Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Anne Hathaway in Alice in Wonderland (top); Brendan Gleeson, Matt Damon in Green Zone (upper middle); Jay Baruchel, Alice Eve in She's Out of My League (lower middle); Robert Pattinson, Pierce Brosnan in Remember Me (bottom)
Alice in Wonderland dominated the North American box office on its second weekend, grossing an estimated $62 million (an impressive $16,631 per screen) according to Box Office Mojo.
Tim Burton’s fantasy-adventure blockbuster had a below-average 46 percent drop from the previous weekend chiefly thanks to great Saturday/Sunday business. (Friday's decrease had been steeper — 57 percent.) Alice in Wonderland's total take to date is $208.6 million — the first 2010 release to cross the $200 million mark. The film stars Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover, Matt Lucas, and the voices of Stephen Fry, Barbara Windsor, and Michael Sheen.
Although Alice in Wonderland is doing remarkably well, its weekend-to-weekend decrease was much steeper than Avatar's, which generally hovered between 10 and 20 percent.
At a distant #2, the Paul Greengrass-Matt Damon Iraq War thriller Green Zone, in which Matt Damon stars as the leader of a US Army team who uncovers a conspiracy over the US government's search for weapons mass destruction, grossed $14.5 million at 3,003 screens, or $4,840 per screen. That's several million less than distributor Universal expected chiefly because, unlike Alice in Wonderland, Green Zone did relatively poor business on Saturday. That's the same problem faced by another "serious" movie greeted by mixed-to-negative reviews, the Robert Pattinson vehicle Remember Me, which actually suffered a 20 percent drop on Saturday.
Green Zone, which cost $100 million to produce, will turn out to be another Iraq War drama that flops — and flops badly — at the domestic box office.
Remember Me, Robert Pattinson’s first non-vampire leading role since his Twilight Saga stardom, took in $8.3 million at 2,212 screens, or a disappointing $3,762 per screen. Saturday's box-office figures killed it, possibly because of poor word of mouth or perhaps Pattinson's fans decided they didn't want to go see a movie in which their idol dies. The "twist" ending was out even before Remember Me opened.
The romantic drama will likely be unable to recover its low — $16 million — cost at the domestic box office. (Exhibitors keep about 50 percent of a film's gross.) But ancillary and international revenues will probably earn Summit Entertainment some good cash, even after taking out distribution expenses.
Another new entry, She’s Out of My League actually outperformed Remember Me thanks to higher grosses on Saturday and Sunday. The teen comedy earned $9.6 million at 2,956 screens, for a $3,248 average. The box-office figures themselves are okay for a teen comedy movie with no big names in front or behind the camera, but the per-screen average was on the low side. According to Box Office Mojo, She’s Out of My League cost $20 million to produce.
Photos: Alice in Wonderland (Disney Enterprises); Remember Me (Myles Aronowitz / Summit Entertainment); Green Zone (Jasin Boland / Universal); She's Out of My League (Darren Michaels / DW-Paramount)