What started as a close and unpredictable race to box office supremacy wound up an easy win for Nicolas Cage’s latest sci-fi flick, Knowing, which grossed $24.8 mil this weekend, trumping challenges from the hearty laugher I Love You, Man and the Julia Roberts-Clive Owen rom-thrill Duplicity.
While I’m somewhat surprised by the outcome — Knowing fared much better than I, or most other box office prognosticators, expected — in the end the battle wasn’t even very close. Cage scored his third consecutive No. 1 opening in the past year and a half, drawing a diverse crowd that was evenly divided between men and women and about two-thirds over the age of 25. For indie distributor Summit, meanwhile, Knowing’s debut marks a second big win after last fall’s Twilight (which happened to hit DVD this weekend, in case you didn’t hear — yay!).
I Love You, Man was a solid second-place finisher, grossing $18 mil and cementing Paul Rudd’s status as a rising comedy draw. While perhaps a bit lower than hoped, the film’s opening sum is on par with that of Rudd’s last success, Role Models ($19.2 mil), which wound up banking $67.3 mil during its domestic run. With an audience that basically hits “all four quadrants” (young and old, male and female) awarding the film a decent B+ CinemaScore grade, I Love You, Man could have some box office legs in the weeks to come.
The same can’t be said about Duplicity (No. 3), which disappointed with $14.4 mil, despite boasting some pretty big names. It’s hard to compare the film’s performance to that of any recent Julia Roberts release — simply because the woman still often dubbed the biggest female star in the world hasn’t had a lead role in a major movie in years. That said, this opening total falls well short of the $20 mil-to-$40 mil premieres she consistently drew during her heyday from 1997 to 2001. And with a woeful CinemaScore grade of C from a “one quadrant” crowd mostly comprised of older women, Duplicity doesn’t appear to be the comeback hit many hoped it would be.
Race to Witch Mountain (No. 4 with $13 mil) and Watchmen (No. 5 with $6.7 mil) rounded out the top five in a frame whose overall gross declined about 5 percent from a year ago, making this the second “down” weekend in a row. But the slow times shouldn’t last much longer, as Monsters vs. Aliens is set to scare up a fortune starting next weekend.
More Box Office News:
Box Office Preview: I Love You, Man, Duplicity, and Knowing battle for No. 1
Race to Witch Mountain casts a spell at No. 1
Watchmen wins the weekend with $55.7 mil
Madea tops Jonas Brothers for a second box office win
Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail wins big at the box office
Friday the 13th slashes records
EW.com’s Box Office Chart
Comments (1-15) of 37 Add your comment
“Twilight (which happened to hit DVD this weekend, in case you didn’t hear — yay!).”
The fact that you made a plug for Twilight (as EW has been doing for what seems like a year now) AND liked it makes you an idiot.
twilight wasnt even great.
you wanna support a vampire, its called Let The Right One In. best movie of 08
This is truly a crying shame — because I LOVE YOU, MAN is a FAR superior movie than KNOWING. Nicolas Cage was really laughable in this — and so was most of the acting and script.
For my review of both of these movies — and other recent releases — check out the “March Movie Reviews” entry in my blog:
http://movies-tv-entertainment.blogspot.com/
I can see why people went to Knowing, you know exactly what you were gonna get with that movie. I bet it drops by more then 60% next weekend.
I love you, man. will have much longer legs and is pretty funny.
The Julie Roberts and the guy whose publicist did a good job in promoting looks very boring. If the best parts of the movie are in the commercials, there was nothing that made me laugh. I like Julia Roberts enough, and she is always fine in these romantic comedies….but after the Mexican, and Runaway Bride, she should have stopped making these sort of films.
The audience will never love Julia Roberts as much as she has grown to lover herself.
entertainment weekly sure does love twilight… Twilight is everywhere lol haha…
Will took the words right out of my mouth! F@#K twilight and all the unnecessary bulls#!t attention EW pays to it! ENOUGH ALREADY!! The movie sucked and the books are written for middle-school kids!! Grow up EW!!
Me suspects whoever owns EW also owns the company that made Twilight.
MVA is going to dominate next weekend-
1)Monsters VS Aliens
2)Knowing
3)I Love You, Man
4)The Haunting of Conneticut
5)Duplicity
Oh yeah and EW lay off this Twilight crap
Twighlit is for sad lonely girls who cling to the bad boy is reformable fantasy.
That Knowing did so well both boggle sthe mind and doesn’t surprise me all at once. Of course the masses will flock to stupidity. ILYM will hold up much better though as it is a smart, funny movie.
Hopefully Duplicity will hold and do well in the end. Still is short of 100 million even after 3 weeks…wow
Knowing was awful
EW’s bizarre luv of everything Twilight makes me kind of hate their magazine anymore. It’s like they finally lost their last shred of street cred with this total bowdown in trying to appeal to the masses. It’s a shame, because EW used to be the best magazine ever.
I think that more people would want to see a JR romantic comedy. To be honest, I didn’t love Erin Brockovich or any of her other “serious” roles. I’m ready for another movie from her, but not a drama.
knowing was actually good. I was shocked.