Box Office Report: 'Four Christmases' jingles all the way to the bank
Dec 1, 2008, 09:45 AM | by Joshua Rich
Categories: Box Office
The long, always competitive Thanksgiving weekend is over, and Four Christmases has decked the halls with a big box office victory, easily outpacing Twilight, Australia, and all the rest of the movies at the multiplex along the way.
Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon's comedy won the robust weekend with a much-better-than-expected $46.7 mil from Wednesday through Sunday, according to early estimates. That makes it the third-best Thanksgiving weekend opener ever, after Toy Story 2 ($80.1 mil) and last year's Enchanted ($49.1 mil). The film also grossed a hefty $31.7 mil over the traditional three-day weekend (and fair warning, I'm going to be giving both five-day and three-day totals in this report, so get focused -- you know, drink some coffee before reading on, or something). That's Vaughn's top premiere sum since The Break-Up's $39.2 mil two and a half years ago, and Witherspoon's best bow since Sweet Home Alabama's $35.6 mil more than six years back.
Credit a somewhat older, female audience that gave the movie a so-so CinemaScore grade of B. But, as I have said before, all of those statistics don't matter much when you consider one important fact: With the word "Christmas" in the title, this film is sure to hang on well into the yuletide season.
Twilight (No. 2) was next in the five-day rankings, with $39.5 mil, although its three-day weekend total was a more disappointing $26.4 mil, a steep 62 percent drop from its huge debut a week ago. Still, the Stephenie Meyer saga continues to draw in teen girls, and it crossed the $100 mil mark in just eight days (its domestic haul is $119.7 mil), so there's still plenty of good news there.
Third place over the long weekend went to Bolt, which grossed $36 mil from Wednesday through Sunday, and $26.6 mil in the three-day frame (sure enough, that's more than Twilight banked in the same period). Thus, Disney's animated feature enjoyed a rare thing in box office land: A week-to-week gain. Bolt was up 1 percent from its debut sum of $26.2 mil last time around. So, yeah, get accustomed to seeing this film in your local movie listings for weeks to come.
Quantum of Solace (No. 4) held strong with $28.1 mil over five days and $19.5 mil over three; its domestic sum is a stellar $142.1 mil to date. The Nicole Kidman-Hugh Jackman-Baz Luhrmann epic spectacle, Australia, rounded out the top five with an unspectacular $20 mil over five days and just $14.8 mil over three (this despite an A- CinemaScore grade from a largely older-woman audience). And Transporter 3 (No. 7) was also an afterthought with $18.5 mil from Wednesday through Sunday and $12.3 mil on the three-day weekend.
Indeed, there's no need to waste time talking about those films when we can applaud Gus Van Sant's limited-release biopic Milk, which cracked the top 10 while playing in only 36 theaters. The Sean Penn starrer grossed $1.9 mil over the five-day frame and $1.4 mil from Friday through Sunday, a marvelous average of $38,375 per venue.
Overall, the cumulative box office total was up about 4 percent from Thanksgiving weekend a year ago, when Enchanted and This Christmas led the way. And if you'll excuse me now, I'm going to start work on a movie I've been thinking about making -- it's called Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, and although I only have a title, I know it's gonna be a blockbuster.
More box office news:
Four Christmases dominates Thanksgiving box office
Box Office Preview: Can Twilight hold off Four Christmases and Australia?
Twilight sinks its teeth into a blockbuster debut
Quantum of Solace stirs up a win
Holiday films to receive season's greetings, beatings
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