Geekscape’s Box Office Roundup For the Weekend of 10/07/11

No beating around the bush this week, Real Steel didn’t hold back any robot punches as it jacked up the competition, man. The Robot Boxing movie knocked out the competition and took the number one spot in a unanimous decision.

The Top

Real Steel, which, let me reiterate, is a movie about boxing robots, opened strong with $27.3 million. Its weekend take was more than the second, third and fourth place movies combined.

There’s been doubt whether or not Hugh Jackman can be successful opening a movie that doesn’t involve X-Men, but Real Steel’s strong showing is far and away his best since 2004’s Van Helsing opened with just under $52 million. However, Van Helsing was considered a bomb as it never made it to it’s $160 million budget and the sequels and spinoff television series that were planned were killed. Real Steel’s budget was half that, so the standard isn’t set as high, and a sequel is apparently already in the works. The movie will likely see a dramatic dropoff next week, but should still come close to it’s $80 million budget before it leaves theaters.

For director Shawn Levy, Real Steel’s $27.3 million was slightly less than the $30.4 million opening he saw in 2006 with Night At The Museum, but is an improvement over the $25.2 million Date Night earned in 2010.

To make the most obvious comparison possible, Real Steel had a stronger opening than the 1990 robot fighting classic, Robot Jox. Robot Jox only opened with $464,441, but also only opened on a tenth of the screens that Real Steel did. To put that mismatch in boxing terms, it’d be like Mike Tyson in his prime facing a beauty pageant contestant.

From a boxing angle, it greatly outperformed the $1.5 million opening in 1992 of my favorite boxing movie ever, Diggstown, and the 1996 $3.3 million opening of the criminally underrated The Great White Hype. From a fighting angle, it proved that the reason Warrior was never able to find an audience was due to it’s lack of robots.

Real Steel was the first new release to debut at number one in three weeks, and put robots of some sort in the top spot for the second week in a row.

The Rest

A whole lot of handsome came in second place as the George Clooney/Ryan Gosling political thriller, The Ides Of March, brought in $10.4 million.

That’s on the low end of what’s become par for a Clooney opening at this stage in his career, as Leatherheads, Michael Clayton, The Men Who Stare At Goats and The American have all opened in the $10-13 million range. As a director, it’s his second best opening, a few million behind Leather heads, but better than Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind and Good Night And Good Luck combined.

For Gosling, this gives him three movies currently in the top 21, as Drive sits at 14 and Crazy, Stupid, Love still hangs in there at 21. Of those three, The Ides Of March had the weakest opening.

After inflation, its $10.4 million opening is very similar to the $7.8 million Wag The Dog saw in 1997. That’s another movie about politics with an all star cast.

Five seconds later, Gosling’s character takes a hammer and beats everyone to death.

Last week’s number one gimpily swam itself down two spots as Dolphin Tale still brought in another $9 million to come in third. After just three weeks, its sits at $49 million compared to its $37 million budget. It obviously would be well beyond that number by now if that dolphin’s robot tale was fighting other dolphin robot tales.

For the second week in a row, Moneyball saw a steeper decline and finished behind Dolphin Tale, but still sits with slightly more total at $49.2 million in the same amount of time. By early this week, it will surpass it’s $50 million budget.

50/50 saw the smallest decline of last week’s new releases with a 34.6% drop and sat still at number five by bringing in another $5.6 million. After two weeks, it sits at $17.4 million, and by the time it’s out of theaters it will have likely tripled it’s $8 million budget.

Bible lovers stayed home this weekend as Courageous dropped 46% to $4.8 million for sixth place. But, it’s still made over $16 million in two weeks from a $2 million budget, so they’re doing just fine.

The BluRay release of The Lion King definitely affected the 3D rerelease, as it saw a nearly 57% decline and fell four spots to number seven. By the time it finishes it’s theatrical release it will be ninth place on the all time domestic earner’s list.

The other second week releases, Dream House and What’s Your Number? each saw 40+% declines to come in eighth and ninth, while the top 10 can’t seem to shake Contagion as it holds strong at number 10.

In limited release, The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence earned $54,000 in 18 theaters for a $3,000 per screen average. After one week, it’s almost a third of the way towards earning what the first one made, and will far surpass it as it opens wider and wider throughout the month.

The Worst

Despite legitimate star power, Dream House and What’s Your Number will likely be out of the top 10 by next week, in only their third week.

Despite Daniel Craig, Naomi Watts and Rachel Weisz, Dream House only sits at $14.4 million and likely won’t even reach half of it’s $50 million budget domestically.

Someone should have rented…

What’s Your Number? had lower standards with only a $20 million budget, but has been unable to cash in on the familiarity of Anna Farris or carry over Chris Evans’ Captain America success. It’s half way to it’s budget at $10 million, but the odds of it reaching it are very slim.

Add Killer Elite to the list of films unable to maximize extreme star power and coming nowhere near their budget. In just it’s third week, the Statham/Owen/DeNiro actioner sits at just $21.6 million, which is a long, long way from its $70 million budget.

Next

Next weekend brings a lot of variety in an effort to shake up the top five. Will The Big Year peep success, or will it be added to the list of recent films that fail despite a big name cast? Can a Footloose remake dance its way to the top? Does the supposed prequel/apparent remake of The Thing make the most of its October opening and scare its way to number one?