America may have just celebrated Thanksgiving, but it’s likely that Disney bosses aren’t done giving thanks just yet. They’ll be down on their knees right now (steady) in front of Amy Adams and director Kevin Lima after their new flick, the beguiling comedy, Enchanted, took the top spot over the weekend.
The film, in which Adams plays a Disney cartoon princess magically transported to the real world, took $35 million over the 3-day weekend, and $50 million over the 5-day weekend to make it the clear winner this weekend. It’s one of the strongest openings for a non-Pixar Disney film in quite some time, and may finally see Adams break out as a bona fide star.
In second place came This Christmas, a comedy-drama about an African-American family’s first Christmas together in years. Boasting the best per-screen average in the Top 10 ($10,010), it raked in $18.6 million over three days and $27 million over five, giving Screen Gems an unexpected hit.
Other new entries over the weekend included Fox’s Hitman, based on the popular computer game series. The film represents Timothy Olyphant’s first real stab at a starring role, and it did pretty well, with a $13 million three-day take, and $21 million over five. Word of mouth is likely to hurt its long-term chances, but don’t be surprised to see a sequel at some point.
August Rush, a musical drama starring Freddie Highmore (go Freddie!) and Robin Williams, did ok, pulling in $9.4 million over three days and $13.3 million over the longer haul. It narrowly beat out Frank Darabont’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Mist, which scared up $9 million worth of business over the conventional weekend, and $13 million over five days.
We’ll be honest – we were hoping that Darabont’s movie would post a better result than that, but it’s still a decent take, and word of mouth should be good. And it means that Thanksgiving passed without even a hint of any turkeys, which is rare and unusual.
Holdovers are usually much stronger over weekends such as this, and sure enough the family-friendly likes of Bee Movie and Fred Claus barely dropped at all, with Bee Movie losing 14.3% of business to cruise over the $100 million mark. The Jerry Seinfeld animated comedy now has $112 million in the bank.
Fred Claus, written off by many as a hideous flop, dropped less than 10% for a $10 million three-day weekend. It now has $53 million after three weeks, and may end up with $70-80 million at this rate.
However, Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf didn’t fare that well. The epic action adventure, which really should be seen in 3D, dropped 41% from last weekend, for a $16.2 million three-dayer, and now has only $56 million after 10 days. It looks unlikely to break $100 million, and would become the first Zemeckis film to do so since 1992’s Death Becomes Her. Ouch.