Box office report
Disney/Pixar made it a perfect 10 in a row, flying the animated adventure “Up” to No. 1 at the box office with a $68.2 million opening weekend.
All 10 films from Pixar Animation Studios have opened in the top spot and gone on to become commercial and critical hits.
“Up” had the third-best opening for a film from Disney-owned Pixar, just behind the $70 million debuts for “Finding Nemo” and “The Incredibles.” Last summer’s Disney-Pixar release, “WALL-E,” debuted with $63.1 million, according to the Associated Press.
“Usually things that are very popular with audiences don’t necessarily go over that well with critics. These things do both, and pretty much consistently every time,” Hollywood.com box-office analyst Paul Dergarabedian told the AP. “The Disney-Pixar collaboration is probably the closest thing to box-office perfection out there.”
“Up” features the voice of Ed Asner as a lonely widower who ties helium balloons to his house and flies to a South American adventure with an unexpected 9-year-old stowaway, Russell (newcomer Jordan Nagai).
Factoring in higher admission prices, earlier Pixar movies such as “Toy Story 2″ and “Monsters, Inc.” sold more tickets than “Up” over their first weekends, according to the AP.
“Up” drew both family crowds and adults without children, and the film’s 3-D release accounted for 51 percent of the total gross, the AP reported. “Up” is the first Pixar film to be released in 3-D.
The weekend’s other new wide release, director Sam Raimi’s return to horror, “Drag Me to Hell,” opened at No. 3 with $16.6 million. It wasn’t muc commpared to the blockbuster opening weekends for Raimi’s ”Spider-Man” movies but pretty good considering his previous efforts like the “Evil Dead” films, known as cult classics rather than blockbuster powerhouses.
The previous weekend’s No. 1 film, the family-friendly sequel “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian,” came in at No. 2 with $25.5 million. The sequel raised its 10-day total to $105.3 million.
“Star Trek” continued to boldly go toward box-office greatness, coming in at No. 5 with $12.8 million. Director J.J. Abrams’ reboot of the venerable sci-fi series raised its domestic total to $209.5 million, becoming the first 2009 release to cross the $200 million mark, according to the AP.
Hollywood finished off May with record revenues of $1.02 billion, coming in slightly ahead of the previous high in May 2007, the AP reported.
While May revenues came in 4.7 percent above those of May 2008, Hollywood has yet to see a soaring opening comparable to last year’s action hits “Iron Man” and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” which both topped $300 million domestically.
Overall weekend revenues were at $167 million, virtually even with the same period last year, according to the AP.
Total revenues for 2009 rose to $4.1 billion, up 13.7 percent. Movie attendance was about 11 percent ahead of last year’s.
Here is the top 10 list, according to the AP:
1. “Up,” $68.2 million.
2. “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian,” $25.5 million.
3. “Drag Me to Hell,” $16.6 million.
4. “Terminator Salvation,” $16.1 million.
5. “Star Trek,” $12.8 million.
6. “Angels & Demons,” $11.2 million.
7. “Dance Flick,” $4.9 million.
8. “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” $3.9 million.
9. “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” $1.9 million.
10. “Obsessed,” $665,000.
-BAM
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