The Black Box Office Report – May 25, 2009

32 years ago today, Star Wars: A New Hope was released to theaters. A lot has changed since then. But one thing remains the same when it comes to Hollywood movies:

A family movie will always win, no matter how big your robots are.

This weekend, which, depending on who you ask, is still going on, the #1 movie in theaters was “Night At The Museum: Battle At The Smithsonian”, to the tune of $53.5 million. 4,096 theater owners all saw an average $13,062 box office this weekend. The apparent lack of Black historical figures at the Smithsonian Institute didn’t stop millions of families from going to check it out, and it probably means we can expect to see Ben Stiller in many more of these kinds of movies to come.

Warner Bros’ “Terminator: Salvation” sits at #2, making $43,010,000 in 3,530 theaters nationally. With an average per theater take of $12,184, if you were one of the theaters showing both the #1 and #2 movies this weekend, you are well on your way to paying for that new “IMAX” screen in the back. Christian Bale was a brilliant casting choice for this. If only they could go back and recast the role in the last three movies. Common is also in this film, and he’s pretty good! With the dialogue he’s given, he does what he can. We’re really looking forward to Common’s next role, because this thing with him and the guns in every role…that’s enough. Terminator as a franchise is on its way to becoming the new Star Trek. Beloved, still cool, but not exactly the way it started out. Someday someone will come and reboot this story, making it relevant to the times, but that’s not what MCG did. Maybe James Cameron will come and take it back. We can only hope.

At number three, and apparently not going anywhere is Star Trek, the most successful movie of the year so far, making $21,951,000. It GAINED 493 theaters this weekend, which helped, as a lot of the Imax runs are limited and will end soon. Again, this is a movie that is winning new fans over and slowly converting older fans. Though it had a relatively low per theater gross of $5,416, it’s made $183,000,000 so far, after 3 weeks. Zoe Saldana, was recently on director Pete Chatmon’s Double Down Film show with an exclusive interview. Pete and Zoe have worked together previously on his feature film “Premium, where she starred opposite Hill Harper.

Angels & Demons fell 53.7% this week to #4, taking in $21.4 million at 3,527 theaters, averaging $6,056 per. It’s already made $81M, so expect them to keep these movies going for as long as they can find new angles to tell the story. Or, until they decide that the conspiracy is aliens. Then ya know it’s over.

This weekend, Paramount’s “Dance Flick” hit theaters, a new Wayans Brothers comedy that parodies all the dance oriented movies of recent release. Made for a relatively modest $25 million, it made $11,113,000 this weekend at 2,450 theaters. Averaging $4,536 per site, this movie’s doing pretty good business for a small release. Paramount seems to have a good balance of large and small releases this season.

Here’s the rest of the top movies for your weekend. If you’re off today, you can take advantage of this chart and go see something!

1 - Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian 20th Century Fox $53,500,000 $53,500,000 (total)
2 - Terminator Salvation Warner Bros. $43,010,000 $56,382,000 (total)
3 2 Star Trek Paramount $21,951,000 $183,585,000 (total)
4 1 Angels & Demons Sony Pictures Releasing $21,400,000 $81,511,000 (total)
5 - Dance Flick MTV/Paramount $11,113,000 $11,113,000 (total)
6 3 X-Men Origins: Wolverine 20th Century Fox $7,800,000 $163,054,000 (total)
7 4 Ghosts of Girlfriends Past Warner Bros. $3,720,000 $45,858,000 (total)
8 5 Obsessed Sony Pictures Releasing $2,000,000 $65,908,000 (total)
9 7 Monsters vs. Aliens Paramount Pictures $1,345,000 $192,991,000 (total)
10 6 17 Again Warner Bros. $1,005,000 $60,314,000 (total)
11 8 The Soloist Paramount Pictures/DreamWorks/Universal Pictures $823,000 $29,219,000 (total)
12 9 Next Day Air Summit Entertainment, LLC $600,000 $8,912,000 (total)

Next Day Air is still hanging in there, so if you are so inclined, this would be a good weekend to see it. The Soloist is still creeping towards $30M, and it looks like “Obsessed” is finally about done.

What a great ride by “Obsessed”, hanging in there against some major, heavy films with pretty much no marketing support. This is a great example of the people supporting a movie and continually supporting it. “Obsessed” is enjoying support much in the way a Nollywood movie does, by word of mouth and good ol’ fashioned fan support. While millions were spent in major media ads for the top 3 movies, people still got up, went to the theater, and paid money for “Obsessed”, and the reviews for this film have not improved. Not bad! Might we see Beyonce and Idris work together again?

This week the 62nd Annual Cannes Film Festival concluded, and the winner of the coveted Palm d’or was Austrian director Michael Haneke, but the biggest star to come from this year’s festival is Lee Daniels. His film “Precious”, got a standing ovation at Cannes and is being hailed as one of the best films at the festival. Check the trailer for yourself here, or visit weareallprecious.com!

This summer there are a number of film festivals taking place throughout the country, and one of the ones we’re looking forward to is Urbanworld. We’re talking to Stacey Spikes at Urbanworld about what we can expect this year and more, so watch for that conversation.

And finally, last week, the networks revealed a few of their new shows. We showed you trailers and clips from “V”, “Flash Forward”, “Brothers”, and “Human Target”. So far, “Brothers”, starring Michael Strahan, Darryl “Chill” Mitchell”, CCH Pounder, and Carl Weathers is getting the worst response. Will this be indicative of the response when it actually premieres? Fox hopes not.

That’s it for this week. You are now officially caught up. Now, since it’s a Holiday Monday, some things may change, but if they do, we will be sure to update you!