HOLLYWOOD — The vampires displayed box-office bite, but overall it was another anemic weekend for Hollywood despite a bevy of new releases.
Receipts were down from a year ago for the fifth consecutive weekend as a record eight movies opened at, or expanded to, more than 1,000 theaters across the U.S. and Canada, research firm Nielsen EDI said Sunday.
Only escapism managed to cut through the clutter of serious fall fare: Sony Pictures’ vampire thriller “30 Days of Night” ranked No. 1 with an estimated $16 million in grosses. It was followed by the holdover hit comedies “Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?” with $12.1 million and “The Game Plan” with $8.1 million.
“As an industry, we’re bludgeoning our audience with serious dramas,” said Chris Aronson, senior vice president of distribution at 20th Century Fox. “We already get confronted with politics and bad news on a daily basis.”
Audiences mostly shunned a throng of serious, R-rated pictures as the industry’s fall slump deepened, including the Halle Berry- Benicio Del Toro redemption saga “Things We Lost in the Fire,” which earned strong reviews for its two stars, and the Reese Witherspoon-Jake Gyllenhaal terrorism drama “Rendition,” whose notices were mixed.
After a standout summer, overall box-office revenue is down 6 percent so far this fall, and attendance has shrunk by 10 percent, said Media by Numbers, another data tracker.
The kidnapping mystery “Gone Baby Gone” fared best among the serious new R-rated films aimed at adult audiences and year-end awards consideration, grossing about $6 million to tentatively place No. 5.
