'Wonderland' Apparently Full of Money

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland blew away already high expectations, coming in with a total of $116 million domestically in its opening weekend and $210 million worldwide.  It came in as the sixth highest grossing opening weekend of all time, and easily took the record for largest opening weekend in the first quarter of the year.  Given its family-friendly nature, broadly popular subject matter, strong marketing, 3-D "wow" factor and Johnny Depp and Tim Burton's star power, the film should hold over well in the weekends to come, at least until such time as its 3-D screens are taken away for other, newer, films.

Overture pictures apparently took the perfect counter-programming strategy with Brooklyn's Finest, a picture that seems to have completely slipped under my radar.  The Richard Gere/Don Cheadle/Ethan Hawke/Wesley Snipes vehicle came in second place with a strong $13.5 million in its opening weekend, appealing to audiences with absolutely no interest in 'Alice'.

The number one picture from the previous two weekends, Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island starring Leonardo DiCaprio slipped two spots to third, bringing in $13.3 million for a total gross of $95.8 million three weeks into its run.

Kevin Smith's Cop Out held fairly strong considering the terrible reviews and bad word of mouth the film has gotten.  It dropped by half from its opening weekend, to $9.1 million.  With just over $32 million to date, and a production budget of around $30 million, Cop Out will be profitable.  This is the first film where Smith was a 'hired gun', brought in to direct material he did not write.

Avatar, as expected, suffered its biggest drop week-over-week to date.  The film did hold well in the face of very strong competition, dropping 43% to $7.7 million.  It lost about 12% of its screens, most of those being the incredibly lucrative IMAX screens, showing that the film will continue to have legs for some time.  With a total gross of $720 million domestically to date, expect James Cameron's new highest grossing picture of all time to top out in the $750-780 million range.  Adjusted for inflation, it currently comes in at #14 domestically, and will likely settle in at around #12, just ahead of The Empire Strikes Back.  With a total of $2.56 billion worldwide so far, Avatar is easily the highest grossing movie of all time, whether adjusted for inflation or not, given that international box office was not as relevant when the other films on the top charts were released.