Weekend Box Office

Dwayne’s #1!  Dwayne’s #1!

GIANT’s March cover boy Dwayne Johnson scored the fourth #1 opening of his career with this weekend’s Race to Witch Mountain, the action-packed revival of the ’70s family franchise.  It’s Johnson’s second-best start after 2002’s The Scorpion King, which opened to $36 million and $3 million ahead of his last box-office hit, 2005’s The Game Plan.  Johnson handily bested the screwed-up superheroes in Watchmen, beating out last week’s box-office champ by a solid $7 million.  The Zack Snyder directed adaptation finished second with $18 million, bringing its total gross to $86 million.  $100 million doesn’t seem out of reach, but that’s still a disappointing decline that suggests word of mouth on the film is mixed-to-negative outside of the most dedicated fanboy crowds.  The Alan Moore box office jinx continues!

Debuting in third place was the horror remake The Last House on the Left, followed closely behind by Taken (which refuses to drop out of the Top 5) and Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail.  Fox Searchlight might want to reconsider rushing their Best Picture winner Slumdog Millionaire onto DVD so quickly.  Although the disc is scheduled to hit stores on March 31, only two weeks away, the movie continues to print money in theaters, adding another $5 million for a $132 million total gross.

Speaking of surprise hits, there are still people out there still going to see Paul Blart: Mall Cop, as evidenced by its seventh place finish.  Like Taken, the movie has been a Top Ten list stable since January and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere soon.  He’s Just Not That Into You and Coraline finished eighth and ninth respectively, while the Playboy-themed comedy Miss March came in dead last with $2.3 million, just barely beating out Confessions of a Shopaholic.

The full list is below courtesy of the-numbers.com.  Next week should be an interesting one as three very different movies open chasing three very different audiences.  For the date movie crowd, there’s the Clive Owen/Julia Roberts romantic thriller Duplicity; for Judd Apatow slackers there’s the Paul Rudd/Jason Segal bromance I Love You, Man; and for Nic Cage fans (there are still some left, right?) there’s Knowing, a disaster movie from the guy that made The Crow.  Your guess is as good as mine as to what’s going to finish first.

The Top Ten: March 13-15
1. Race to Witch Mountain: $25
2. Watchmen: $18/$86
3. The Last House on the Left: $14.6
4. Taken: $6.7/$126.8
5. Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail: $5.1/$83.2
6. Slumdog Millionaire: $5/$132.6
7. Paul Blart: Mall Cop: $3.1/$137.7
8. He’s Just Not That Into You: $2.9/$89
9. Coraline: $2.6/$69.1
10. Miss March: $2.3

For more Dwayne Johnson, click here to his GIANT photo shoot!

And for more Watchmen, click here to win “Watching The Watchmen”!