Box Office: Burn After Reading Burns the Competition
Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on September 14, 2008
Well, we have a bit of an upset this weekend. Burn After Reading, which was picked by a lot of people to finish well behind at the box office, ended up winning the weekend by a hair over Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys and also Righteous Kill. Burn After Reading finished with 19.4 million, while The Family That Preys finished with $18 million and Righteous Kill $16.5 million. Here are the numbers:
| 1. Burn After Reading | $19.4 million |
| 2. Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys | $18.0 million |
| 3. Righteous Kill | $16.5 million |
| 4. The Women | $10.1 million |
| 5. The House Bunny |
$4.3 million |
| 6. Tropic Thunder |
$4.2 million |
| 7. The Dark Knight | $4.0 million |
| 8. Bangkok Dangerous | $2.4 million |
| 9. Traitor | $2.1 million |
| 10. Death Race |
$2.0 million |
The Women ended up not tearing it up at theaters, finishing with $10 million. Meanwhile, I notice that silly House Bunny movie keeps hanging around, in fifth place making $4.3 million.
Needless to say it was a MUCH BETTER weekend at the theaters than last weekend when the top-grossing movie only made seven freaking million dollars! As for me, I got my predictions bang-on about the Tyler Perry movie and about Righteous Kill, but I really underestimated Burn After Reading. A note to critics who keep whining about the lack of drawing power of George Clooney and Brad Pitt: shut up!!
Some news about The Dark Knight to pass along. Warner Bros. is planning to do a full re-launch of this flick in the new year, in time for Oscar season, so it has a chance to add some more to its box office total, now up to $517 million. The Dark Knight is now $83 million behind Titanic’s all time record domestic gross. Yes, the dream is still alive for you Batman fans. The Dark Knight might yet sink the Titanic, though it will still take a lot of effort.
Stay tuned for another busy round of predictions later this week at the Reject Report!
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