8:47 pm