Just how big was the second weekend of Alice in Wonderland? The four new releases—Green Zone, She’s Out of My League, Remember Me and Our Family Wedding—could only account for 65 percent of Alice‘s total; somewhere, the Mad Hatter is doing a CGI-enhanced Irish jig to celebrate. As we do each Monday, here’s a breakdown of the top five at the box office.
1. Alice in Wonderland: $62 million ($208.6 million total)
And you thought 3-D was just a fad! A ridiculous 70 percent of the domestic gross for Alice in Wonderland (or $146 million, for non-math majors) has come from the third dimension. With $208.6 million in the bank after just 10 days, Alice is already the top-grossing collaboration between Johnny Depp and Tim Burton, and sometime next weekend it will pass Batman to become Mr. Burton’s biggest success of all-time. As if that weren’t enough, Alice also seems assured to be Mr. Depp’s fourth $300 million earner in the last seven years—its better-than-expected drop of just 47 percent bodes well for future dollars—joining the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. In case you were wondering: Yes, Pirates of the Caribbean 4 is due to hit theaters in May of 2011. Start buying Disney stock now.
2. Green Zone: $14.5 million ($14.5 million total)
According to the New York Times Twitter page, the $14.5 million opening for Green Zone was “dismal.” But with all due respect to the Paper of Record—and the intern writing their tweets—what did they expect? As we’ve seen from State of Play, Body of Lies and Duplicity, non-franchise adult-themed films don’t open much larger than this no matter who is starring in them. Toss in the fact that Green Zone is about the Iraq war and we imagine the fired Universal executives who green-lighted this $100 million film are doing cartwheels. Bear in mind, the long-delayed Paul Greengrass film nearly grossed as much in three days as The Hurt Locker has in 171. Relatively speaking, Green Zone‘s opening was far from dismal.
3. She’s Out of My League: $9.6 million ($9.6 million total)
Maybe Jay Baruchel isn’t a movie star after all. The beloved Judd Apatow Player (or is that just us?) branched out into a lead role and the results were far from exciting. The $9.6 million opening of She’s Out of My League place it in the same league as Observe and Report, which opened to $11 million last spring on the way to just $25 million total. Of course, that film—from cult director Jody Hill and starring Seth Rogen—was supposed to do much better, so in that regard perhaps League did just fine. The laws of diminished expectations at work!
4. Remember Me: $8.3 million ($8.3 million total)
De-fanged and away from the comforts of tween girl obsession, Edward Cullen found himself on the wrong end of a bomb—the $8.3 million opening for Remember Me was about one-third of what New Moon grossed … from its midnight showings alone. Yikes! Forget Jay Baruchel, maybe Robert Pattinson isn’t a movie star after all.
5. Shutter Island: $8.1 million ($108 million total)
If you were expecting to see Avatar on this list, we wouldn’t hold it against you. For the first time since December 18, James Cameron’s big blue Oscar loser failed to crack the top five. Don’t feel too badly though: Down just 18 percent, Avatar had the lowest decline in the top 10 and pushed its domestic gross past $730 million. As for Shutter Island, the thriller enjoyed the lowest decline in the top 10, non-Avatar division (38 percent), and is now Martin Scorsese’s second biggest hit ever. It’s also the director’s third film with Leonardo DiCaprio to cross the $100 plateau. Call them the (very) poor man’s Depp and Burton.
