Giving a little clue as to what theaters need to draw people in, Battle: LA took the crown this weekend with an expected $36 million take domestically. The feature, which Sony continues to claim has been made for $70 million, is on track to do decent numbers overall for the studio and could have some legs depending on how other fare plays out in the next weekend or two with what big draws there are on the action front. While that movie lived up to its expectations, others did not fare as well. One new entry, Red Riding Hood, failed to achieve critical mass and only reached $14 million even with the draw of the director being behind Twilight and some at least impressive visuals. On the plus side, the feature only cost 40 million to make pre-marketing and there is a chance it can do much better in international markets.
The real dud of the weekend though is Disney’s Mars Needs Moms. With it being based off of the Berkeley Breathed book, there was some hope for it to do pretty well, but clocking in under 7 million is not a good sign in the slightest. With a budget of $150 million, which is hard to wrap your head around for a project like this, Mars Needs Moms is going to be a heavy anchor on the studio for this year.
While the domestic market did about as expected this weekend, the international market did not fare as well as reports from the studios indicate that things are off by about 60%, which makes sense considering the disaster in Japan and the Asian-Pacific region in general dealing with rolling blackouts and other alerts related to it.
- Battle: LA – $36 million
- Rango – $23 million
- Red Riding Hood – $14 million
- The Adjustment Bureau – $11.4 million
- Mars Needs Moms $6.8 million
