Hollywood broke out the Champale, as the industry’s long wake for a bad year at the box office turned to cheers and confetti for the New Year’s weekend. The old reliables — Tom Cruise in a Mission: Impossible episode and Robert Downey as an action-hero Sherlock Holmes — lured the hard-to-please young male audience back to movie houses, and a third infestation of Alvin and the Chipmunks brought in the kids. The mix of burly action and family fare helped goose theatrical revenue for 2011’s last weekend about 3% over the previous New Year’s holiday frame.
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol won the four-day weekend at North American theaters with $38.3 million, according to preliminary studio estimates, boosting its 17-day domestic total to $132.4 million (or nearly as much as the entire run of Mish Imp 3) and its worldwide take to $362.5 million. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows improved on its so-so first week with a Friday-to-Monday finish of $26.4 million and $130.9 million in its third week. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked won’t come near the $220 million earned by the second installment, but the $21 million it squirreled away this weekend should push it over $100 million by mid-week.
(MORE: Richard Corliss’s Top 10 Best Movies of 2011)
Having come close to exhausting popular franchises, the industry tested the audience’s tolerance for new pictures — “new” in this case meaning a remake of a Swedish movie adaptation of an international best-seller, a version of antique Belgian comic books (also previously filmed), a movie of a children’s war book (previously made into a hit stage play) and the latest artifact in the bereaved-dad-finds-renewal feel-good genre.
Two of these holiday movies were directed by Steven Spielberg, and it looks as though War Horse, the boy-loves-steed epic, has dug its way deeper into American moviegoers’ hearts ($40.5 million in nine days) than his 3-D CGI comic-book movie The Adventures of Tintin ($47.5 million in 12 days). Cameron Crowe’s We Bought a Zoo, starring Matt Damon as the neophyte zookeeper rebounding from his wife’s death, seems to have found its audience: the $41 million it has cadged in 10 days is higher than the lifetime domestic grosses of all but two Crowe films, Jerry Maguire and Vanilla Sky, both of which benefited from Cruise’s luster. The one downer in the quartet, David Fincher’s Sweden-set remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, has earned $56 million in two weeks, which sounds shabby only in comparison with its makers’ high expectations. The movie’s ultimate financial success (it cost $90 to produce) will depend on whether European audiences want to invest two-and-a-half hours and eight to 10 Euros in yet another version of the Stieg Larsson thriller.
(MORE: Mary Pols’ Top 10 Films of 2011)
In the Tiny Town of so-called indie films, Meryl Streep’s impersonation of British PM Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady earned a landslide $280,000 in four theaters — which, Indiewire’s Peter Knegt reports, accounts for the year’s fourth highest per-screen average, after Midnight in Paris, The Tree of Life and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Considering that The Iron Lady‘s very limited opening was heralded by Best Actress citations for Streep from the New York, Boston and Southeastern Film Critics groups, plus a Newsweek cover, a hagiographic segment on 60 Minutes and so much exposure on NPR that the star could have been hosting a pledge drive, you might expect Meryl-does-Maggie would open at least as strongly as Woody Allen, Terry Malick and the ghost of John Le Carré. But it’s a healthy start for this Oscar-angled bio-pic, whose other goal should be to earn more at the domestic box office than Woody’s $56.3 million, thus becoming the top-grossing “indie” picture released in 2011.
(MORE: Corliss’s review of The Iron Lady)
The news was also encouraging for two actual indie films. A Separation, the Iranian drama of two families battling at home and in court, cashed in on its warm reviews and its New York and Toronto Critics awards for Best Foreign Film with $79,500 in three venues. Dee Rees’s black-lesbian coming-of-age film Pariah managed a liberating weekend total of $65,100 on four screens and $101,500 since its Wednesday debut.
In second-week holdovers, Wim Wenders’ danceumentary Pina rang in the new year with a leaping $93,000 in three theaters, for an 11-day total of $316,000, while Angelina Jolie’s Bosnian-war love story In the Land of Blood and Honey limped to $12,000 in four days at two houses, with an 11-day cume of $52,000. In wider release, two “indie” films releases could break out the champagne. The Artist, a potential Oscar front-runner, earned $1.7 million on 167 screens, for a six-week cume of $5.4 million. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy isn’t getting as much love from the critics and the Hollywood guilds, but over the long weekend it earned nearly as much as The Artist in just over a third as many theaters; it took in an imposing $1.4 million on just 57 screens, for $4.3 million in four weeks.
(MORE: The Top 10 Movie Performances of 2011)
These platform releases are designed to launch films not into the B.O. top 10 but into the minds of Academy Award voters. If those responsible for The Iron Lady, The Artist and A Separation hear their names called on Oscar nights, they can consider their mission: impossible accomplished.
Here are the three-day (Friday-Sunday) and four-day (Friday-Monday) estimates for the New Year’s weekend’s top-grossing pictures in North American theaters, as reported by Box Office Mojo:
- Mission Impossible—Ghost Protocol, $29.6 million, three days; $38.3 million, four days; $132.4 million, third week
- Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, $21 million, three days; $26.5 million, four days; $130.9 million, third week
- Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, $16.4 million, three days; $22.8 million, four days; $92.7 million, second week
- The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, $14.8 million, three days; $19 million, four days; $55.6 million, second week
- War Horse, $14.4 million, three days; $19.2 million, four days; $40.5 million, second week
- We Bought a Zoo, $13.2 million, three days; $16.5 million, four days; $40.7 million, second week
- The Adventures of Tintin, $11.4 million, three days; $15 million, four days; $47.5 million, second week
- New Year’s Eve, $6.4 million, three days; $7.7 million, four days; $46 million, fourth week
- The Darkest Hour, $4.3 million, three days; $5.3 million, four days; $13.1 million, second week
- The Descendants, $3.4 million, three days; $4.3 million, four days; $39.4 million, seventh week