Zac Efron, Michelle Pfeiffer, New Year’s Eve
Starring Matt Damon and former Woody Allen muse Scarlett Johansson, Cameron Crowe’s We Bought a Zoo brought in $14.3 million at no. 6 as per studio estimates found at Box Office Mojo. After surging 53%, the film’s per-theater average was a better-than-expected $4,521 at 3,163 locations. As mentioned in a previous post, despite its performance this New Year’s weekend, We Bought a Zoo will have quite a bit of trouble recovering its $50m budget domestically. Matching it, however, shouldn’t be too much a problem despite my early, more dire prediction.
We Bought a Zoo, Crowe’s first narrative feature since the Orlando Bloom/Kirsten Dunst/Susan Sarandon box-office fiasco Elizabethtown six years ago, also features Angus Macfadyen, Thomas Haden Church, Patrick Fugit, Colin Ford, and Maggie Elizabeth Jones. I’ll say it again: when it comes to box-office returns, perhaps it’s time for Cameron Crowe to pair up with Tom Cruise (Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky) one more time.
At no. 7, Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin drew $12 million at 3,087 theaters. To date, the $125 million motion-capture animated 3D feature has collected $47.87 million domestically. Considering that Tintin has the advantage of higher ticket prices, the North American box office total — despite an enthusiastic reception in Quebec — is disappointing.
Co-produced by Peter Jackson, The Adventures of Tintin features Jamie Bell as Tintin, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s Daniel Craig, Andy Serkis, Ghost Protocol’s Simon Pegg, Cary Elwes, Toby Jones, and Nick Frost.
Garry Marshall’s New Year’s Eve scored $6.74 million — up 103%, for obvious reasons — at no. 8. The all-star omnibus comedy-drama features Michelle Pfeiffer, Zac Efron, Robert De Niro, Halle Berry, Jessica Biel, Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher, Lea Michele, Sarah Jessica Parker, Josh Duhamel, Hilary Swank, among others. Domestic total to date: $46.37 million after four weekends.
Rounding out the top twelve were Chris Gorak/Emile Hirsch/Olivia Thirlby’s The Darkest Hour with $4.3 million (total: $13.2 million), George Clooney/Alexander Payne’s The Descendants with $3.65 million (total: $39.67 million), Jason Segel/Amy Adams‘ The Muppets with $2.58 million (total: $82.45 million), and Martin Scorsese/Asa Butterfield’s Hugo with $2.52 million (total: $49.53m).
Jason Reitman/Charlize Theron’s Young Adult and Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart/Taylor Lautner’s The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 tied in 13th place with $2 million each. Breaking Dawn’s 36% surge compared to last weekend was particularly surprising. Total after seven weekends: $275.44m. How far beyond the inevitable $280m Breaking Dawn will reach depends on how steep the drop-off rate next (non-holiday) weekend.
