WASHINGTON, December 26, 2011 — For many department stores, today marks a kind of “Black Monday” as staffers gear up for the inevitable onslaught of Christmas gift returns. But for Hollywood, the entire month of December 2011 has been a kind of black hole into which year-end releases fall while rapidly losing escape velocity.
Aside from the Tom Cruise thriller, “Mission Impossible—Ghost Protocol,” which topped this weekend’s box office numbers at the number 1 spot with $26.5M in domestic receipts (first-weekend full release), most of the remaining holiday-release films on the docket failed to win much traction. (UPDATE: Today, Reuters updated figures for the four-day weekend MI take to an even more impressive $46.2M.)
The Cruise action flick gained a near-perfect score from the online reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes where it's described as “Stylish, fast-paced, and loaded with gripping set pieces,” further noting that it is “big-budget popcorn entertainment that really works.”
Here’s how the remaining flicks fared, according to early (Sunday) film industry weekend estimates:
In second place was the Robert Downey, Jr.-paced detective sequel, "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows." In its second week of release, it hit $17.8 million in domestic receipts.
Rounding out the top three, "Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked," grabbed $13.3 million, here, a disappointment. International receipts, however, totaled some $20.1 million, which must be some consolation.
Coming in at a disappointing number four was the much-touted ultra-dark thriller, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," which pulled in a paltry $13 million, even after a saturation promo campaign on U.S. TV over the past week. A surprisingly clean remake of a Swedish original which took Europe by storm, “Girl’s” box office opening weekend here would seem to confirm, right or wrong, this country’s continuing disdain for any film with a foreign stamp on it.
At number five, Stephen Spielberg’s "The Adventures of Tintin"—which chronicles the adventures of a young, globetrotting reporter—totaled about $9.1M this weekend, genuinely disappointing if you consider its take during its initial European release: approximately $250M. Again, though, Tintin is a beloved European comic book figure whose not-so-secret origins don’t involve either Metropolis or Gotham City. (For our observations on Not Made in the USA, see above. For a nifty Tintin trailer, illustrating stop-action animation,see the trailer below.)
Nonetheless, in 3-D stop-action animation, the filmic “Tintin” is not necessarily worth the thumbs-down it got at the domestic box this weekend. Local Tintin fan and online film critic “Cinema Siren” (aka, Leslie Combermale), gives this flick a nice thumbs up, along with a bit of French language instruction.
“All in all,” she writes in Woodbridge Patch, “after a few dodgy minutes at the beginning, Cinema Siren, a true fan of the world of Tintin (the ‘I’ is pronounced like 'ham' not 'pin,' second 'n' is silent) settled in to find it a very exciting and fun ride. It is highly recommended and absolutely great for kids, since the character is so engaged with life and has such a strong moral compass.”
Weighing in at number six was the Matt Damon vehicle, "We Bought a Zoo," coming in at $7.8 million domestically while grabbing $1.1M in international release. You’d think the film would have pulled in a larger audience, given the-always welcome presence of Scarlett Johanssen as Damon’s co-star as well as its eco-friendly (and true life) plot in which Damon’s character purchases and saves a struggling zoo. Maybe “heartwarming” was just not a popular theme after the miserable 2011 we’ve just endured.
Rounding out the bottom four: “New Year’s Eve,” taking in an estimated $3M in spite of being headlined by the irresistible Halle Berry, whose career appears to be tanking with inexplicable speed; “Arthur Christmas,” a well-rated holiday flick, only took in $2.7M on U.S. screens; Martin Scorsese’s visually spectacular yet dark family flick “Hugo,” fading fast after a good open last month and taking in $2.3M this weekend; and “The Muppets” movie, whose puppets are starring in their own film for the first time in many years, took in just $2M, although their box office receipts over the last few weeks have remained respectable.
In an AP report (latest version here) commenting on this year’s disappointing holiday release period, Hollywood.com’s Paul Dergarabedian is inclined to write this year off. "Thank God 2011 is almost over, because we've had a real rough run here at the end of the year," he’s quoted as saying. "We always count on the holiday season to give us a big boost at the end of the year, and it just didn't happen. "These admission numbers this year just tell me that we maybe have to set our sights a little lower in terms of attendance every year."
A better idea: slicing ticket prices, now so sky high—particularly for 3-D releases—that more and more film fans are doing what this reviewer does: wait for FiOS to run the films or rent them when they go DVD. In this kind of economy, frills like films are getting cut first, and Hollywood needs to recognize that the gravy train they’ve grown used to may no longer be on schedule.
(Note: All figures will be revised later today, taking into account estimates for today’s receipts, part of the 4-day holiday weekend total. Rankings could change when the Christmas Day debuts of the much touted film “The War Horse” and the Sandra Bullock 9/11 thriller “The Darkest Hour.” For details, check out Hollywood.com.)
Read more of Terry's news and reviews at Curtain Up! in the Entertain Us neighborhood of theWashington Times Communities. For Terry's investing insights, visit his WT Communitiescolumn,The Prudent Man in Politics.
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