It’s difficult to know what the Disney suits will be thinking tomorrow morning. After a two cinema release over the last couple of weeks, the House of Mouse’s return to hand-drawn animation, The Princess & The Frog, expanded wide in the US this weekend. It’s topped the box office with $25 million, which is a solid if unspectacular debut, particularly compared to the opening weekends of many CG animated movies – Ice Age 3 made $41 million in its first weekend, while Up made $68 million. That said, it is comparable to many of Disney’s other recent non-Pixar efforts, with Bolt opening to $26 million, and Meet The Robinsons to $25 million.
With the Dinsey execs waiting to see how The Princess & The Frog would perform before greenlighting any other hand-drawn projects, this weekend’s result will probably mean they’ll now wait and see whether its box office holds up over the festive period before deciding whether to make more traditionally animated treats.
The only other new entry in the US top 10 was Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-bait movie Invictus, starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, about how the Rugby World Cup helped unite South Africa after the end of apartheid (with Matt Damon as SA rugby captain Francois Pienaar). The film made $9 million in its first three days to place third on the list. It’s not a bad result for this sort of film, although as with Princess & The Frog, the film is going to have to hope for good word of mouth – and award nominations – to help it keep making money over the coming months.
Falling outside the top 10, because it was only showing on three screens, was Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, which is having its Oscar qualifying run before expanding in January. It made $116,000, which is an average of just over $38,000 a screen. Although that’s not bad, it’s perhaps not as much as the distributors might have hope for from a new Peter Jackson movie. It again looks like awards buzz may be the film’s best shot at box office success, although with middling reviews, it may struggle.
Take a look below for the full US top 10 for the weekend of December 11th-13th.
Rank | Title | Weekend Gross (millions) | Total Gross to date (millions) |
1 | The Princess And The Frog | $25.0 | $27.8 |
2 | The Blind Side | $15.4 | $150.2 |
3 | Invictus | $9.0 | $9.0 |
4 | The Twilight Saga: New Moon | $8.0 | $267.3 |
5 | Disney’s A Christmas Carol | $6.8 | $124.4 |
6 | Brothers | $5.0 | $17.4 |
7 | 2012 | $4.4 | $155.3 |
8 | Old Dogs | $4.3 | $39.9 |
9 | Armored | $3.5 | $11.7 |
10 | Ninja Assassin | $2.7 | $34.3 |